Is any one of you in trouble?  He should pray.

Is any one of you sick?… The prayer offered in faith

will make the sick person well… Therefore… pray

for each other so that you may be healed.

(James 5:13-16)

Greetings from Amsterdam!  It’s spring-time here in the city.  Daffodils and crocuses are beginning to bloom.  The hours of daylight are getting noticeably longer.  Cafes are putting their tables and chairs out on the sidewalks and terraces again, in anticipation of warmer days when their clientele will want to sit outside.  It’s a season of anticipation.  We’ve almost made it through another Amsterdam winter—but we’re not quite there yet… I’m sure you know what I mean.  In any event, I hope that this letter finds you doing well and enjoying your own sense of anticipation for what’s to come.

I was recently thinking about my job and realizing how unusual (and amazing) it really is.  Reading the Bible, for instance, is a part of my job (though I’d also call it a great personal interest, as well!).  Or, I’ll find myself talking with a young person for hours about deeply personal, deeply spiritual, things—and somewhere along the way, I’ll start to wonder:  where does “ministry” end and “friendship” begin?  Should I count this on my time card, as something “professional”—or is this something “personal?”  I have to confess that the amount of “gray area” between these things can be challenging.  It’s a continually-evolving process of making sure that I have some boundaries in my life—so that I’m not neglecting my own family or my personal well-being—without having too many distinctions which would create unnecessary artificiality and awkwardness in the tentative balance between personalism and professionalism that is full-time ministry…

I share this with you because my subject matter for this month’s letter is, well, gray area.  I honestly don’t know if I could call it “ministry” (and, in fact, feel inclined to say that it is not)—and yet, I feel compelled to ask for you, my ministry partners, to pray with me for God’s intervention in this sphere of interaction.

You see, sixteen months ago I joined a “fiction critique group” with a literary organization here in Amsterdam called WordsInHere (www.wordsinhere.com).  I’ve long enjoyed writing short stories as one of my personal hobbies (I even minored in Creative Writing back in college), and I’m always trying to develop my writing skills further.  Furthermore, I had been hoping to make some friends outside the church here in Amsterdam.  So when I found out that WordsInHere organized these groups where a handful of writers get together twice a month to read and critique each other’s writing, I signed up enthusiastically.  In the end, it turned out that I helped to catalyze a new fiction critique group—since the other two groups at the time were pretty full and there also happened to be a waiting list with just the right number of people—and I was coincidentally asked to serve as facilitator for the group (since I had some experience with creative writing workshops).  So since November 2007, I’ve been meeting together with this diverse group of writers every-other Monday evening at this Iranian café in the old Jordaan section of the city.

It’s a very eclectic group of people:  a Jewish-American woman writing her memoirs of living in Tehran (Iran)… a young man from Aruba writing material best described as “magical-realism”… a woman who grew up as the daughter of a Dutch diplomat writing a book for young adults… an American businessman writing stories set in New York City and Amsterdam… a Dutch college student who’s still finding his voice… an Indian woman working on her PhD in Literature and writing short stories about life in India… an Iranian-American woman with an Ivy League education who is just publishing her first fantasy novel for young adults… and me.  Yet despite our different styles and life-experiences, we’ve gotten along remarkably well as a group… Until the most recent holiday season.

Just before Christmas, an ethical dilemma presented itself.  One of the people in the group had written a sexually-charged piece about one of the other members of the group (he claimed it was only an “exercise”) and e-mailed it to a mutual friend of theirs.  And not only did the main character in the piece strongly resemble this woman from our group, but direct lines of text from her personal e-mails had been used without attribution (i.e. he was using her words as if they were his own).  These are big “No-No”s in the writing community.  Yet before the situation could be adequately addressed with the offending party, the “victim” chose to resign from the group (while the “perpetrator” remained).  As facilitator for the group, I tried to mediate the conflict and create respectful communication about the situation.  But as time went on, the situation became more and more confounded (tense, heated, interpersonal conversations and scathing e-mail wars).  Eventually, after bringing the situation before the rest of the group, one other woman from the group and the “perpetrator” also resigned from the group.  And the rest of us were left in the vacuum of broken trust, hurt feelings, and disappearing friends.

Over the last couple of weeks, we’ve been trying to pick up the pieces and move on.  We’ve talked about the situation exhaustively.  We’ve written up some formal guidelines for how we treat each other and each other’s work.  And we’ve talked about how we might better handle such a situation in the future.  All in all, I feel like we’re finally on the right track again as a group—and we’ve developed a healthy sense that “whatever doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.”

Still, I feel compelled to pray for this group of my friends.  And I’d like to ask for you to pray for us, too, if you’re up for it.  Specifically, I’m praying that a sense of trust could be re-established, that relationships could be reconciled, and that a sense of joy could return to our group after this dark winter of our discontent.  I’m also keenly aware of the role that I play in representing Christ to these friends, and I’m praying that I could bring the wisdom of the Bible to bear on group situations—just as I hope to do in every life situation—but to always do it with gentleness and respect (like it says in 1 Peter 3:15).  I’m praying that I could have a good sense of boundaries in these “gray areas” of my life and ministry, so that I don’t confuse the two—but neither do I artificially separate them either.  Does this make sense?  I’m not entirely sure if makes sense to me, myself!  But anyway, any prayer support that you could provide in this direction (however you might choose to categorize it) would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks so much for everything you do to keep me, my family, and our ministry afloat.  We appreciate you more than we could ever express—and we will, of course, be in touch…

Eric