Marc's Short Messages

As usual we're a bit late with planning our holidays. If you know of a place where we could stay as a family for 1-3 weeks during the Summer, for instance taking care of someone's house, then let us know. Preferably in the countryside or a village in natural surroundings.

Another balanced article on the Lakeland Revival comes from Billy Kennedy, who's one of the advisors of the 24-7prayer movement.

Working on the planning of two European church planting roundtables. One for those who are in an active transnational networking, developing or training role in the 'simple church' movement in Europe (28-30 Oct 08), and another for younger church planting network leaders (6-8 Feb 09). Both are invitation-only. Details here.

In the Dutch edition of Joel News I published a reflection on the Lakeland Revival that's both receptive and critical. There's a lot of polarisation in the Christian media here (it's God or it's the devil), and I wanted to offer a more discerning perspective.

Yes, I also saw the match last weekend and the Russians (led by Dutch coach Hiddink) did an excellent job in kicking our asses. So the Orange party is over, and the Swiss can sleep well again.

Yesterday evening I met with the board and advisory team of Soul Survivor. Good discussions on the future, and happy to see that the internal reorganisation is paying off.

Just returned from a meeting with the European DAWN team in Kristiansand, Norway. What was good: the fresh air, the woods, a trip to an island on Oivind's neighbor's yacht, catching up with friends, and an honest and open evaluation of where we are. Less helpful was the intensity of a not very well moderated evaluation and repeating discussions. What are the outcomes?

- We will continue to meet as a DAWN 'peer group' in Europe, on a friendship basis (not a formal), once a year. What we share is a vision for church planting development in Europe, and we value intervision. This peer group is made up of people with a geographic focus (Oivind for nordic Europe, Reinhold for germanic Europe, Martin for anglosaxon Europe and Paulo for latin Europe) and people with a specialist Europe-wide focus (Andreas for research, Andrew for emerging church, myself for simple church).
- We will no longer be part of Dawn Ministries, the American organisation, and will not assume corporate (externally imposed) goals for Europe, an operational team agenda, or a formal relationship with a global body. Our fields of development (for me simple church) are owned by the actors in these fields and not by DAWN. We just relationally connect the dots.
- We can organically evolve to a whole-European team (was Western Europe).

And yes, Andrew is back and I did not step out of the team as planned, because our main concerns were met.

After six years our amazing office manager Rob will move on to pursue his own ministry in helping start and encourage houses of prayer internationally. This week and the next he will transfer most of the Joel admin to Karolien. It's a temporal solution as we're planning to simplify the admin side and automate more. We will miss him big time.

Met up with Ian and Pete from 24-7prayer, some YWAM leaders and a handful of Dutchies to talk about the development of 24-7prayer in the Netherlands. We met in The Tabernacle of the Nations in Amsterdam, where 56 churches joined hands to pray for the city.

The Dutch football supporters are among the craziest in the world, as this commercial for a food store shows.

Yesterday the boys spoiled me with self-made paintings and sweet notes. We also went for a nice hike in the forests north of Utrecht and had apple cake with cream and 'kroketten'. Yes, Father's Day rocks.

Gearing up for the DAWN evaluation next weekend in Kristiansand, Norway. Reinhold did a survey among European leaders, how they perceive DAWN, and this generated some very helpful feedback.

Look what is emerging in Europe... Holland-France 4-1! How nice to also win the second match of a championship from the world's second best team. Tout va bien, très bien.

The Joel News site was a bit messy and carried too many distracting messages, so I simplified it by cutting out 70% of the text and reviewing the navigation and colours. Two leading questions: what is our unique selling point, and what information do visitors really need to sign up for Joel News? This is a first improvement, there will be a completely new site later this year.

Wow, what a game. Holland-Italy 3-0. Always nice to win the first match of a championship from the world's leading team.

Rogier paid a visit to our 'Overvecht group'. I like his definition of church planting: "You sit on the floor with people with passion, and you talk about possibilities. And then you pray." Hope it stays this organic, as the Protestant Church (PKN) might be tempted to incorporate (part of) this group as one of their new church plants in Utrecht. Glad most of us are healthily anarchistic. ;-)

Had Gijs over this morning. He will do some writing and editing work for Joel News.

Engaged in an interesting discussion with some Connect friends on how the apostolic calling of the Church relates to the restoration of Israel. A sensitive topic, as there tend to be extremes on both sides. On a lighter note, I came across this street version of 'Hatikva' from the Israeli movie 'Someone to run with'. Like it.

Martijn Vellekoop wrote an interesting thesis (still in draft) on churchplanting in the Netherlands and found that contextualisation (matching a new community with the specific missional context) is a weak point. Good stuff, hope it will get published soon.

On Sunday I caught up with friends Charis & Keith who live in the Czech Republic, and paid a visit to my Serbian friend Branko who lives with his family in Bratislava, Slovakia. Branko and I worked together for Joel News in the past and he now serves as Trans World Radio's Central European director. Monday I chilled out most of the day around Vienna before my evening flight.

Spent the past few days at the European gathering of 24-7prayer in Brno, Moravia. Good to meet prayer and missions pioneers from the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Finland, Germany, Switzerland, The Netherlands, the UK, France, Hungary, Malta and Iceland. Today I gave inspirational teaching on 'what is God doing in Europe' and 'simple church'.