Thanks be to God!  He gives us the
victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
(1 Corinthians 15:57)

Greetings from Amsterdam!  Let me start by saying, “Beste wensen voor 2011” (Dutch tradition is to always offer someone “best wishes” for the New Year, when one first encounters a friend in the New Year).  And because it’s a New Year, I return to our annual tradition of publishing a “State of the Ministry Address”—using the first prayer letter of a new year to write a more extended overview of our lives and our ministry.  In so doing, I realize that I’m throwing a lot of information at you—yet, I want to my best to keep you aware of everything that your faithful support in prayer and finances is enabling us to do, simultaneously equipping you with the information to be continually praying for us in an educated manner.  Don’t feel guilty if you prefer to skim. :-)  But in any event, please know that we deeply appreciate your part in making our ministry possible.  It’s a great honor to report all that God is doing in our lives and in our ministry…

Amsterdam Life

This month marks the beginning of our ninth year in Amsterdam.  As of this coming summer, Lord willing, I (Eric) will have lived in Amsterdam longer than I’ve ever lived in any other place on Earth!  This is obviously also true for our children; so in a lot of ways, this place has simply become home to us.  We continue to evaluate our family’s long-term trajectory (particularly in light of our children’s eventual transition to secondary education), but at least for 2011 we remain fresh, focused, and fiercely committed to the task of making disciples in Amsterdam.  It’s a great honor to serve as a pastor to people through the most basic rhythms of life:  coming to faith, getting baptized, falling in love, getting married, having babies, enduring illnesses, and grieving death.  Bringing God into all of these rhythms—not to mention the everyday stuff—is a beautiful and mysterious process that never gets old.  This is our life in Amsterdam. 

Communities

As you may remember, it was about a year ago that we completed the process of adapting our small group system to create a network of “Communities,” with each group united around a specific mission and grounded within a broader sub-culture in Amsterdam.  Basically, as we studied the way that our city works, we realized that the most cohesive social units are not geographic / neighborhood groupings—but rather sub-cultural groupings centered upon a shared demographic or field of interest.

Because of this, it seemed wise to structure our small groups in such a way that we could tap into these natural networks.  With God’s help, we sifted through 114 different sub-cultures that we could identify with representation from among the people of our church, and we ultimately formed a dozen different communities reaching out to the sub-cultures that we found to be most prevalent and most strategic, including Artists, Families, Musicians, Persians, Professionals, Social Activists, Students.

The results of this strategic approach to ministry have varied from community to community, but overall it seems like there are some really strategic opportunities that have popped up or are just waiting to be cultivated.  In part through the work of these new communities, six individuals made first-time professions of faith in Christ—and there are countless other people throughout the city who are being exposed to the Gospel for the first time.  Please continue to pray with us for the growth, development, and multiplication of these communities throughout Amsterdam (and beyond).

Worship Gatherings

In addition to our smaller communities, held throughout the week and throughout the city, we also continue to gather every Sunday for worship gatherings at our ministry center in the heart of the old city.  In 2010, we studied the themes of Spiritual Disciplines, the Book of Jonah, the Book of Galatians, and we did an Advent series on the Gospels.  I did more of the preaching this year than ever before, but it was also neat to see three young Dutch men get their first experience in preaching as well.  Another two guys (who already had some experience) also continued to hone their skills in studying the Bible and communicating its truths publicly.  So I’m very encouraged to see a team of people developing in this area.

All in all, we’ve got some great momentum with our worship team and our teaching team, and we’re praying that our times of corporate worship will be very life-giving, Spirit-filled experiences in 2011.  One of the specific plans that we have for the coming year is to spend some more significant time teaching through the Old Testament of the Bible.  But rather than just looking at the Old Testament from a historical perspective, we also want to really examine the ways that the Old Testament points us to Jesus and to the ongoing role that we play as the Body of Christ in 21st Century Amsterdam.  So would you please pray with us for God’s movement through our worship gatherings?  We’d appreciate it!

Special Events

There’s much more to our church community than our weekly events.  I don’t even know if I’d accurately be able to provide an exhaustive list of all ministry activities!  But at any rate, here are a few highlights from the last year…

In the summer of 2010, we welcomed a summer intern from the University of Illinois, named Jeff Spencer.  As Jeff benefited from the opportunity to explore the possibility of a career in full-time international missions, we also benefited from his energy and enthusiasm in building up our church community through service projects, strategic support of our Students Community, and research on the overall health and well-being of our church.  It ended up being a really positive experience for us all, and it made us look forward to the possibility of hosting other interns in the future.

In July (in part due to Jeff Spencer’s organizational assistance), twenty people traveled from Amsterdam to the Italian Alps for a week-long experiential learning initiative called ReBoot.  Seemingly everyone who went on this trip came back with a fresh sense of things that God is doing in their lives and in our church community as a whole.  In many ways, the reverberations of that week in the Alps are still echoing through people’s lives today, and I’m excited to see how God will continue to work in these young people’s lives.

Another thing that stands out to me from 2010 is the partnerships that we were able to foster with other ministries in Amsterdam.  Stichting HiP (Help in Practice) and Serve the City provided us (and other churches) with strategic opportunities to serve others in need—and we look forward to continued partnership for various service projects in the future as well.  In addition to working with these two organizations, we’ve also developed a special relationship with two other churches in the city center, which has led to us deciding to partner together to offer a special edition of the Alpha Course, coming up from February to April 2011.  Every time that we’ve organized an Alpha Course in the past, seekers have become believers—and we’re really praying that the same will be true (just on a larger scale) with this joint initiative starting next month.

There were so many other special events throughout the course of the last year:  seminars, retreats, conferences, and councils—not to mention three weddings and two new babies born.  God really did a lot in and through Amsterdam50 in 2010.

Ministry Team Development

Things were scary last February, when our ministry funding took an unexpected hit and we found ourselves scrambling to raise some extra support even prior to our planned time of Home Service Leave in the summer.  But God totally provided for our needs, working through all of you:  the individuals, families, and churches that make up our ministry team!  It was a huge faith boost to see the way that everything came together.  By the end of our Home Service Leave in August 2010, we were back to 95% of our support goal.  Today, we still have a little bit of support to raise (approximately $250/month) in order to be fully funded; but overall, financial support for our ministry remains relatively strong and consistent.  We are confident that God will continue to care for us.

In light of all this, we just want to say thank you for the incredible thoughtfulness, consistency, and generosity that you’ve demonstrated throughout our years of ministry.  It sounds clichéd and hollow, but I sincerely mean it when I say that you are a vital support to us and our ministry in Amsterdam.  Thank you so much, for everything.

Our Personal Lives

Our family got to do a lot of traveling in 2010.  In March, we went to a conference in the Slovenian Alps.  In June, Marci and I were privileged to celebrate a special wedding anniversary in Rome.  We got to take a family vacation to Belgium in November during the kids’ fall break.  And we got to visit the United States more than once (for a funeral, our Home Service Leave, and a chance to celebrate the holidays with family)!  What a blessing!  This is definitely one of the “perks” of doing ministry in Europe.

Marci and I celebrated our twelve-and-a-half year anniversary here in Amsterdam this November—which, in the Netherlands, is a bigger deal than the 10th anniversary or even the 20th!  The road has been long and winding, with many unexpected turns, but we’re really glad that we’ve gotten to travel together.  Marci continues to teach English as a Second Language to kids at the elementary school in our neighborhood, and she manages our household with grace and skill.  Apart from my role as the pastor for our church here in Amsterdam, I’ve kept working on a couple of different writing projects:  one a creative day-by-day study of the Biblical Proverbs, and the other novel about an Albanian mobster coming of age in the lawless era immediately following the fall of Communism (a story based on a friend of ours here in Amsterdam).  I still help to facilitate a critique group for other international writers here in Amsterdam, and I’ve also started organizing a weekly morning of basketball with other friends at our kids’ school.

The kids are, as always, a great source of joy.  Elliot, now almost 9 years old, has started playing organized basketball on Saturday mornings—in addition to playing soccer almost every day on the school playground.  He also has a voracious appetite for reading, and we scramble to keep him “fed” with books in both English and Dutch.  Olivia, now six-and-a-half years old, loves to think up new ways to wear her hair (Are the 1980s-style ponytails as big in America as they are in Holland right now?!?).  Her reading skills are also noticeably picking up steam, and she was thrilled to get her first real Bible for Sinterklaas (the Dutch gift-giving holiday in early December).  Cor started pre-school—and thus, seriously learning the Dutch language—shortly after his third birthday in September.  He loves to sing and make funny faces to keep his older siblings and parents entertained.  Even though there can be times of frustration and difficulty, Marci and I are really happy with the people that our children are turning out to be.

There’s always more that we could write—but I think I’ll draw this letter to a close here.  You can, however, find ongoing updates of pictures, videos, news, and anecdotes about our family on my website:  www.ericasp.com.  Thanks again for the part you play in our lives and ministry here in Amsterdam.  We’ll be in touch…

Eric

P.S. – I’ve also compiled a “Picture Page” for this month’s prayer letter, which can be viewed electronically at http://www.ericasp.com/ministry.php/2011/01/14/january-2011-picture-page.  Sorry that it requires an extra step for you to access it, but it would have been just too large of a file to try to transmit via e-mail. :-)