Remember those who led you, who spoke the
word of God to you, and considering the result of
their conduct, imitate their faith.
(Hebrews 13:7)

Greetings from Amsterdam! The summer vacation season has ended, and school is back in session (even our little Cor is now a kindergartner!). Our life is full again with birthday parties and evening meetings. Attendance at church gatherings is swelling again, after the summer ebb. It can feel crazy at times, but also invigorating. I love the way this time of the year breathes fresh energy and vitality. If only we could get some of the beautiful, blue-skied, crisp, autumn-in-Ohio weather to go along with it all, the world would be perfect!

As a matter of fact, we’ve been having a lot of rain around here recently (the coldest, wettest summer since 1903, they say). Even so, I was recently realizing how such weather makes us all the more grateful for the warm and dry places where we can sit, and sip warm drinks, and enjoy fellowship with friends… like my Tuesday nights at Café Dickys.

After twenty-five minutes of bicycling in the rain, it’s so nice to step inside the café and see friendly faces again. The owner of this café, in the southern business district of Amsterdam, is a young man named Jan-Willem. He welcomes me as I step through the door and asks what I’d like to drink. I give him my order and then climb the stairs to our usual table. Jazz music plays over the café’s sound system, and there’s a flock of businessmen in suits downstairs, chattering over drinks; but otherwise the café is pretty quiet. The place is lit by small incandescent table-lamps, casting a warm glow onto the shades of brown and gray on the Victorian-style wallpaper. The tall windows, running along the front side of the establishment, are broken up by thick, velvet curtains, but in the spaces where the outside world is visible it’s a very rainy world. I look forward to drying out over the coming three hours.

Within a few minutes of sitting down, I am joined by my friends Michaël and Marc, laughing about the weather, stripping off soggy raincoats, and laying them aside on unoccupied chairs to dry. We catch up on the weekly rhythms of family and work. Michaël’s youngest son, Olan, hasn’t been sleeping very well at night lately. Marc is getting ready to assume a new position with his IT consulting firm. As we settle in at our table, Jan-Willem brings us our drinks—a cappuchino, a fresh-squeezed orange juice, and a sparkling water—and we ask him about the music festival that he went to see last week. Since it’s not such a busy night at the café, he draws up an extra chair and sits down, backwards in the chair, to talk with us for a moment. Relating a couple of stories about his favorite acts from the festival, he says it was a great experience; they even had a couple of days without rain—and we all chuckle at the obligatory weather reference. Jan-Willem is a likeable guy: floppy blond hair, bright blue eyes, a friendly Drenthen accent to his Dutch, and a generally hospitable demeanor. Although he’s told us that he’s “0.0% engaged with spiritual things” right now, he seems to enjoy talking with the three of us: a pastor and two pastors-in-training.

Eventually, Jan-Willem has to get back to work; and Michaël, Marc, and I decide that we need to do the same. So we pray and ask God to fill us with His Spirit. We pray for wisdom and insight. We pray for the people in our church, and for a city full of people outside of the church, like Jan-Willem. And when we close in Jesus’ name, we say “Amen,” look up at each other, and begin the work of talking through the week’s affairs.

Basically, we’re leading the ministry of Amsterdam50 together. Over the last few months, Michaël and Marc have been taking on more and more of the leadership responsibilities within the church—working under the philosophy that one of the best ways to learn the work of a pastor is to do the work of a pastor. You might say that they’re learning to direct the affairs of the church like a student driver learns to direct his vehicle. More and more, as time goes on, I’m letting them “sit behind the wheel” to make decisions and take action in regards to various situations as they present themselves; but at the same time, I’m sitting right beside them “in the passenger seat,” offering encouragement, instruction, and supplementary braking whenever it might be really necessary. Obviously, they’re still learning, and they’ve still got a ways to go before they’re really ready to serve as full-fledged pastors—but it’s really beautiful to watch the ways that they’re growing and developing. I’m encouraged to see what God is doing, both in their lives particularly, and in the life of the church in general.

I consider it one of the great privileges in my life, that I can be involved in helping to develop these young Dutch leaders. Throughout the flow of our Tuesday evening conversation, I find myself challenged and comforted by the conversation with Michaël and Marc. This whole pastoral training process seems to be refining my character just as much as it’s refining the character of the two trainees! We talk and we pray. We order more drinks. We talk and we pray. By the end of the evening, my brain is buzzing—simultaneously stimulated and exhausted. But I’m satisfied. I’m warm and dry, and ready for a long, cool bicycle ride again. So we stand up, gather our things, and descend the stairs to the bar. We chat briefly with Jan-Willem again, as we settle up from the evening’s refreshments. And then we step out into the night again. As the rain and mist blow into our faces again, I give Marc a big hug, I give Michaël a big hug, and then I turn to unlock my bicycle. Riding off into the darkness, I call out my last farewells. “Tot zondag” or “Wel thuis.” And I spend the rest of my ride home praying, processing, and looking ahead to the next time when we’ll all be together.

Would you please pray with me for these men that I see every Tuesday evening at Café Dickys? Please pray for more opportunities to share the Gospel with Jan-Willem. Please pray for Michaël’s and Marc’s development as pastors-in-training. Please pray for my own grace and humility in mentoring these two young leaders. And please pray that God will continually raise up more workers for his harvest fields, here in the Netherlands. Thanks for everything you do to keep us going! We’ll be in touch…

Eric