One of my colleagues is getting married and moving on from her day-to-day responsibilities with our ministry here in Amsterdam, so we decided to mark the occasion with a special Staff Day. The celebration started at the end of the school day, when the team greeted our kids with balloons and cheers.

After balloons were distributed and affixed to each bicycle in our group, we loaded up and biked to a local bowling alley to spend the afternoon goofing off together.

My team lost (who knew that Marci, Linda, and Naomi were such bowling sharks?!?), but we still had a really good time together.

After bowling, then, we all rode back to our family's home and enjoyed a lovely dinner together -- followed by lounging about and having some deeper conversation. It really ended up being a lovely day.

To me, the whole experience underscored the point that we're not just colleagues; we're family. We know and appreciate each other deeply, after having experienced much joy and sorrow together over the past decade of working together. I could never completely explain the connection in words -- but somehow the pictures from our time together help to capture the beauty of this "Family of Colleagues" (a greater collection of images can be accessed in the Family Pictures section of the website). God has given us a tremendous gift with this group of friends / sisters / colleagues.

Happy New Year!

I haven't been blogging much lately because of the holidays, a personal vacation, and a concentrated push to complete a handful of other writing projects... But I think that's all pretty much past, now -- so I'm looking forward to more regular maintenance of this space in the coming year...

Christmas was spent in Florida this year, and it was lovely. I really enjoyed the opportunity to experience a siginificantly greater exposure to sunshine... and to family (my Mom's whole side of the family congregated on Siesta Key, on the Gulf Coast, for a three-day reunion). The weather wasn't all fabulous frolicking in the sun and surf -- but it was a whole heck of a lot better than the weather in Amsterdam. For those who would like to see pictures, I've posted a bunch on my Facebook page (which can also be accessed by non-Facebookers). Just go to the album entitled Christmas in Florida, to see how the holidays and vacation part of things went.

New Year's, then, was spent on an airplane -- flying back from Orlando to Washington to Amsterdam. I'm not exactly sure where I entered into 2011 (since there's an unusual dynamic of racing to meet the sunrise, out over the Atlantic)... But I really did spend some time doing some amateur calculations on this -- and the best I can figure, I was about a third of the way between the southern tip of Greenland and the western shore of Iceland, when our plane passed over from 2010 to 2011. Here's my pinpointed map of the location:

The first day of 2011 has thus been a day of getting our house back into working order and caring for two jet-lagged kids (Elliot and Olivia are with me now, while Marci and Cor don't come back until the middle of next week). So far, I can't complain. Even with the typical unpleasantries of jet-lag and post-vacation ennui, 2011 seems to be off to a pretty decent start...

The one thing that I will be particularly interested to follow up on in the coming year is some of the writing projects that I've been working on lately. Most notably, the Proverbs 365 project has now officially come to a close -- the figurative dossier stocked with 365 installments of short fiction, essays, and personal anecdotes collected over a year's worth of daily meditations -- still, I have high hopes for what it all might become in the long-term... so stay tuned, here, for further review, analysis, and announcements about the future of this project (among others).

In any event, I'm looking forward to the year to come. I hope the same is true for you, anticipating much pleasure and/or productivity in 2011... Happy New Year!

Our church is going through a season of transition right now.  And as I was thinking about all this church transition stuff, it made me think of my old days in my high school's marching band.

Yes, I realize that it's a very odd association.  For those who aren't familiar with marching bands, they're a part of the American football phenomenon, where musical entertainment comes out in the middle of the football game, during half-time, to put on a kind of show.  If it sounds kind of weird, well, that's because it is kind of weird. Even in America, people in marching bands are considered a little bit weird and geeky (and I can only get away with saying this because I used to be one of those weird and geeky people in the marching band!).  But it's tradition, so everyone kind of goes along with it.  Anyway, the way that a marching band performance works is that you've got a group of maybe 50 to 100 musicians (big tuba-like Sousaphones, trumpets, drums, trombones), and they're all marching around on the football field, creating an interesting visual performance while playing their music.  The whole thing basically works with the band morphing from one shape into another.

For instance, maybe they’re doing a half-time show on big Hollywood movie music... They might be playing the theme song from the Pirates of the Carribbean movies, for instance, and then march into the shape of a big pirate ship, as seen from up in the stadium.  And then, maybe they switch into a song from Batman, and then they move around and everybody changes places to make the famous bat symbol.  Or it could be more basic stuff, too -- like circles and diamonds and other geometric shapes... But this is basically how marching bands work.  It’s all timed to the music so that the coolest shapes come out at the most dramatic swells in the music.

But what’s fascinating to me about marching band performances (and what brings me to the analogy that I’m trying to draw out, here) is what they have to teach us about transition.  It’s amazing, if you think about it, that a group of musicians can take the shape of a pirate ship... And then you take the same set of musicians, and they can also take the shape of the Batman symbol... Or a circle, or a diamond, or the word “Ohio” or whatever!  However, if you’re watching a show, and you take any step in the process and select a random freeze frame, it might look like pure chaos.  Like something dumb or demented.  Because there’s really no good, natural segue from a pirate ship to a Batman symbol.  The morph has to be a bit messy.  But just because it’s messy at any given point doesn’t mean that we need to despair.  We can have faith and hope that we’re going to see something big and beautiful when the next swell in the music comes.

This is where our church’s current transitions (primarily related to adaptations in the way that we do small groups) may feel very chaotic at times.  People in our church may feel like, “I haven’t enjoyed good, small-group fellowship for over a month now!”  Or they might feel like they don’t really want to shift from Home Groups to Communities, because they liked the look and feel of Home Groups as they used to be.  Others might feel like they're being left out of the new plans, like there’s no natural point where they're going to fit in when all the dust settles.  It may often feel like “I can’t take all the drama of this church anymore!”  And honestly, I couldn’t blame anybody for feeling frustrated or confused at times!  Because I feel that way sometimes!  If you take any random freeze-frame from these last couple of weeks (or maybe from the next couple of weeks, yet to come), it might look like pure and total chaos!

It’s good to remember that we really sensed God’s leading as we went into these transitions.  We talked about it and prayed about it and talked about it some more, as a Servant Leadership Council (all nine of us).  And ultimately, we made a unanimous decision to move in this direction.  It wasn’t a 5-4 vote, or 7-3, or anything like that.  We all felt God’s leading together, and we did a lot of planning and preparing to make sure that we weren’t hastily jumping into things.  Our current ideas for how to do church may not be perfect -- but they’ve certainly been well thought-out!

And while we may be going through a season of transition, we need to remind ourselves that God is a God of peace, not chaos.  God is the one who created the Earth from its vague, mysterious, primordial soup.  Genesis 1 records how, "The earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.  And God said, 'Let there be light... water... sky... land... vegetation... heavenly bodies... fish... birds... animals... people...' God saw all that he had made, and it was very good."  This is also the same God who brought Israel through a dark period of its history, when the kings deserted the way of the Lord and the people drifted towards idols.  God spoke to Elijah during an especially dark and discouraging season of ministry, when the prophet was convinced that everyone had rejected the Lord’s covenant, broken down His altars, put all the other prophets to death, and seemingly left him all alone.  In the midst of that chaos and confusion, God spoke to Elijah and reassured him that everything was still under control.  And not just in a general sense either.  He provided specific names and details and reminded Elijah that he was not alone.  1 Kings 19:15-18 records the conversation:  "Go back the way you came, and go to the Desert of Damascus.  When you get there, anoint Hazael king over Aram.  Also, anoint Jehu son of Nimshi kind over Israel, and anoint Elisha son of Shaphat from Abel Meholah to succeed you as prophet.  Jehu will put to death any who escape the sword of Hazael, and Elisha will put to death any who escape the sword of Jehu.  Yet I reserve seven thousand in Israel—all whose knees have not bowed down to Baal and all whose mouths have not kissed him."

Furthermore, in addition to the anecdotal references to God bringing order out of chaos, it's significant to remember that the Bible tells us very specifically -- very directly -- that God is not a God of chaos or disorder, but a God of peace.  He’s one who brings order out of chaos.  1 Corinthians 14:33 states it unequivocally:  "God is not a God of disorder but of peace."

I don’t know about you, but I find it very encouraging to think about these things while we’re in the midst of transition.  I find it encouraging to remember that any discomfort that we’re experiencing is just seasonal and passing.  If we can keep ourselves centered on Jesus -- on the God of peace -- then we’ll be able to make it through just about anything.  We can trust that God has a well-designed halftime show drawn up for us; we can just keep marching in faith, following his directions until the next swell in the music and the next dramatic revelation of His shape for us.

Our home group is coming to a close this week.  In preparation for our church's transition to Communities, we're disbanding this fellowship -- with the members of our group poised to play key roles in initiating, establishing, or reinforcing multiple other Communities within Amsterdam50.  For the most part, we're pretty excited for what lies ahead.  But I'd also say that we're going through something of a grieving process, remembering all that God has done through the years in developing this little spiritual family.

It's been a good group.

We started with a random group of strangers, meeting up for a drink in the cafe on the Rozengracht and awkwardly getting to know one another.  Me and Marci, Jen and Jurren (although they weren't Jen-and-Jurren back in those days), Shawn, Sherry... maybe one or two others that I can't remember.  We didn't know exactly what to talk about, but we knew we eventually wanted to become a home group.  A couple of weeks later, I remember sharing my 26th birthday on the 26th of February, 2003 with the home group with our first evening meeting -- in the Leidsekade apartment where our family was staying at the time.  And since that time, we've spent many evenings -- and mornings and afternoons -- together with each other...

Over the years, our group grew and developed.  We eventually multiplied, and then multiplied again, and again -- with a total of four groups having descended from that original home group (though one of the four groups died and reabsorbed back into one of the other branches of the family tree).  The names of the people who've been involved along the way are many:  Renske, Nathalie, Mariska, Sander, Marco, Kor, Gerard, Jetske, Jens, Luka, Elisa, Sokol, Alex, Samuel, Melanie, Bram, Linda, Leslie, William, Robert, Christel, Christian, Mirjam, Guy, Becky, Geert Jan, Anne, Mourad, Lukas, Vera, Neil, Maria, Rosa, Ben, Saskia, Suzy, Meghan, Rada, Jeroen, Tanya, Chenther, Amarys, Fons, Tobias, Piotr, Martijn, Steven, Marcus... and this is by no means an exhaustive list!  Not only have people gone from our group(s) to help start other groups in Amsterdam -- but we've even sent out "missionaries" to Brussels and Southeast Asia!

I'd like to think that future generations will be blessed by the legacy of our home group(s) as well.  Certainly our children have been blessed by all the surrogate uncles and aunts.  And in addition to Elliot and Olivia and Cor,  there's been Selina and Selina, Jaydee, Lise, Daisy, and Eron... plus a number of other couples who have hooked up in the context of our group and could easily become their own families someday.  It's crazy to think of what all can come out of a home group!

Along the way, we've had some hard times.  I remember bringing flowers to Linda after her cat, Bagheera, died.  I remember counseling Jen and Jurren through a break-up and temporary home group reassignment (though they're back together again now).  I remember the time that some creepy guy kept calling up Renske in the middle of the night.  I remember more good-bye parties than I care to count.  I remember the feeling of defeat when the home group I was leading two years ago had to fold.  I remember the conversations that our group had about a year ago, when we realized that we were doing a pretty crappy job of listening to each other and really loving each other.

But, of course, we've had some good times, too.  I remember when Chenther and Steven helped to carry the unbelievably heavy granite slab that now serves as our kitchen counter (they always say that you know your true friends by the ones who'll show up to help you move!).  I remember when Jurren, Renske, Sokol, Leslie, Nathalie, Jeroen, Vera, and Maria were baptized.  I remember winning the "50 Cup," an absurd aluminum-foil trophy handed out for the winner of our church's summer speurtocht, for three years in a row!  I remember our children performing for the group before weekly Bible studies.  I remember special dinners together.  I remember countless birthday parties and a handful of weddings...

It's been a good run.  Not perfect.  But good.  We really did succeed in what we set out to do.  We succeeded in becoming a spiritual family that could grow and develop together through the years.

And now it's coming to an end.  Several of our group members have already left town for the holidays, and when we all come back for the new year, we'll be moving onto Communities.  It'll be odd, in some ways.  But I'm hoping and praying that what's yet to come will be more of the same -- and perhaps even better stuff down the road...

[In case you're interested (especially for those who have been a part of the home group at one point or another), you can find a small, random, retrospective collection of photographs in the Zolder50 Pictures section of this website.]