The Word became flesh
and made his dwelling among us...
(John 1:14)

Season’s Greetings from Amsterdam!  We enjoy a very special experience of December, as Americans of Swedish ancestry living in the Netherlands.  We’ve just rounded the corner on Sinterklaas (a Dutch holiday celebrated December 5).  Now we’re heading quickly towards Santa Lucia (a Swedish holiday celebrated on December 13) and onto Christmas (especially celebrated by Christians and Americans on December 25) and the New Year’s celebrations (internationally celebrated on December 31 and January 1)!  What fun!  We pray that you’re enjoying the holidays in your own unique ways—but especially wondering at the mystery of God’s incarnation in the birth of Jesus…

As a home group we’ve recently been praying more for our friends, family members, colleagues, neighbors, and acquaintances.  We started making a concerted effort to do this around the time that our church was first making its strategic transitions from one church to two neighborhood church communities, putting more emphasis on smaller groups of fellowship and opportunities for sharing Christ in other spheres of influence, outside of the church.  In addition to praying, we’ve been trying a number of very practical avenues for outreach… but really, we’re finding that our campaign of prayer (paired with personal availability to seize opportunities that God presents) is proving to be our most effective means of influence.  We’ve been discovering the power of prayer more and more over the last couple of months of increased intercession…

Case in point: I started praying a couple of months back for an opportunity to build more relationships outside of the church (for me, personally).  I had been realizing that most of my time was spent with Christians—you know, pastoring people in the church (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing).  Nevertheless, I wanted to make friends in other walks of life and trust that God could use me to spiritually influence other subcultures in the city.  In particular, I asked God for an opportunity to get involved with a writers’ group—since writing is a particular hobby of mine, and I figured I might find some natural friends among people with similar interests.  With a little research, I found out about an international collective of writers in Amsterdam organized under the name of “wordsinhere.”  My prayers seemed to have been answered!  Unfortunately, all of their writing workshops met at inconvenient times and all of their fiction critique groups were full… But instead of just putting me on some kind of waiting list, one of the organizers asked if I would be willing to meet up sometime in-person.  Of course, I said yes—and I kept praying, together with others in my home group.  When we met, we had a really great connection; in fact, it turned out that if I was willing to serve as a facilitator, then we could start a new fiction critique group.  I prayed some more, followed up some more… And on Monday, December 3, we had the first meeting of our new fiction critique group:  a Dutch fairy-tale writer, an American working on her memoirs, an Indian short-story writer, and an Iranian oral storyteller, in addition to me.  I’m really excited about these developments, on the personal level as well as the ministry level.  And I’m continuing to pray that God will allow these relationships to develop over time…

Another instance of God creating outreach opportunities as we pray can be seen in our kids’ school.  We’ve been praying more and more for ways to build trust and respect and friendship with other young families at the school… And wouldn’t you know it?  As we’ve prayed, we’ve had a number of extra opportunities to get involved with school activities.  Marci has continued in her roles on the Parent-Teacher Board.  We’ve been able to help with decorating the school for Sinterklaas and Christmas.  We’ve been able to participate in special parents’ discussions about the future of the school.  And in all of these contexts (plus the normal drop-off and pick-up routines), we’ve really started to get to know some of the other families better.  It’s hard to quantify or explain, but we can just feel that God is answering our prayers for trust, respect, and friendship in one of our family’s most significant spheres of influence.

In addition to our family’s outreach opportunities, another guy in our home group has seen one of his friends experience a dramatic turnaround in his lifestyle through the weeks that we’ve been praying for him.  It’s only happened recently—and pretty much out of the blue.  One weekend, he was reveling in his typical party-scene lifestyle of “zuipen, blowen, en bommen” (drinking, drugs, and graffiti)… and the next weekend, he was sincerely questioning the guy from our home group about Jesus and the Bible.  He and his girlfriend had somehow, mysteriously, been compelled to read a Bible that had been given to them by “some guy on the street.”  Totally unexpected.  Totally out-of-the-blue… And yet, it’s totally happening.  The only explanation that we can come up with for this series of events is the power of prayer.

In a way, all of this offers a beautiful reflection of the incarnation.  That’s what we’ve been calling it, actually: “incarnational ministry.”  Even outside of the Christmas season, “incarnational ministry” is this kind of buzz-word that could be used to describe Zolder50’s strategic decision to shift the focus from bringing people from the city into our weekly worship gatherings to putting more emphasis on our life groups and home groups going out on mission, taking Christ into our various spheres of influence throughout the city:  the writers from our church reaching out to the greater writers’ community of Amsterdam… the graffiti artists of our church reaching out to the society of graffiti artists in Amsterdam… and so on.  As we bring the peace and love of God’s Kingdom to share with our fellow human beings—not just communicating with words, but embodying the gospel—we’re doing exactly what God does for us in Jesus Christ!  God had plenty of reason to distance himself from us (being contaminated with sin and all), but he chose not to remain distant; rather, he came to us in the person of Jesus and made peace with us.  And now, we have a unique opportunity to pass this blessing along to others.  Cool, huh?  We’ve been amazed to watch God work through these initial weeks of prayer and “incarnational ministry.”

At any rate, we just want to acknowledge your role in making all of this possible.  We could never be here in Amsterdam, embodying Christ among the people of Europe, if it weren’t for your generous financial and prayer support for our family and our ministry.  Thank you so much for everything!  Please keep praying for us and with us.  God is definitely doing something here.  We hope that the same is true in your life, and wish you a very merry Christmas…

 Eric