Marc's Short Messages

Yesterday I mailed our supporters a concise overview of our ministry focus for 2008.

My friend Jaeson blogs about his struggle with the 'ministry machine' - all the demands to keep going for God, and how this work-mentality is in fact limiting us to become people of true significance. Maaike, who works with Soul Survivor, shared something similar last week. She slowed down her pace of work and also intentionally broke the pattern of primarily engaging with Christians. In the words of Eduardo Verastegui, the actor in Bella: "True success is being faithful to your values."

Ronald van der Molen is writing a practical handbook on church planting titled 'The DNA of Church Planting', and I'm one of his three proof readers. A quote from his concept material that I liked: "A fool can count how many apples there are in a tree, but it takes a wise man to count how many trees there are in an apple."

This week in Joel News International an update on Christian Schwarz's global research that now comprises over 55,000 churches. I really like his approach called Natural Church Development because it's so organic, and Christian is a very solid German teacher with a fiery passion, as you can see on these videos. One of his key findings: the smaller a church (remains), the more potential for multiplication. Quite obvious and still a mystery why so few churches apply this wisdom.

Last week and today I reordered and updated the complete administration of our non-profit. I'm really happy it's finished now. In fact I should celebrate this! And thanks to Rob the ongoing administration runs like a smooth engine.

Aad Vermeulen, who directs Aatop Recruitment asked me to join a training in Veenendaal with some of his staff. Their assignment was to interview and profile me (as an exercise), and also get some glimpses of what God is doing in Europe on the side. If was fun, and also helpful to hear their feedback.

Donny, who leads Generation Fire in Australia and makes preparations for our Connect World gathering in Sydney, received open and warm responses from various Catholic leaders when he offered to serve their vision for renewal in the RC Church during the upcoming World Youth Days in Sydney. During these five-day festivites there is a special night called 'Receive the Power' when Catholic young people from across the globe are invited to receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

Godson, a Nigerian missionary friend who joined our first Connect meeting, mailed me that he was sworn in as a city councilor for Lodz, the second-largest city in Poland. He's the first black councilor at this level in Poland, so he was featured on national television and in the papers. Talking about God's favour. His motto: "Abiding in the Lord is the key to fruitfulness."

Had an interesting e-mail conversation with Simon about funding ministry: dependency/maintenance model versus entrepreneurial/apostolic approaches. He quoted Is. 60/61, which seems to imply that those who covenant with God will draw from the wealth of nations.

Rogier published a whole page of pictures of last Saturday's national church planters' day.

Wrote a concise report for my DAWN colleagues about church planting developments in the Netherlands. In the European context the Dutchies seem to be making more progress than most other nations, while we work mainly 'organically' (not formalized).

Steve Hill wrote a critical article on why today's prophetic movement (especially the North American stream) has become corrupted. Prophets sold themselves to the stage, prophetic guilds (without outside accountability), the need to produce 'new words' all the time, and commercialism, thus making the movement quite useless in the context of the Great Commission.

I joined the national church planters day in Leidsche Rijn, Utrecht, with around 100 participants from a wide spectrum of the church. Excellent contributions, inspiring stories, focused small group interaction, workshops, interviews, research, lounge time. Church planting is clearly on the agenda in the Netherlands and emerging in all kinds of expressions, with a strong presence (2/3) of more organically-wired leaders under 40.

In the Dutch edition of Joel News I published the exciting story of a 24-7 prayer shop that will open in Woerden, initiated by fellow blogger Jan Wolsheimer who also pastors the CAMA Parousia church.

My friend Eno, a 'simple church' planter who works with young people and m-slims, is over for a few days. In Utrecht we spent most of the day with Lee Behar and Curtis Sergeant who work for ML Foundation and are interested to stay in the loop of developments in Europe. Curtis helped start up to a million house churches in Asia and shares some of his insights in this article.

Yesterday night I hooked up with Andrew and some 15 emerging church planters at Phil & Laina Graf's place in Amsterdam. Topics: pilgrimage as the new missions, small business coops as creative communities, and dehyping the emerging church. Was good to catch up with Andrew, and encouraging to meet two people that are in the process of planting a new church in Utrecht (one PKN and one simple church). Rogier has a report and some pictures.

I told our son David that kiwi Sir Edmund Hillary, the first man to reach the top of the Everest, died. A few weeks ago David found a book on my shelf by Dutch alpinist Ronald Naar who mastered the K2 (2nd peak in the Himalayas, but harder to climb). Now every evening before bedtime we read a chapter about this fascinating enterprise.

Marek reports on his weblog about their first gathering of simple church groups in Prague. "While traditional denominations may experience decrease in memberships, we see God drawing people to himself left and right. Our task is in helping these people grow in faith and together with a few others around them to become the church that has moved into their neighborhood and workplace."

One of the advantages of moblogging is that I don't have to login to the admin section of my blog to post something. I can just send an e-mail (like now) or a text message from my mobile phone, that will appear directly on my blog. And as many readers use the rss feed to stay in the loop, the weblog has become just a passing-on station.

I'm finetuning my weblog a bit. If you have a suggestion for improvement, then drop me an e-mail.

Currently evaluating a survey among readers of Shiftzine, the Dutch webzine for innovation and reformation. Two critical points: are we reaching our target group (people under 35), and is it sustainable in time and finances?

The meetings went well. Prophetic prayer times for the north of Europe, insights from Niina into the 'nordic identity', reflecting on indigenous expressions of church, enjoying the Finnish forests, good food and lots of inspiring conversations. On the way back I caught up with two old friends from the EPL times: Anneli Portman (who's currently doing a PhD in political science) and Tomas Sandell, who has been working in Brussels and with the European Coalition for Israel.

I'm on my way to Helsinki and then Turku for the Nordic Gathering. Look forward to interact with old and new Connect and 24-7 friends from Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark and the UK, and to see the progress in this region.

Had a hot chocolate with Floyd McClung to swap notes on simple church. In the past Floyd pioneered YWAM in Kabul and Amsterdam, pastored a mega church in Kansas City for some time, and now trains Africans in the townships of Capetown to plant simple churches. This weekend he will teach for Soul Survivor and his book 'I see an army' just got published in Dutch. Really enjoyed the conversation. It was especially helpful to discuss the grid of his All Nations training.

Met with Herman van Vuren who leads Jesus Freaks in the Netherlands. Cool guy, even an inch taller than me. They are developing into a simple church network with small groups in Utrecht, Amersfoort and Ede.

Made some pictures of last Sunday's family outing to De Haar, the largest castle in the Netherlands, just west of Utrecht.

Welcome to version 4.0 of my weblog, which is actually a moblog. No long posts here, only short and to-the-point updates on how I'm faring, and now and then a cool picture. No categories, no comments. But a higher frequency. Promise.