Marc's Short Messages

Tomorrow night I will return to Israel for a week (not yet 40 days) of prayer and reflection. When I was in Jerusalem last month God started revealing some things related to the Church and reformation, and living out of covenantal relationships, and I feel there's more to come that will be quite relevant for our 'Connect journey'. I will also spend some time in the desert. Solitude.

Donny from Australia asked me what I think of the 'Fitna movie' that Dutch politician Geert Wilders released yesterday and that seems to get a lot of media attention worldwide. In short: the way he presents his case is unnecessarily polarizing, even propagandic (selective quotes mixed with video shots of terrorist attacks). It's incredible that a quite superficial 15-minute clip gets so much media attention. However, the slowly progressing islamization of Europe (in terms of rights and sharia) is a topic that needs to be addressed pro-actively. At the moment I'm more concerned with the politically correct and appeasing statements from some politicians and church leaders who give in to intimidation, then I am with Wilders' black-and-white statement. This movie is not much different from the Danish cartoons. I'm glad I live in a country thas has freedom of speech, press and religion (which implies the freedom to provoke or offend), something that Muslim fundamentalists (not all Muslims) have difficulty with. It's a tension, but I see no reason why we cannot AND love and embrace Muslims AND boldly stand our ground in terms of our democratic society. Also see my earlier post here.

Nine years ago I received an invitation to come over to Russia for two national prayer conferences. One was in Togliatti in Central Russia and another one for Siberia in Irkutsk. It was an amazing, God-ordained time. There the vision for a prayer movement that would encompass the largest nation in the world was born. This morning my Romanian friend Ioan Peia mailed me about a national prayer conference for Russia held in Moscow that he facilitated, and that now links over one thousand churches. In the coming years 24-7 prayer watches will be established in 70 key cities in Russia. It's encouraging to see the vision unfold.

If you haven't heard back from Karolien lately, it's because her notebook
(my old one) decided it was time to pass from the pressing life down here to
the notebook heaven. But she got a new one and is back online now.

Believe it or not - it's snowing right now. Two weeks ago it felt like
Summer had arrived, and now it's back to Christmas.

Good Friday is such a nice, quiet day to work on reports, progress and planning, while others reflect on faith and life or enjoy holidays. And when others are busy and working, I think I will go on a nice and quiet retreat. It pays off to oppositely mirror the actions of others. Btw, at Easter we'll be spending some time with friends and family.

Donny skyped me that the Generation Fire and Connect World meetings, preceding the (Catholic) World Youth Days in Sydney, Australia, are shaping up. He posted a program here. We agreed that Gaby and Petra will represent Connect Europe down-under.

 

Met with Wouter van der Toorn, who runs Agape's internet evangelism department, and who brought me up to date re: developments related to online social communities. He said that over the past year around 1,500 people decided to follow Christ after visiting I'm searching God and related sites.

Yesterday we paid a visit to the Royal Institute for the Tropics in Amsterdam, one of Europe's leading ethnographic museums, renowned for its rich and intelligently displayed collection. Lots of objects from the former Dutch colonies (Papua-New Guinee, Indonesia, Suriname) and a temporal photo exhibition that tells the personal stories of Palestinians who had to flee when the Jewish State was founded in 1948. But the building is also literally stuffed with thousands of animistic and hinduistic idols and after a few hours inside it's quite releasing to get some fresh air.

Open Day at Peter's school. There were various games and he proudly showed us around. Around noon all kids could send balloons on an air trip to Africa, but not likely they will ever get there, as the wind direction was north-north-west. So friends in Norway and Scotland, be on the outlook for a yellow balloon.

Skyped shortly with a friend in Germany about the premature birth and death of their baby boy. Joy and thankfulness mixed with sadness. "I have been here, read my name."

As most parents tend to be late with giving their kids sex education, we decided to bring our boys of 6 and 8 up to date. Some books and pictures, interesting stuff about mom and dad making love, seeds and eggs, babies in the womb and more. After having processed this amazingly new view on life for a few days, the boys spontaneously asked: "So tell us, when are you going to have sex again? We would fancy to have a little sister."

Good news for travellers! This is the website you've been waiting for: Airtraffic.eu. It generates a routemap of all flights in Europe, including the low-budget ones. In just two clicks you can see which companies fly from place A to B for which fare. One click extra brings you directly to the company's booking page.

This week in Joel News: resurrections from the dead. A Dutch one here and an Ethiopian one here.

I'm used to the fact that big companies don't provide any customer care after you bought their product, but Acer beats them all. Today I called in for the 16th time, after they promised me five times to call me back, and again sent me from one employee to another, until I hit the bureaucratic wall again. They should rename their 'customer care desk' 'customer drain machine' or 'customer torture department'. Companies like Acer don't care for their customers at all, they only care to make money, not realizing that they already lost more money by having me on the line, than if they had repaired my notebook (that fell apart already within one year) promptly. For me Acer is the worst company in the world. Be smart and don't buy their products.

My colleague Alexander reports from Capetown, where he and his family are doing Floyd McClung's CPx training. He writes: "We live together in small communities (home churches), and together we minister and reach out. Four mornings per week we all meet together for worship, prayer and learning, and in the afternoons and weekends we reach out to the poor and marginalised. We rebuild burnt out shacks and pray with people. We are learning how to make disciples who are able to make more disciples. We are learning how to start simple churches which can reproduce themselves. We have fun together and enjoy the amazing creation around us. Here's something I am learning by practice here: in making disciples and starting new churches prayer makes a difference, in fact it makes things happen."

Kudos to the guys at Goedgelovig.nl who just won the Webfish Award for the best Dutch Christian website. Goedgelovig (a Dutch word with the double meaning of 'being naive' and 'believing properly') is a satirical website that playfully aims to further the cause of reformation by poking fun on many expressions of established churchianity and Christian small-thinking. I've been following them for some months and I think they rock. I understood from their website that they didn't want to join this contest because they hate Christian prizes (someone else signed them up), so it's quite ironical that they won it nevertheless.

I'm back in Utrecht. Several people asked me how the situation was in Israel. As you probably heard in the news it was a quite bloody week with 125 people killed in the Gaza strip and just a few hours ago eight Jewish children massacred in a school in Jerusalem. When I visited the Westbank on Monday there were demonstrations, young masked Palestinians speeding through the city in pick-up trucks, higher security at the gates. On the road the traffic jammed because of a bomb scare. On Tuesday Israeli police discovered and detonated several bombs in Jerusalem. About tonight's attack the BBC reports: "... we saw 15-, 16-year old guys lying on the floor with their Bibles in their hands - all dead." This is the sad reality of the Middle East. The Israeli man who sat next to me on the plane remarked: "I was born and raised in Israel, but still I never get used to this violence."

Today we prayerwalked the walls from Jaffa Gate to Golden Gate, along the Arab quarter. In the afternoon Bart and I drove into the Judaean hills and desert, along the Dead Sea, and via Arad, Beersheva and Hebron back to Jerusalem. A beautiful trip, and lots of time to talk and reflect on foundational issues related to God, the world and the church. Enriching and confirming. More pictures here.

Met up with Bart and Joke Repko for a prayer walk over the walls of Jerusalem from Jaffa Gate to Dung Gate, along the Christian and Jewish quarters. Bart worked as a documentary maker for Dutch television for many years and has been quite a lot on the frontlines before God called him to literally be a watchman (Is 62). He has been walking the walls every day for the past two years, and dreams of groups coming from all nations to join in. It's an interesting experience to proclaim words of truth and life from Israel's own prophets over the city and nation. One of my teachers at uni called it 'historic sensation': history and prophecy coming alive (making sense) on the spot. It was really good to reconnect with Bart. Afterwards he showed me a bit around in the old city, we had lunch at the Austrian-Hungarian guesthouse, and at dusk I climbed the Mount of Olives. More Jerusalem pictures here.

A full day of meetings with Christian workers in the Westbank and Jerusalem. Crossing several checkpoints and a concrete wall with watchtowers and graffiti was a kind of déjà-vu of my first trip behind the Iron Curtain.

I'm in Jerusalem now at the Christ Church Hostel at Jaffa Gate. It was a quite long trip due to the extensive check-in time for Israel (3 hours before departure). Because I had a Malaysian stamp in my passport, watched all episodes of '24', and look like a potential terrorist I was being interrogated and double-checked by a Mossad-type security guy. In the plane I met retired church pastors and experienced Israel travellers Henk and Nelly Dik who had some helpful ideas for my stay here and also arranged a ride to Jerusalem.

We find it quite important to teach our kids history. Knowing where you come from (corporate roots), strenghtens identity and provides a basis to shape the future and make history yourself. Karolien found a book that vividly describes the history of the Netherlands in 50 stories (a kind of canon). It's about people who have been influential in their time and beyond from a kid's perspective. The boys got hooked and already nearly finished it.