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!

Around four o'clock this afternoon, I felt very odd.  At that moment, half-way across town, a worship gathering was just getting started at the H88, organized by Zolder50 (the church for which I serve as co-pastor)... and yet I was casually tidying up in the dining room of my home in Amsterdam Oost.  Not sick.  Not on vacation.  Not disgruntled...

Just not there.  Not participating in my own church's worship gathering.

Instead, I was tidying up the house in preparation for the arrival of the others from our home group.  Instead of meeting for weekly worship as eight combined home groups, with extra attenders thrown in on the side, we're now meeting as two separate neighborhood church communities.  More focus is being put on missional living (taking the church to the people, instead of bringing the people to the church) and embracing community on the level of home groups and life groups.  Thus, four of the home groups meet for worship on the 1st and 3rd Sundays of each month; and the other four home groups (including ours) meet for worship on the 2nd and 4th Sundays of the month.  In the process, more opportunities are afforded for home groups to organize in innovative ways that connect with people outside the church...

Like organizing casual family-style dinners that can serve as a forum for introducing friends to a circle of believers. 

Who knew that Fons could cook snert (Dutch pea soup) from scratch?  It was delicious!  I had no idea that Amarys was such a natural baker... Her double-chocolate cookies were amazing.  Of course, Marci contributed her now-famous culinary skills in coordinating an appetizer... And as such, it seems like our home group has found a meaningful way to interact and to create a hospitable environment for welcoming others into our circle of relationships.

We really had fun doing "church" in our own way this evening.  Everybody cooking together in the kitchen... four kids (our three, plus Maria's Selina) making noise and providing a sense of joy to the scene... It felt like a family holiday gathering.  It really did.  Some might say that it's strange to call such an experience "church" -- and I have to admit that it was bizarre to have a Sunday go by with not participating in the more typical worship gathering, and to know that our church was spread out all across Noord Holland this evening (I believe another home group went to the seaside... another group organized a prayer walk... another four groups, of course, were celebrating our first worship gathering in our "new" ministry center).  But this Sunday's experience of "going to church" was beautiful and meaningful in its own way.

 I just thought I'd post a few brief reflections and a few photographs of the occasion, for the sake of posterity (and my own intellectual and emotional processing of the events)...  In case you were wondering, even though Fons was the primary cook for the evening, my best photograph of meal preparations turned out to be of Marci, chopping vegetables.   So please be sure that Fons gets the props -- but Marci is prettier to look at anyway!

Everyone enjoyed the meal immensely.  And we all felt quite immense after multiple helpings of all the delicious food!  Dutch pea soup is a classic winter recipe, especially if made by a real Dutchman with all fresh ingredients, cooked from scratch.

The evening wound down around the time that Elliot was going to bed -- but not before Amarys, Jeroen, and I helped him make a fantastic lego "tent."

Marci is actually quite glad that we didn't retain the "coveted" Zolder50 Cup this year.

The plastic cup, covered in aluminum foil and a circular 50 logo, had graced the shelves of our home (albeit behind some books on the shelves) for the last two years... Champions in 2006... Champions in 2005... But in the third running of the Zolder50 Speurtocht (Scavenger Hunt), our home group was only able to manage a respectable third place (though I must say that it was out of a record nine teams this year!)... Ah well -- maybe next year...

I must confess:  there's something kind of campy about a church scavenger hunt.  As much as I'd like for it to be otherwise, it's got kind of a cheesy youth-group feel to it, and it's woefully difficult to keep everyone organized and on-track.  Still, I enjoy the symbolism of a speurtocht -- a home group working together, complementing each other's strengths and weaknesses, facing challenges as a team, and having fun as we go along... And I especially value the way that an organized adventure like a speurtocht allows people to interact in ways that they would not normally be privileged to interact.  For the committed core of Zolder50, there are a handful of people who might typically seek out deliberate interaction with strangers at a normal worship gathering (probably more than the average church) -- but most people prefer to stick to their own little cluster of acquaintances from week to week.  Consequently, clumping individuals together as teams for an organized activity like the speurtocht allows them a unique opportunity to connect with new people and realize that it can actually be fun to meet new people.  And secondarily, an organized activity like a speurtocht allows for new people to be introduced to our home groups (in a way that an announcement or a testimony at a Sunday worship gathering could never do) and other individuals in a natural way that doesn't put the impetus of interaction solely on them.  And I think that's really cool.  We have some people who make it a point to participate in the speurtocht each year (even if they're only casual attenders at other times throughout the year).  We've had a number of people join home groups as a result of this annual "HomeGroup50" event.  And in the process, we continually push people to consider what it really means to be the Church.

Truth be told, I wish there was a way to accomplish the purposes of a speurtocht (creating opportunities for deliberate interaction, exposing people to home groups, and enjoying a mission together that involves goals, creativity, and getting-to-know each other)... without actually having to organize a speurtocht (let me tell you -- they're a lot of work to put together!).  But until we figure out a viable alternative to this activity (I am open, by the way, for any other ideas that people out there might have) -- I'm content to enjoy our annual adventures on the streets of Amsterdam... even if I have to settle for third place this year.

The home group leaders (well, most of the home group leaders) from Zolder50 travelled to Bakkum this weekend for a retreat.  It was a great experience with some great people.  During the time that we were all together I was reminded that this was why I moved to Amsterdam... We spent time talking about our personal lives, talking about the mechanics of leading a home group, as well as talking about the vision and direction of our church and our calling in Christ.  And although I felt that we were able to get a lot accomplished, I also came away feeling a bit rested and refreshed.

Before our final dinner of the weekend, our whole group got to take a beautiful walk through the nature preserve between Bakkum and the North Sea.  Our ultimate destination ended up being this uitzichtduin (look-out dune), a few hundred meters short of reaching the coast itself (there seems to be something somhow symbolic in that).

I wish I would have taken more pictures while we were there this weekend.  I just have this "anti-tourist" complex that inhibits me at times.  However, on the way up to the uitzichtduin, Marco and I had a foot-race... He beat me pretty easily (pictured above).  Still, by being challenged up to the top of the dune, I had the advantage of being able to stop for some rest and some deliberate time taking a bunch of pictures while everyone else climbed up to join us (could there be yet another metaphor in there somewhere?).