Greetings from Amsterdam!  This is a beautiful time of year here in the city.  The trees blossoms are now starting to fade into the thick, leafy greenness of summer, Marci and I just celebrated another wedding anniversary (our eleventh!), and we just had a lovely Pentecost weekend.  Pentecost is a national holiday here, though most people don’t actually understand its biblical significance.  Ironically, though, I had never really celebrated Pentecost either, before moving to the Netherlands.  It's actually a very significant holiday for Christians—and especially for a church like ours that happens to call itself 50 (which is the modern translation of the Greek word Pentecost).

Reading through Acts chapter 2, it’s impressive to see the ripple effect that the original Day of Pentecost had on the city of Jerusalem.  Out of nowhere, there’s this huge “Whooosh” coming down from heaven, settling on the house where the disciples were staying.  So everyone runs to see what’s happening, and not only do they hear this crazy sound—but they look and see flames!  Then these Galilean peasants start to talk in different languages which they’ve never learned but which are clearly fluent enough to be understood by Jewish pilgrims from every corner of the ancient world, and they all hear God’s praises in their own languages… It’s quite the scene, if you really think about it!  Everyone is completely amazed.  They’re all asking “How can this be?” and “What can this mean?”  So in the midst of this scene, Peter steps up to explain exactly what it all means.  He quotes from the ancient prophets Joel and David, reassuring the crowds that everything had been predicted long before.  Then, Peter shares about as clear a presentation of the Gospel as you could ever hope for—and the response from the crowds is overwhelming, with thousands and thousands coming to faith in Jesus.

It’s an incredibly inspiring story.  It really makes you wonder what it might be like to experience some of the same things for our churches today.  Here in Amsterdam, we’ve long dreamed about how we could live out the last five verses of Acts 2:  no loneliness, no selfishness, no materialism, a real sense of community, a real sense of experiencing God, a real sense of growth and development and change…

But how?

As a church, we’ve recently started questioning:  How can we make the most of this summer?  How can we take advantage of our longer hours of daylight and nicer weather?  How can we live it up like the church in Jerusalem that we read about in Acts chapter 2?  How can we have a lot of fun and make as much of an impact for the Kingdom of God as possible?

So after much discussion and prayer, we’ve developed a very simple (but hopefully very memorable) motto for the summer, encouraging each other to “Be neighborly.”  In the end, this is what we really see in Acts 2, isn't it?  Sharing meals, sharing possessions, sharing stories, spending a lot of time together, both in each others' homes and in public spaces... This is what we could be!  This is how we could spend our summer!  It’s ridiculously simple—but it seems like there’s incredible potential in just choosing to focus on being friendly, being available, and being neighborly, deepening trust in our relationships—both inside the church and outside the church.  Practically speaking, this might mean having lots of picnics in the park (Amsterdammers are passionate picnickers in the summer), spending a lot of time with friends in the semi-public spaces around our homes (balconies, roof-top terraces, and/or the sidewalks in front of our houses), playing sports together… that kind of thing.  We want to be constantly inviting each other to hang out and being neighborly with each other.  We’re telling our people that they don’t have to wait for an officially organized “Zolder50 summer activity.”  Rather, we’re encouraging each member of the community to invent their own activity (or activities) and invite others to join!

This goes every bit as much for the people outside the church as it does for those of us within the Christian community.  We want to make a point to get to know our friends and neighbors better this summer—those people we’ve always been wanting to invite over for dinner, but never getting around to doing it.  And we want to make new friends, too, deliberately going out of our way to learn our neighbors' names or learn how to say "Hello" in your neighbor's own languages (seeing how Amsterdam is such an international city)…The main concept with which we’re challenging each other is to just be initiators.  We’re asking every member of our church to spend some time thinking, praying, and talking about these ideas with other people here from the church—and then come up with a plan for themselves.

Now, maybe you’re thinking to yourself:  “Seriously?  That’s it?  Hang out in the park, and enjoy picnics with friends?  Is that really what Acts 2 teaches us?”  Well… if you look into the text of Acts 2, it’s actually very interesting to note how the story of the early church is moved forward.  Note how Peter decides to get into the presentation of the gospel—and how the challenge for the listeners to repent and turn to Jesus comes about.  Amazingly enough, all of these developments happened as answers to questions that the people of the city were asking.  “How can this be?  What can this mean?  Brothers, what should we do?”  In all of these situations, the early church was simply responding to the questions that were coming up, as people witnessed their life of supernatural joy and communion with God and with each other.  Perhaps this can’t be our strategy all the time, yet it seems to us this summer that our challenge is to live in such a way that we’re just genuinely enjoying God and each other… And when the questions come up, we want to engage in regular conversation and let God lead from there.  Recognizing the miracle of Pentecost, we want to trust that the Holy Spirit is inside of each of us, and He’ll give us the right words to say at the right time.

I’m excited to see what God might do through the coming months.  I feel personally excited to try and apply some of these ideas in my own neighborhood, and among my own circle of friends.  But I pray that the Holy Spirit will fill us in an extraordinary way—and that we’ll talk about the “Summer of 2009” for many years to come.  Please pray with us, as God leads…

Eric