Marc's Short Messages

I'm getting used to last-minute change of plans. The pencilled-in trip to Austria, Slovenia and Croatia didn't really fall into place and will be on hold, while the already postponed trip to Malta, the smallest EU member state, shapes up.

Reinhold, my DAWN colleague from Switzerland, mailed me this picture and wrote: "Do you understand now why I'm afraid for Euro 08? There will be especially fans from a small European nation flooding our area here." I mailed him back: "They can be a bit noisy, Reinhold, but at least they water in the urinoirs, and not in your beautiful alp meadows. Just to comfort you: they will be gone after the first round. Enjoy them and spoil them the short while they are around. If the Swiss have done their homework well, you can sell a lot of fondues and raclettes (make sure to put in some oranges though, otherwise they won't eat it). When they're gone again, you will surely miss them." Btw, if you like orange, make sure to come to Holland this week for Queen's Day (30 April), when the national craziness is peaking again.

Took the boys on a trip to the Biesbosch national park, a wetlands area close to Dordrecht. More pictures here.

In Joel News International this week the encouraging report of a miraculous turn-around in a Louisiana prison.

Karolien and I met with Wim de Knijff to discuss the spiritual and historic formation of children. Wim worked most of his life for the Evangelical Broadcasting Company EO and produced a children's series and materials on 'Christian pioneers throughout history'. There is an overload of all kinds of Bible stories for kids, but nearly no Kingdom history and Kingdom advance education. It's an area that needs to be repioneered, because it helps shape identity and passion for God.

The past few days I cleaned out my office. From the dozens of files to the notorious unreached paper groups, from equipment to small stuff. What first looked like a boring task to do turned into a spiritual exercise, or more specific: a spiritual cleansing. Wading through page after page of ministry, projects, correspondence, more ministry, more projects, more correspondence, God confronted me with 20 years of well-meant but also quite ambitious human striving and perfectionism. Of course it wasn't all bad and I learned a lot, but if 10% of all this was truly 'Christ in me' (or Spirit-led) I would be happy. Yes, of course the context of a church system, old-paradigm ministry and Western society don't really help either, but hey - I want to live as a son of God, not a worker for God. I ended up driving seven large boxes of paperwork to the container, and already feel much lighter. I won't need any of this in the next phase.

Young emerging leaders from France will gather in the Cevennes this weekend to seek God, share life and dream. Florian will be there. I planned to go, but decided to chill out. However, I sense this weekend is going to be quite key in God's purposes. He's connecting people in a place of relative invisibility and perceived weakness. This is where God molds us, deals with heart issues and builds a secure foundation of 'Christ only'. Then if we 'emerge', we will have God's strength, not our own.

We live in one of the 40 neighbourhoods in the Netherlands that our government marked as 'problem areas' that within a few years need to become 'precious areas'. To make a start with this ambition in Overvecht they designated the piece of grass in the backyard of our apartment as a pilot project and pimped it up. A soccer field for the kids, some artifical hills and a walking path. There's still rubbish everywhere and this morning a truck ran over the grass and ruined it, but hey at least something is happening. Today two Government Ministers from the Hague visited our area, last week the Regional Commissioner of the Queen and the Mayor of Utrecht were here, and several weeks ago some people from the City Council. They all want to see our backyard which has been become the showcase for the whole neighborhood. As a model citizen Karolien was asked to share about her project with the kids. The officials asked some questions, only heard half of what Karolien had to say, and moved out again in their Mercedeses and BMW's. Non-conformist website GeenStijl (NoStyle) shot this video clip that shows the Minister responsible for the 40 neighbourhoods in sleeping posture. I take this whole political show with a big grain of salt. Where are the real ministers who want to live in this area?

Rogier, Peter and Johan blogged about the first Dutch 'emerging church' weekend, that might spin off into various local-regional (mainly relational) networks.

I will finish my Israel impressions with this picture of Jaffa, one of the oldest harbors in the world, and symbolic for the link between Europe and Israel. It's here (and in Jaffa Gate in Jerusalem last month) that God spoke about issues related to the Church, Europe and Israel. I'm still chewing on this, and might blog a bit more in-depth about this later.

I spent three days in the Negev desert, the dry and dusty south of Israel. Nothing grows here, except for a few acacia trees. But the landscape is majestic and peaceful. I've been to many places in nature, but the desert is a much more existential experience. There's no distraction, and if you don't bring some food and water you won't be able to survive. Like we need desert times in our spiritual life where God can really meet us existentially, it's also a fair observation that there would be no Jewish people or a Jewish state without the desert. It's in the Negev that God covenanted with Abraham, where he dwelled and dug wells. It's in the desert that God prepared Moses and the people of Israel, David and his men, Eliah, John the Baptist, Jesus, Paul. And it's in the desert that kibbutzim and moshavs pioneered for 40 years before they saw a Jewish state materialize. Ben Gurion even said that the future of the Jewish people lies in the Negev. How's that for visionary leadership! More Negev pictures here.

The Judaean desert west of the Dead Sea is the area where David and his men hid for Saul. There are many mountains, wadis and caves, and here and there a lush oasis. The Dead Sea is the lowest point on earth. It's here in this wilderness that God turned a bunch of outcasts and nobodies into mighty warriors and heroes. I made a hike near En-Gedi, prophesied to be a place of new life in the desert, and hid in a cave to pray. There I also found a tree as described in Job 14:7-9, completely dead but still botting out at the scent of water. The presence of a source or well makes all the difference here. I also visited Masada, a fortress high above the desert, overlooking the Dead Sea, where a Jewish resistance army held the last stronghold against the Romans (conquered in 73). More Dead Sea pictures here.

It's not so easy to keep up with the growing amount of weblogs and social network sites. Of course one way to manage is an RSS reader or browser that picks up the various feeds, but for networks like Shift and Connect Europe it would make sense to integrate people's blogs and social network profiles into a corporate website. I used FeedSweep to integrate the weblogs of a dozen missional pioneers in the Netherlands into the Shiftzine homepage, but am eager to learn about other integration mechanisms, so drop me a line if you have any experience in this area.

If you want to learn about pioneering in difficult circumstances and creating community life: go to Israel. I have to say I was quite impressed with the kibbutzim and moshavs where I stayed. What the Soviets didn't manage with the kolchozes, the Jews accomplished effectively with the kibbutzim. The farming communities were the real pioneers, turning desert land into places of springs, modelling community life as a prototype for society. The first kibbutz, Degania (picture), south of Lake Galilee, was founded in 1909, so roughly forty years before the Jewish state was established. One of the aspects of reformation I believe is a return to this kind of village culture (even in an urban context). The main difference between a kibbutz and a moshav is that in the former everything is shared equally, while the latter fuctions as a coop of independent producers. If you want to learn more about the kibbutzim, check out these articles or google yourself. More kibbutz pictures here.

The hills around Lake Galilee form a very pastoral landscape and were the central area of Jesus' ministry. It's easy to imagine the sermon on the mount, and Jesus strolling along the shores with his disciples, doing miracles and upsetting the religious freaks, sometimes setting sail to the other side in an attempt to escape the crowds. I also tried to escape the crowds that descend in busloads on places like Kapernaum. Religious tourists visit so called 'holy places' where once a miracle happened, then people built churches around them (often in the name of denominations, talking about imperialism), and think these places are still special. Often they don't see that today Jesus is still performing miracles and the Kingdom is coming to many places in the world. The cloud has already moved. I withdrew into the hills and canyons to pray and wander, and returned refreshed. More Galilee pictures here.

As promised a few impressions from Israel. I didn't really plan an itinerary or accomodation. Normally I go Luke 10 style and see what God has prepared for me. I ended up driving along the borders of Israel (the Mediterranean coastline, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Egypt) which was an interesting trip in itself. In the Golan I met three former soldiers who now work for the Prime Minister's office, and they took me to some places deeper into the Golan. Israel is probably the best defended country in the world (for good reasons), and all men and women (except the orthodox) have to serve 3 to 2 years in the army plus one month every year. This creates a sense of collective responsibility for the welbeing of the nation. More Golan pictures here.

I downsized Shiftzine, the website and newsletter for innovation and reformation, to make it more managable time and cost-wise. Explanation (in Dutch) here.

Joined a prayer conference in Brussels yesterday, hosted by the European Coalition for Israel. It was good to catch up with several Connect friends, and gain some insights on what God is doing in the relationship between nations in Europe and Israel.

I had an excellent retreat time in Israel, with some unexpected encounters. I might share a bit more over the next few days.

Today we published the first children's edition of Joel News in Dutch. Credits to Karolien who selected and rewrote the stories to encourage kids with what God is doing worldwide.