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

Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world,
but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. 
Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s
will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.
(Romans 12:2)

Greetings from Amsterdam!  I must confess that November is not my favorite month of the year to be living in Amsterdam.  No Thanksgiving; no American football classics; no reverent hush of the season's first frosts and snows… just a dark and dreary descent into the gray, rainy, Dutch winter.  But not to sound too depressive, we also have reason to celebrate these days!  We have officially made the transition from a single Zolder50 community to the circles and squares of two neighborhood church communities...  And, after more than a year of waiting and wandering, we've finally been approved for official use of the H88 (our "new" ministry facility in the heart of Old Amsterdam) and started holding our worship gatherings in this beautiful space.  Of course, in each of these items there’s a whole story that could be told (multiple prayer letters, in their own right)… but suffice to say, it's been quite the adventure, getting everything aligned.  We're glad to see God pulling everything together.

For this month’s prayer letter, I actually want to focus on something that happened thousands of miles away from Amsterdam.  From October 19-26, I had the opportunity to participate—together with eight other Amsterdammers and two Filipino missionaries serving in the United Arab Emirates—in a special intensive course for international missionaries, sponsored by Equipping Ministries International (EMI), in Cincinnati, Ohio.  In case you’re not familiar with EMI, their website (www.equippingministries.org) offers the following self-description:  “EMI equips churches and ministry organizations in proven, outward-focused relational skills that YOU can put to work right away - empowering effective outreach, leadership, and all kinds of ministry.”  And from my own observations, it seems that EMI’s strength comes from its focus on basic inter-personal skills which provide a foundation for building relationships and ministering in any environment.

Indeed we found this “International School of Service” (which consolidated the materials from a number of EMI’s core curriculum) to be a highly effective tool for equipping ourselves for ministry in Amsterdam.   We learned (and practiced) things like listening skills, conflict management skills, skills for evaluating our belief systems, fresh approaches to evangelism, and more.  We covered a lot of information; in fact, at times it felt like drinking from a fire-hose!  Still, it was an incredibly educational week.  We brought back a number of the materials which we hope to use for training other leaders within Zolder50 (one of the great strengths of EMI’s material is its transferability).  And as we have opportunities to process, assimilate, and apply the lessons learned in Cincinnati, our ministry should be immeasurably benefited from these interpersonal relationship skills.

In addition to learning a lot, we had some fun in the process.  I especially enjoyed showing off my home state (at one of its finest times of the year) to my friends from Amsterdam.  We got to visit some of my old friends from Bowling Green (who have also become familiar to the Amsterdammers through short-term missions trips) at their Fall Get-Away.  We got to go shopping in a real American mall.  And perhaps the most interesting cultural experience was our visit to the world’s largest flea market.  Thanks to the generous people at EMI, we were fed some good food and put up in beautiful homes, and we got to experience all of the best that America has to offer.  Not surprisingly, the team that we brought from Amsterdam was able to grow closer together, as we saw each other in different environments and practiced our interpersonal relationship skills on each other.  It ended up being a very special week.

If you would, please keep praying for our assimilation of the concepts we learned at EMI—both on the personal level (for each individual participant) and on the ministry level.  We’re particularly hoping that God will use these materials to equip our home group leaders during this season of transition in our ministry and the subsequent increased responsibility on their part.  We also want to trust that God will simply make us more healthy and mature as a church community, through applying the lessons that we learned in Cincinnati.  Your prayer support for this would be very much appreciated.

On a separate note, I just wanted to give you a heads-up that we will soon need to focus on raising financial support to cover the increased costs for us becoming a family of five and for accommodating an unfavorable trend in the dollar/euro exchange rates.  I plan to give a more complete update on our needs (and our strategies for meeting these needs) in January’s prayer letter, but in case you like to think in terms of year-end giving, I just wanted to let you know that we will likely need to raise between $500 and $800 per month in regular (ongoing) financial support and approximately $15,000 in special gifts throughout the coming months.  If you would like to contribute toward meeting these needs in any way, it would be greatly appreciated; just let me know, and I can follow up with you personally.  And, for the record, even if you can’t offer any further financial help at this time, please know that your prayers for God’s provision would be highly valued.

Thanks for everything you already do to support our family and our ministry.  We’ll continue to be in touch…

Eric

There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under heaven.
(Ecclesiastes 3:1)

Greetings from Amsterdam!  We’ve had a beautiful fall season so far this year.  Typically, autumn in Amsterdam seems to be nothing more than a slow, gray descent from summer into winter, weather getting steadily cooler and rainier, daylight getting steadily shorter and more muted… But this year it has seemed somewhat different.  The air feels fresh and cool.  The sun shines in sepia tones through the trees.  There is a hopeful sense of change in the air.

And it’s not just the weather.

Our family has been going through its own season of change, with the addition of our fifth member.  Five-week-old Cor is doing very well, as is the rest of our family; in fact, I’m actually surprised by how well we’ve managed the transition up to this point.  And as if all of this was not enough—our church, too, is working its way through some very significant transitions this fall.

Since the establishment of Zolder50 in Amsterdam, our vision has been to follow the example of the first-century church, as recorded in the book of Acts.  As such, we’ve organized our ministry around concentric circles of ministry, starting with Life Groups (single-gender groups of 2-4 emphasizing accountability, in-depth personal Bible study, and prayer for unbelievers), then expanding to Home Groups (“family” units of 5-15 people “doing life together”—growing spiritually, growing relationally, and uniting to serve others in the community), and ultimately gathering in Neighborhood Churches (50-150 people meeting regularly for worship, teaching, and community)... We had always hoped that there might also one day be a network of Neighborhood Churches, loosely organized as a City Church (potentially thousands of people, meeting once every two or three months for worship and envisioning)—but this has been more theory than practice up to this point.  Going on faith, we’ve sought to build a culture of making disciples—particularly in the context of Home Groups and Life Groups—developing seeds to what we hope will be a continually-multiplying network of churches that will allow God’s love and His people to spread throughout the city of Amsterdam and, eventually, even beyond that to cities all around the Netherlands and Europe (Luke 13:20-21).  As we’ve come to phrase it, our church’s goal is to “know Jesus, become like Jesus, and make Jesus known.”

Over the past several months, we have been looking more closely into the subject of multiplication (making multiple churches from one). We’ve experienced quite a bit of growth in the five years since our church was first started, but it’s only been within the last year or so that our leadership core has become substantial enough and strong enough to realistically consider branching out further.  Also, as we’ve moved toward occupation of a new ministry center in the heart of the city (which automatically restricts us to smaller spaces, with greater limitations on the number of people allowed in a single meeting location), we’ve also felt the need for creativity in managing church growth.

Therefore, throughout our times of conversation and prayer on this subject, we’ve discussed a number of different strategies for multiplication, looking at various factors such as how Jesus led His disciples, how the first-century church was formed, how Amsterdam society works today, what the learning-style in a post-modern society looks like, and other such considerations.  More and more we came to the conclusion that the Sunday service may not always be the best place to showcase a life of faith or to make Jesus known to them—at least not in the context of Amsterdam’s younger generations.  In fact, we started to wonder if, by keeping the emphasis on our weekly worship gatherings, we might be teaching Amsterdammers the very same misconception which the church has been subconsciously perpetuating over the past centuries: Christianity is merely something for Sundays in a building we call 'church'.

But that's not what we want to teach them! We want to show them the Church as God intended it, the church described in Acts 2:42-47, the church where people live their lives together, care for each other, and actively multiply God’s love to others.  We want to bring the church to the people—instead of just bringing people to the church.  And in order to do this, we have to create time and space to build (new) relationships with people outside of the church and invest time in them.  Such relationships work best if they take place in familiar territory: among our colleagues, classmates, neighbors, friends, people from our sports clubs, or any of the other countless subcultures of Amsterdam—those whom we already know or with whom we can easily get into contact. We believe that it is these kinds of relationships which have a lasting impact and which can be life-changing.
 
Consequently, starting next month (November), we have decided to shift from one community meeting weekly for worship to two communities, meeting every-other week for worship and thus putting more emphasis on our home groups and life groups and creating an expectation for greater penetration into other subcultures throughout the city.  Four of our church’s home groups will gather as one Neighborhood Church for corporate worship on the first and third Sundays of the month, and the other four home groups in our church will meet together as a second Neighborhood Church on the second and the fourth Sundays of the month (in months with five Sundays, we'll do something special as a “City Church” on that fifth Sunday of the month).  Consequently, we should have more room for growth in our Sunday worship gatherings (essentially doubling our capacity) and more of a need for people to step up into key areas of serving and leadership, while simultaneously avoiding the trap of over-extending ourselves and burning out our leaders in the process.  Also, with such a schedule, our hope is that the people in our church would have extra time in their regular schedule to invest, together with others from their home groups, into the relationships for which they might otherwise never seem to find the time.

Without a doubt, such a transition is an ambitious undertaking.  We’ve been building up to this change for months, and we realize that it will be several months (if not years) before the transition is fully realized.  We understand that blazing new trails and building new relationships does not just happen overnight. It will take time and effort and perseverance. And it will take lots and lots of prayer (that’s where you come in!)!  Still, we’re confident that God is with us and for us, and the He is calling us in this new direction.  We look forward to keeping you updated throughout the coming months.  In the meantime, though, please keep praying.

Eric

You are all sons of God through faith in
Christ Jesus… If you belong to Christ, then
you are… heirs according to the promise.
(Galatians 3:26, 29)

Greetings from Amsterdam!  It is with great pride and joy that we write to you this month with exciting news, announcing the arrival of the newest member of the Asp family… Yes, ladies and gentlemen, on September 2, 2007, at 2:07 in the morning (Amsterdam time) Cor William Asp was born at Onze Lieve Vrouwe Gasthuis (our neighborhood hospital) in Amsterdam!

That’s right -- we are now officially a family of five!  To fill you in on some of the specifics, when he was born he weighed in at 3090 grams (6 pounds, 13 ounces), and his overall health has been excellent.  Of course, he looks a lot like other newborn babies:  cute little nose and mouth, dark slivers of eyes, soft pink skin... He came out of the womb with extremely long fingernails, but not with a lot of hair.  In fact, he's mostly bald (more so than either of our other kids), with just a bit of very short, very fine blond hair mostly clustered on the back of his head.  Marci and I both found it quite a shock to hold him -- marveling at how light-weight he is (compared to the five-and-a-half-year-old and almost-three-year-old that we're used to) and how tiny his hands and feet are... Babies truly are miraculous.  Already, we are enamored by our beautiful little boy.

Even though I’ve already been privileged to witness the birth of my first two children, it’s still an indescribable miracle to witness the birth of a brand-new human being!  It all happened so quickly.  Right around the time that we were putting Elliot and Olivia to bed on that Saturday night, the early stages of labor began... And by the time they were just waking up on Sunday morning, we were arriving back home from the hospital with our newest family member in tow!  The labor itself went very fast (Cor was born within about twenty minutes of arriving at the hospital) -- still, we really felt quite calm, controlled, and relieved that we were able to make it to the hospital at all.  Our midwife and the nurse did a good job of handling the whole situation, and it really didn't feel all that frantic.  Marci., too, was a champ throughout the process and is recovering quite well following the delivery.

You might be interested to know that we chose our son’s name for a number of reasons…  Ever since learning that we would be having a boy, we felt that we wanted to choose a name that would reflect our family's feeling of establishment on Dutch soil, a sense of masculine strength, and an affirmation of identity and purpose.  Thus, the name Cor -- a classic Dutch name (something like the American equivalent of naming a kid "Jack" or "Harry") -- appealed to us purely on the basis of its national associations.  Furthermore, we thought that this kind of old-school (though not necessarily unfashionable) name fits well with the sense of masculine strength that we desire our son to develop over time.  Finally, we liked the name Cor because of a rather obscure allusion to identity and purpose, drawn from the fictional work of C.S. Lewis.  One of my favorite books growing up (and indeed, to this day) was Lewis's fifth installment of the Chronicles of Narnia:  "The Horse and His Boy."  In this story, the protagonist is a young slave boy named Shasta, who escapes with a talking horse to the "free lands of the North" -- and (though the plot is much more interesting and complex than this crude summary) there discovers that his true identity is not "Shasta," the poor, dirty, smelly, fisherman's slave in the oppressive land of Calormene... but rather "Cor," a noble, courageous, royal, long-lost prince, heir to the throne of Archenland.  So, in naming our son Cor, we hope to endow him with a similar sense of meaning and purpose -- as well as just having a cool name... His middle name is William, in honor of his great-grandfather, Bill Hettinger (a godly man who's had an enormous influence on Marci's life, and on mine).  And, of course, his last name is Asp -- hearkening to another solid heritage from which we hope he will draw strength and develop.

It’s exciting to imagine what God may have in store for Cor, and for the rest of our family.  We're grateful that God has brought us through the labor and delivery -- and onto the next challenge:  life as a family of five.  So far, we’ve been surprised with how smoothly things have gone.  Please keep praying for us, though, as it comes to mind.

If you’d like to see more pictures (lots more pictures!) and hear more of the story surrounding Cor’s first week of life, you can visit our website at www.ericasp.com (specifically looking to entries from September 2-8, 2007, and to the Family Pictures section).  At any rate, I hope you enjoy the attached images of our newest family member and rejoice with us for the gift which God has given to us in the form of a healthy baby boy.  Thanks so much for your support of our family, on so many levels...

Eric

You also, like living stones, are being built into a
spiritual house... that you may declare the praises of him
who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.
(1 Peter 2:5,9)

Greetings from Amsterdam!  We’re enjoying the relaxed pace of the summer season, and we hope that you are too.  This month’s prayer letter focuses on some recent developments with our new ministry center… and, ironically, on the efforts of our community to minister in just about every kind of environment except for a ministry center!

At any rate, you probably haven't noticed it nearly as much as I have... But it's been a loooooong time since I've really had anything to say about our church's relocation process.  Believe it or not, our “temporary” period of homelessness has turned into a ten-month ordeal.  Although we were initially very excited by the prospect of a new ministry center on the historic Herengracht, the road to actual occupation of the facilities has proved to be a bumpy one.  Over the last six months, in fact, we've undergone an agonizing ordeal of business negotiations and legal positioning as the situation with the “H88” facility went from complicated and difficult to more complicated and more difficult...

In particular, we encountered significant issues with the renovation costs (which, at one point in the spring, had been inflated to approximately three times the original estimate under which we signed the contract) and with the maximum attendance allowance by the fire marshal (although the contract explicitly stipulated an allowance for at least 120, the initial permission granted by the fire marshal—after all of those expensive renovations—was for only 81 people).  Indeed, there have been times over the last several months when the situation with the new facility seemed truly impossible.  We and the building owner stood at the brink of a court case on a number of different occasions.  It was a very intense (and seemingly impossible) situation.

Thus, it was incredible surprise when, about a month ago, we finally reached an agreement with the owner of the H88 that should have us meeting in there relatively soon!  Despite the odds, we and the owner settled on an agreement securing permission for at least 120 people and distributing responsibility for the extra renovation costs.  Of course, in the give-and-take of business negotiations, we—like the owner—had to make some concessions to reach this agreement; however, the final agreement has still kept us within our means, and it has definitively provided for eventual allowance of at least 120 people (and maybe even as many as 150, now that they’re going to have to put in a second fire exit after all).  The actual timelines are still working themselves out, but at any rate—we are now moving forward again!  Hallelujah!  Please keep praying, with us, for the conclusion of our relocation process…

In the meantime, even while growing excited to have a more “permanent” base of operations for our ministry in the city, we’re actively working to keep our church fluid and flexible—not dependent on the classical elements of ministry (like a ministry facility) that can sometimes take the focus away from our basic identity as the Body of Christ in Amsterdam.  So much of our reason for moving here was a hope that we could make a difference—serving as a very different kind of church, challenging people’s expectations and creating a fresh sense of who God is and what the church can be.

To accomplish this, we’ve learned that we must be very deliberate in conditioning ourselves to be a church “outside the box.”  One of the most intriguing  ways that we’ve kept ourselves flexible and fluid over the last couple of years is to deliberately shake up our schedule during the summers—particularly in the month of August.  Instead of the typical worship gatherings (with worship music and teaching from the Bible), we’ve planned a number of different activities to practically remind ourselves of the fluidity and flexibility of what it means to “do Church” (or “be Church”) in Amsterdam.

On the first Sunday of the month, we’re meeting in the Vondelpark (a big, beautiful green space right in the middle of the city), actually reprising an event that we've been doing for three years now.  In this, we desire to take our church to the people of Amsterdam, rather than waiting for the people of Amsterdam to come to our church… That is to say, on a sunny summer Sunday afternoon in Amsterdam, most Amsterdammers are in the Vondelpark!  So we take the church to them!  And again, by "church" I don't mean the building (obviously) or the worship gathering per se... We take the Church.  The people of God.  The Body of Christ.  And we bring God’s presence with us to the Vondelpark.

In the second week of the month, we’re organizing a scavenger hunt that serves to introduce people to our church’s home groups.  The following week, we’re sponsoring a party on a canal boat (an iconic Amsterdam experience) to which people can invite their friends and introduce them to the Zolder50 community.  And in the final week of August, we’re hoping to christen the H88 facility with an “Open Mic Night” in which we can showcase some of the amazing artistic talent in our own community, while simultaneously hoping that God will use the event to bring new people into contact with His Church (since there are a lot of different budding artists in the city, and they're all looking for venues in which they can get their stuff out there!).

Perhaps this all sounds crazy to you—and in a sense, it is!  Yet we don’t just do this to be “different” or “cutting edge.”  We do this to allow ourselves a greater opportunity to influence the city.  As we’re out and about, we’ll have people asking who we are and what we’re doing—thus, we’ll have opportunities to introduce other people to God in a non-confrontational way.  Also, with events like what we’re having in the coming month, the people in our community have an ideal opportunity to introduce their friends or family members to Church in a way that totally subverts their expectations and stereotypes.  Furthermore, if we really believe that Church is more than a building… or a meeting… or a model… or a good to be consumed, then this is a way to live that out.

So now you know the latest from Amsterdam.  Thanks, as always, for your prayer and financial support.  We’ll continue to be in touch…

Eric