In observance of the five year anniversary of Zolder50's inception in Amsterdam, I helped to put together a video slide-show representing a visual history of our first five years as a church community. It was pretty challenging to sum up so many lives, so many stories, and so many years in a fifteen-and-a-half minute video presentation -- but I'm pretty pleased with the results.

Because of YouTube restrictions on length, I had to post the slideshow in two pieces (rather crudely hacked off between songs). But the show starts with the window above and continues with the window below.

The pictures in the slide-show are arranged chronologically, starting with the initial exploratory trip to Amsterdam in May of 2001 and proceding all the way up until March of 2008. It is far from a complete history of Zolder50 (I'm really, really sorry if your picture did not make it into the show) -- but it's still a fun monument to the last five years. It includes images from every single baptism for which I was able to find a photographic record (which, unfortunately, does not encompass the entire lot of baptisms) -- but I did this because I really wanted to emphasize the work that God has been doing in individual lives throughout the last five years. You may notice that the slide-show is somewhat heavy on pictures of the staff team and my home group... This is partially practical (approximately 80 to 85 percent of the images were from my own personal collection) and partially philosophical (as I considered that I am, after all, really only capable of telling one man's story of Zolder50, and taking this vantage point also helps to provide a kind of "control group" that demonstrates how people have aged, as well as how families and groups have grown and changed).  Again, it's not a perfect slide-show.  But it's something fun to see.

One extra thing that's really cool about the presentation is that all of the musical accompaniment for the slide-show is done by people from Zolder50. Also arranged more-or-less chronologically, the music from Chris Smith, Danny Stimac, Leslie Phillips, and Claire Buswell shares beautiful stories about our community, in their own ways.

I hope you enjoy the slide-show.  Thanks to all of you who have been involved in this church community in some way, or who have prayed for us.  We look forward to seeing what God will do in the next five years! 

We missed you tonight, man. We missed you a lot. I wish you could have been there. Of course, it wasn't the first time that these feelings have cropped up throughout the last five years or so. But it was a particularly poignant evening in Amsterdam that became a particularly painful reminder of your absence.

Your name came up quite a few times throughout the course of our time together. Not with the venom and animosity that you probably suspect, but with affection and honor. For a lot of the people assembled, you were just a name, a second-hand memory... But for me -- and for the rest of us who knew you -- you are (not were) a beloved friend, whose presence is deeply missed.

If it were not for you, Steve, I would not be in Amsterdam. Zolder50 would not be in Amsterdam. I can still hear the sound of your voice on my answering machine, echoing through the white, white kitchen of our Bowling Green home -- the Conneaut house -- in the sunny summer dawn. 6:30 in the morning. Yet it was your cool, casual voice -- calling from Amsterdam to playfully pester me, to pull me through the final months toward the far side of the Atlantic. Breathless from my run down the stairs, I snatched the telephone from the receiver, and I heard your smile through the line. I tried to scold you for forgetting the time zone differential, but you diffused it immediately and effortlessly, like you always could do: "When're you gonna get here, man?" I told you I was doing my best. You said, "Good -- get your butt over here, OK?" I said OK. And then I did.

I don't know how the whole thing ever would've unfolded without you, Steve. I'm sure it would have somehow; I am, after the last five years, a firm believer in the sovereignty of God. Indeed, God has sustained us in ways you never could have, Steve. But at the same time, I have to believe that God used you in the early days of the "Amsterdam Project" in an extremely unique way. I mean, seriously, three-dozen people transplanted from the heartlands of America (Colorado, Kansas, and Ohio, for goodness sake!) -- to Amsterdam, of all places?!?! Taking on real-estate development projects to subsidize ministry costs? Developing an international resource center with people posessing plenty of talent and ambition, but just a handful of stamps in our passports, to start things off?!? You were (and probably still are) a genius, Steve. Some of your ideas were absolutely brilliant. Others were, perhaps, delusional -- even crash-and-burn material (which is to say that I've got some of the bruises and blisters to show for it). I can't deny that there have been nights when I've cursed your name, Steve... And yet, in the grander scheme of things, when I step back and get a sense of perspectve -- like this weekend -- I have to give you credit, Steve. You accomplished a great deal. The fruit of your work is still ripening, still developing, and even carrying seeds to the far corners of the earth...

I wish you could've been there, Steve. I wish you could've heard Sunita talk. . And Jeroen. And Gerard. And Jurren. But you weren't. For what it's worth, everything is going all right, here. Probably not as well as if you could've stuck around a bit longer. But we're doing all right. You'd be proud. You'd be glad.

Thanks, at any rate, for everything you did -- everything you gave -- to make this weekend possible. The cost has been high, but so have the dividends... I almost wrote, "but it's been worth it" there, yet I don't know if I can really make that value judgment. Especially not on your life, your sacrifices, your pain. I can scarcely make such a claim for my own life! All I know is that God has managed to salvage some good things from our efforts. So for whatever it's worth, I just want to say "Thank you."

We sure have missed you this weekend, Steve. You, and Ali, and Chris, and Marcey, and Bret, and Jayla, and all the rest... I wish we could have heard some of your masterful storytelling. I wish we could have heard Chris play "Hallelujah." I wish you were all here.

God bless you, Steve. I hope you're doing all right. Give us a call sometime, if you ever feel like it... even if it's at 6:30 in the morning.

Love,

Eric

It's been quite awhile since my last post, but it's not because I haven't had anything to say. Quite the contrary, actually! My brain is full to over-flowing after four days of participation in the European Church Planters Network's (ECPN) Learning Community in Villamoura, Portugal. But with sessions from dawn to dusk each day, I didn't have much time for blogging this week.

The ECPN draws a sharp distinction its "Learning Community," which emphasizes dialogue and interaction with multiple sources of information, and the more traditional "conference," which is geared toward passive accumulation of information. And let me tell you, ECPN's Learning Community is definitely an active process! I don't normally consider myself to be an extreme introvert or internal processor -- but by the end of the week, I wanted to find some kind of cave I could crawl into, so I could have some time to let myself process and catch up on all the input that had come in throughout the week!

My favorite part of this week's Learning Community was listening to the wisdom of the two men pictured above. Victor John (left) has helped to pioneer a network of house churches in India (though he is now living in Sweden), and Sandy Millar (right) is a bishop in the Church of England. They both have a tremendous amount of life and ministry experience, and it was a great honor to soak up their wisdom and interact with them throughout the week.

I'm glad that I was there.

Of course, it was an extra bonus that the Learning Community was held on the southern shores of sunny Portugal. We had brilliant sunshine and mild temperatures for the entire week -- which is, perhaps, as great an encouragement for all of us North Sea rim participants as anything. And even though I would have liked to have gotten more free time to get out and enjoy the environment on my own -- I still can't complain if we get to have our coffee breaks, break-out sessions, and team tie-downs in such settings.

Can you identify the famous person lying in the poolside lounge chair in the photograph on the left?

There's something really cool about a collage.  Images compounded by other images -- the whole creating something greater than the sum of its parts... I'm really intrigued by these collections of various images.

Above is a collage of portraits taken from the home group leaders retreat last weekend.  Below is a collage of images taken with my children on a recent trip to the Steve Bikoplein, in our neighborhood of Amsterdam Oost.



Cool, huh?

We had a retreat this weekend for the home group leaders of Zolder50.  Good times... Very good times...

I took 168 pictures over the weekend!  After removing the ones that were blurry or just plain bad pictures, I was left with 127... Out of these, I felt that 41 were decent enough to post on the Zolder50 Pictures section of the website (this includes a series of individual portraits that turned out better than I expected).  But I've decided to share a handful of my favorites with you here on the front page of the blog...

I hope you enjoy the pictures as much as I enjoyed the retreat!