The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.
We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son,
who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
(John 1:14)

Season’s Greetings from Amsterdam! Decorative strings of lights and evergreen cuttings are draped over all the city’s major thoroughfares. Homes and cafes are full of people drinking piping-hot coffee and gluwijn. The Asp family docket is full with school programs, Christmas concerts, holiday parties, and special church services… Obviously, it’s Advent in Amsterdam! God has taught me a lot through the years of living in the Netherlands, but this season I’ve been particularly grateful for the way that my experiences as a cross-cultural missionary have brought a deeper appreciation for the mystery of the Incarnation—that magnificent miracle of God taking on flesh and dwelling among us—which we celebrate at this time of the year.

It really is remarkable that the Son of Man came to seek and save those who are lost, isn’t it?!? And what a privilege for us to be a part of the ongoing process, too! Our church has recently finished a study of the book of Philippians, in which we marveled at the challenge to “Live clean, innocent lives as children of God, shining like bright lights in a world full of crooked and perverse people, [holding] firmly to the word of life (Philippians 2:15-16). Ever since our earliest days in Amsterdam, we’ve been preaching and practicing the power of incarnational ministry: actively going to people who are lost (in addition to welcoming strangers), engaging in mission here in the city, and also sending out “missionaries” (whether that word fits as a formal job description or not) to other parts of the world. Several individuals from Amsterdam50 have gone on to help start churches in new cities, engage in humanitarian efforts in the developing world, and blaze new trails for missionary work everywhere from North Korea to South Africa. God’s Spirit has done it, not us; still we’re proud of the men and women from Amsterdam whom God has mobilized for the Great Commission throughout the world.

For whatever reason, it seems we’re experiencing another season of mobilization these days. So I wanted to ask you to pray with us this month for three separate initiatives involving members of our church community. These incidents of “incarnational ministry” involve Amsterdammers, but they are not happening in Amsterdam. Still, I’m sure that they would greatly appreciate your prayer support during the coming weeks! So here are a few stories of contemporary incarnation which you can be following and supporting in prayer...

First of all, Linda left for Kenya on Tuesday (the 13th of December). This is her second trip this year, working with orphans at a safe-house in Karai—and it’s especially neat to see a continually-strengthening link between our church family in Amsterdam and this particular “extended family” of orphans in the Rift Valley of eastern Africa. We in Amsterdam have known and loved Linda for several years. In fact, she happens to be one of the “favorite people in the whole-wide-world” for our children because she exudes a natural sense of kindness and curiosity, especially with young children. So you might be able to imagine how smiles are brought to our faces when we envision “our Linda” spending the Christmas holiday season with three-dozen African orphans: telling stories, singing songs, and directing a Christmas nativity play! She’ll be there in Kenya right up until the end of 2011, so any prayer support you could offer between now and then would be greatly appreciated. And in case you’d like to learn more about the ministry with which Linda is partnering, you can check out www.kenyamatters.org for more information.

Secondly, another woman named Mirjam leaves for Bolivia on the 4th of January. She will be working with street-children in Santa Cruz for a period of four months (though she’s also wondering if God might use the experience to open up possibilities for long-term ministry in such a setting). In addition to being homeless, many of the children with whom Mirjam will be interacting are severely malnourished and addicted to drugs. They speak a language which will be Mirjam’s third language (Spanish, after Dutch and English). Suffice to say: it will be an extremely challenging environment. Yet Mirjam feels compelled by the love of Jesus to undertake this mission. She’s been such a faithful servant within our church here in Amsterdam that we’re going to miss her dearly while she’s away, but we’re looking forward to following her adventures through a blog that she’s set up at www.in-bolivia.blogspot.com. In any event, would you please pray with us for God’s work in and through Mirjam? We’re very excited to be sending her out in this capacity.

Finally, a woman named Marina leaves for Argentina at the end of January. She will be there for two years with an organization called Operation Mobilization (www.om.org), using sports as a way to reach out to teenagers. Marina went to school here in the Netherlands to be a physical education teacher. But somewhere between graduation and finding employment here in Holland, God grabbed her attention with a different possibility. In a recent letter, she shared “Towards the end of my studies I found that sharing the gospel has way more importance than giving kids a good time during sports classes. I would like to invest my time in things that have eternal value, and at the same time use what I have studied. Sports Ministry brings these two elements together. I really like the following quote about sports ministry: ‘We are using a game, but we are not playing a game, eternity is at stake.’” Amen! Isn’t it great to see the way that God develops workers for his harvest fields?!?

Of course, even as we’re sending out Linda, Mirjam, and Marina, we’re very mindful of the incredible opportunities for ongoing incarnational ministry right here in Amsterdam as well. Every ethnic group, every social network, every camp of activists is an opportunity for the Word of God to take on flesh and dwell among lost people. So your continued prayer support for our work here in Amsterdam would also be greatly appreciated! In any event, we want you to know that we really, truly, sincerely appreciate everything that you’ve meant for our ministry in 2011. Your prayer and financial support are the reason that we can be here, “shining like bright lights in a world of crooked and perverse people.” Thank you so much, for everything. We wish you a very Merry Christmas and a blessed New Year. We’ll be in touch…

Eric

Now you are the body of Christ,

and each one of you is a part of it.

(1 Corinthians 12:27)

dam! It’s been a beautiful fall here in the Netherlands. We were especially blessed to spend the past weekend (the last weekend in October) on a church retreat in the gently-rolling hills around Nijmegen, in the eastern part of the country. Together with three dozen other people from our church, we found ourselves right in the middle of beautiful farms and forests as the fall foliage was just nearing its peak. And we even had pleasantly warm temperatures with some sun!

Our focus for this particular retreat was to help the people in our church learn more about the ways God has uniquely designed each one of them for life and ministry. We wanted to teach the people in our church about spiritual gifts and reinforce the idea that we’re each uniquely designed in a way that is supposed to build up the Body of Christ. Throughout the weekend, we learned that all of our spiritual gifts, our natural passions, our special abilities, our unique personality traits, and our life experiences work together to make us who we are as individuals and as a community. So we figured it was well worth our while to figure out who we are, where we’re coming from, and thus where we’re going.

Consequently, we spent a good bit of time during our group sessions filling out questionnaires about our personality types and spiritual gifts. But we also spent time worshipping God together. We played games together. We took walks. We took crazy pictures of our group (see above). And in all of the weekend’s events we really had a lot of fun and experienced God’s goodness and grace.

My favorite part of the weekend, though, was spending time in individual conversations with various people from the church. There’s just something special about getting away and living in a house together for two-and-a-half days: seeing the same faces early in the morning and late at night, combining education and recreation, processing and assimilating new information, sharing meals together.

Late on Friday evening we played some group games that really got our hearts beating and bodies sweating, so a number of us went outside to cool off. We looked at the stars and identified the constellations we could see. And eventually I fell into conversation with Michel, a young Dutch man who just became a Christian over the summer. He’s recently been making some radical life decisions to part ways with some destructive tendencies learned earlier in life, and our conversation became a great opportunity to encourage each other, affirm each other, and express our mutual hope that more and more of his friends could come to follow Jesus through his brave and bold process of transformation.

Early on Sunday morning, I came into the dining area to find just a couple of people milling around, drinking coffee and tea. Filling my own cup with coffee, I sat down at the table where a woman named Nicole was sitting. She and her husband came to Christ through our Alpha Course early in the year, and they had been baptized on Easter Sunday. Ever since then, you could say that they’ve been “growing like weeds,” spiritually-speaking; still, I was curious to hear what she thought of the whole weekend experience (her first time ever participating in such an extended experience of Christian community). Her eyes sparkled and her smile gleamed as she shared how much she was enjoying the weekend. She explained her growing realization of how unique it was that she had pretty much always been a “believer” but only recently had she been able to affix that belief to Jesus and call herself a “Christian.”

Then on Sunday afternoon, I got to eat lunch across the table from a young German woman named Franziska. She’s still not a Christian, though she would say that she and God are kind of “in a serious dating relationship.” She realizes that faith in Jesus requires a commitment, “kind of like choosing to get married,” but she’s not yet ready to make that commitment because she’s waiting for a more meaningful emotional experience.

Thank you for everything you’re doing to help advance the cause of Christ here in Europe, through your financial support and through your prayer. We appreciate you more than words could ever adequately express. We’ll be in touch...

Eric

And the news about him spread
throughout the surrounding area.
(Luke 4:37)

Greetings from Amsterdam! I just got back from a three-day conference in the northern part of Germany, and I’m feeling remarkably refreshed. Conferences don’t always do this for me (mostly because I am an introvert, by nature). But I especially enjoyed this one for three reasons: (1) we were blessed with beautiful fall weather, in a rural location with lots of trees and hills that provided the perfect setting for early-morning prayer walks; (2) I was able to attend this particular conference together with my increasingly-close friends Marc and Michaël (the two pastors-in-training whom I wrote about in last month’s prayer letter, pictured here below); and (3) the conference helped me to come away with a fresh realization of all the different ways that God is on the move, throughout Europe.

Every fall for the past several years, I have had the privilege of joining with a few dozen other pastors from across Europe for the Great Commission Europe (GCE) Pastors Summit. The group includes both American missionaries who work for GCM and Europeans who are serving as pastors, either within their local context or cross-culturally. Since many of the European pastors across the Continent are serving bi-vocationally (i.e. working a secular job alongside their church work, to make ends meet), these summits are always tightly packed to fit within an extended weekend. We spend time connecting relationally over meals. We worship together. We receive exhortation from the Bible, this year by Herschel Martindale, a pastor in his mid- 80s who played a key role in establishing the work of GCE in Europe. We discuss upcoming GCE events. And we spend a lot of time praying together.

The prayer sessions are a particular hallmark of the GCE Pastors Summit. We typically spend one whole afternoon praying for each other’s churches, scattered throughout Germany, Ukraine, Italy, Spain, Poland, and the Netherlands. And then we spend another afternoon praying for each of the other countries of Europe, in which our organization is not currently active. Seeing as there are a total of 55 countries in Europe, you can imagine that this takes a significant amount of time. Every year, I’m struck by how much work it can be to pray like this! Yes, of course prayer can be a very refreshing activity, but it can also be challenging. I confess that I often feel unspiritual when I notice the way that intensive prayer can exhaust me—and it’s especially noticeable after two consecutive afternoons of intercession—yet I’m also encouraged to think of the example of Epaphras, who Paul mentioned in his letter to the Colossians. Specifically, Epaphras is commended for the way that he “is always wrestling in prayer for you, that you may stand firm in all the will of God, mature and fully assured” (Colossians 4:12). That idea of prayer as wrestling is such an appropriate image. Indeed, it makes sense for people to feel tired, after an extended session of wrestling!

The Summit again helped me to realize how extremely blessed we are to have a team of “Epaphrases” (that’s you!), regularly lifting us and our ministry up in prayer.

In addition to praying for our family and our church here in Amsterdam, could you also pray for the Continent of Europe this month? Believe it or not, this “cradle of Christianity” has become one of the most unreached parts of the world. Yet hope is not lost. God continues to do great things throughout the region. Hundreds of people are finding faith in Christ. Leaders are being developed and “harvest workers” are being sent out. Doors are currently being opened into France, Sweden, Scotland, Latvia, Moldova, Albania, Romania, and we’re hoping that new works may soon be established in these countries. But it all needs to be established in prayer.

Thank you for everything you’re doing to help advance the cause of Christ here in Europe, through your financial support and through your prayer. We appreciate you more than words could ever adequately express. We’ll be in touch…

Eric