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