The first thing Andrew did was to find his brother
Simon and tell him, 'We have found the Messiah'
(that is, the Christ). And he brought him to Jesus.
(John 1:41-42)

Greetings from Amsterdam!  The winter is long and dark in the Netherlands—but we’re getting through it.  Each day, when I take the kids to school, the dusk is just a little bit lighter.  I lean into the wind as it pushes against the wide-bodied bakfiets (the “mini-van of bicycles”), and I force a smile knowing that, for all its hassles, the wind is one of those indicators that spring is on its way.  Every now and then, we’ll get an actual burst of sunshine!  But mostly we’re just waiting at this point in the game, and we’re trying to make the most of the winter:  cuddling up with a good book, eating delicious soups and stews, and enjoying long hours of candlelight conversation with friends.

As it happens, a Good Book, delicious food, and friendly conversation are also the main ingredients of a key ministry initiative that we’ve just kicked off this month as well:  the Alpha Course.  Have you ever heard of the Alpha Course?  It was started by an Anglican church in London, but it has since spread all around the world, across different denominations—and it’s become one of the most strategic evangelistic tools in Europe today.  It’s all based on the simple premise of a home-cooked meal, a laid-back presentation of Christianity’s most central beliefs, and a time for dialogue about the tough questions of life and faith.  Our church has offered the Alpha Course on two other occasions in the past, with great success; so we were very excited when another church in town approached us about the idea of teaming together to offer special edition of the Alpha Course at our ministry center—a course that could be carried by the combined resources of three churches, with room for dozens of people from the city, seeking answers to the deep questions in life.  Throughout the end of 2010 and the beginning of 2011, we’ve been planning, preparing, and promoting.  It always takes a decent amount of time and energy to organize an Alpha Course—but finally, on Wednesday, the 2nd of February, we achieved lift-off, and it appears that our efforts were well worthwhile.

Our introductory evening was attended by 43 people!  This is a huge number of people to participate in an Alpha Course, and it presents us with a very strategic ministry opportunity.

The whole Alpha Course lasts for 12 weeks, with a weekend away in the middle.  As mentioned above, each session begins with a meal and a chance to get to know others in the group.  There is then a short talk, which looks at a different aspect of the Christian faith each week.  This is followed by a time of discussion in small groups, where everyone is welcome to contribute their opinion, ask questions and discuss with the rest of the group (most weeks we’ll probably have four different discussion groups, in both English and Dutch).  The emphasis is on exploration and discovery in a relaxed and informal environment.  Throughout the course, we will be exploring the following topics:

• Who is Jesus?
• Why Did Jesus Die?
• How Can We Have Faith?
• Why and How Do I Pray?
• Why and How Should I Read the Bible?
• How Does God Guide Us?
• How Can I Resist Evil?
• Why and How Should I Tell Others?
• Does God Heal Today?
• What About the Church?
• Who is the Holy Spirit?
• What Does the Holy Spirit Do?
• How Can I be Filled with the Holy Spirit?
• How Can I Make the Most of the Rest of my Life?

As you might imagine, the Alpha Course attracts a diverse range of people of different ages and backgrounds, holding many different viewpoints.  Some want to investigate whether God exists; others are concerned about what happens after death.  Some people have particular questions that they would like to discuss; others want to understand other peoples' beliefs or would like to explore what the purpose of life is.  Many participants have never been to church, others may have attended church occasionally but feel they have never really understood the basics of the Christian faith.  In all of these cases, however, it’s exciting to have the opportunity to develop a meaningful dialogue about Jesus.

We’ve gotten off to a great start, but there’s still a long way to go—and in order for this initiative to really succeed, we need a lot of prayer support.  That’s why I’m writing you this letter at this time.  Would you please pray with us for God to plant, sprout, grow seeds of the Gospel—and that we might even experience a harvest before the end of this Alpha Course (even in the dying days of winter, before the Spring has fully sprung!)?  Would you pray for all the course participants and facilitators?  Would you please pray for people to encounter Jesus?

Thank you, as always, for your part in making this ministry in Amsterdam possible.  There’s no real original way to say it:  but you, seriously, are the life-blood of our ministry.  Your financial support and prayer support keep us going in more ways than one, so I just want you to know that we really appreciate you.  We’ll be in touch…

Eric

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. :-)

May God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ
give you grace and peace. Jesus gave his life
for our sins, just as God our Father planned, in order to
rescue us from this evil world in which we live.
All glory to God forever and ever! Amen.
(Galatians 1:3-5)

Greetings from Amsterdam!  This is our first written communication since our time of traveling, visiting, and talking on the phone with many of you, during our time in the American Midwest this summer; so I want to start by just saying thank you for all your hospitality, your words of encouragement, and your increased financial support!  It was really refreshing to have had the opportunity to personally interact with so many of you (though I wish it could have been everyone).  Even though all the travel was somewhat taxing, we felt really “filled up” by the time we returned to the Netherlands.  We’ve been back in the Netherlands for almost a month now, following nearly six weeks fund-raising in the United States—and even though we’ve become pretty well accustomed to this whole trans-Atlantic existence, I have to admit that this has been a particularly challenging transition back into Amsterdam this time around.  Especially the first week or two.  We had to deal with horrendous Dutch weather:  skies of battleship gray, high winds, buckets and buckets of rain, and cold temperatures.  Our basement flooded twice in that first week-and-a-half that we were back.  And stepping back into my church leadership responsibilities, it also felt like it took a good while before I felt up to speed on everything.  Though I won’t burden you with any further details, it’s been a particularly challenging transition back into Amsterdam.  But—thank God!—over the last couple of weeks, things have finally been getting back to a normal rhythm again.  Everybody is back from their vacations and getting back into “real life” again.  Momentum is starting to build again.  And I sense that we’re coming into a really great season of refreshment and renewal and refocusing for the future

Have you ever seen the Star Wars movie, “The Return of the Jedi?”  It came out when I was six years old (one of my earliest childhood memories is going to see it in the movie theater), so it made a big impression on me… But anyway, there’s this one scene near the beginning of the movie just after the good guys have just gotten away from this ruthless mobster named Jabba the Hutt.  They’ve blasted off into outer space with a plan to reconvene with the rest of the Rebel fleet at their mobile headquarters.  When they arrive at the headquarters and assemble in this big round room, there’s a brief moment of reunion.  Old friends hug and joke with each other; they smile broadly and catch up a bit on what’s been happening while they’ve been away from each other… But even while they’re in the midst of all this reunion action, it also becomes apparent that they’ve all assembled for a military briefing.  This weird-looking, fish-headed creature named Admiral Ackbar stands up and gives a presentation about the challenges that they’re all facing from the evil intergalactic Empire.  He describes the life-and-death conflict that the Rebel forces will have to initiate in order to defeat the evil Empire—and he starts going through the strategy that’s been worked up to meet the challenges.  Different people chime in at different moments, bringing in key pieces of information that help to shape the strategy.  And then, after the entire strategy has been discussed, they break to go their separate ways and make it happen.

You see, that’s the kind of season that I feel we’re experiencing with our ministry in Amsterdam right now.  We’re just reconvening again after the summer, after a lot of people have been traveling and such, and there is this very sweet sense of reunion that we get to experience as a church family.  We need to check in with each other and catch up on what’s happened over the summer (which turns out to have been a great season of refreshment, community, and even getting to see a number of people newly decide to follow Jesus).  But it turns out that we’ve also got some serious business to discuss.  As we look around us in Amsterdam, we are reminded of the spiritual battle that we’re constantly facing as a church; and we realize the need to repeatedly remind ourselves of the vision and strategy that we’ve developed to engage with this battle.

We need to freshly commit ourselves to knowing Jesus, becoming Like Jesus, and making Jesus Known.

Isn’t it crazy how we become so easily side-tracked in these pursuits?!?  The pendulum swings fast and hard—vacillating between laziness and legalism.  And this is why we’ve decided to take the fall to focus on studying the New Testament book of Galatians, as a church.  It’s such a beautiful reminder of the beauty and power of the Gospel of grace.  It’s an explanation for why Jesus really is a worthy object of our worship and allegiance.  As our church’s leadership team looked at the “battle plan” for this coming season of ministry, we felt like Galatians would afford us a special opportunity for growth and development, if we could allow ourselves to be impacted and envisioned by its simple message of grace and living a Spirit-filled life.  So I’m really looking forward to the opportunity to study and teach through this book of the Bible (along with a team of others).  In addition to focusing on this message in our Sunday worship gatherings, we’re also encouraging the people of our church to deeply examine Galatians in the context of their communities and life groups and personal lives as well.  And already (just two weeks into our study), we’re beginning to see some fruit…

But in all of this, we desperately need prayer support!  This is actually an integral part of our battle plan for this fall, too.  The spiritual battle in Amsterdam is intense, and we need God’s help for good communication, understanding, and application.  We need God’s help to make disciples and love our neighbors.  We need God’s help to love each other!  Since coming back to the church from our time away, I’ve noticed that there seem to be several low-grade conflict situations plaguing our church right now—nothing to get too alarmed about, I hope, but definitely something which needs to be committed to God in prayer.  We need to pray for more fruit of the Spirit:  love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control (like it talks about in Galatians chapter 5).  And just in general, we need a lot of prayer support!  Fortunately, from all of my conversations with ministry partners back in America this summer, I know that we have a broad network of highly-committed prayer warriors (i.e. those of you, who are reading this letter).  So could you please be praying with us and for us?  We really appreciate everything you do to keep us going.  We’ll be in touch…

Eric

Let us acknowledge the Lord;
let us press on to acknowledge him.
As surely as the sun rises, he will appear;
he will come to us like the winter rains,
like the spring rains that water the earth.
(Hosea 6:3)

Greetings from Amsterdam!  Although it's as cold and blustery here as it's been all winter, I have to say that the onset of March offers me much hope for the promise of spring.  The days are lengthening noticeably, and I can hear songbirds chirping each morning in the pre-dawn stillness of the city.  Holland's famous daffodils and tulips have started to send up some tentative green shoots in the planting boxes around the neighborhood, and this sense of natural optimism and development seems to affirm my own hope and anticipation for the coming season.  Spring is just around the corner!

In the more figurative sense, we’re also excited to see the ways that our ministry in Amsterdam is allowing individuals to grow, develop, blossom, and become more beautiful and alive in Christ.  Our last several weeks as a church community have been focused on providing opportunities for deep soul healing among the people that are involved with Zolder50.  So many in Amsterdam are broken and hurting from the deep wounds of their past; they are often overwhelmed by the subsequent addictions and coping mechanisms that plague their everyday existence.  Thus, at the beginning of February, we asked a local man named Keith Bakker to share about his struggles to overcome homelessness and severe drug addiction to stay clean and sober to the point that he is now actually serving as a counselor for other addicts.  Although we knew that there was a general need for speaking into these areas of society, we were astonished by the response from Keith’s story when about 70 young people showed up on a Saturday morning for a three-hour follow-up seminar about the nature of addiction and recovery!  Since then, we've been considering how we can best follow-up with support groups, seminars, and more effectively utilizing extant elements of Zolder50 to continue the process of emotional and spiritual recovery in the deepest areas of people's lives.  By God's grace, people are already healing and becoming more whole—blossoming into the men and women that God wants them to be—and it's even more beautiful than seeing the tulip fields of Holland prepare for spring.  Still, your prayers for further progress in these areas would be greatly appreciated.

In addition to this cultivation of a broad field of people within the Zolder50 community, our church has also recently been planting some strategic seeds for the future.  We’re currently in the midst of a dialogue on how we can more effectively develop leaders within Zolder50, and it’s been very encouraging to see the level of excitement that’s building through the process (you can also be praying for continued developments in these areas).  Furthermore, our church has been blessed with a number of different opportunities for practical training of ministry workers, by offering internships and international work experience for a handful of individuals throughout the early months of 2006.  Two Great Commission Ministries staff couples—Mark and Jill Beebe, from Bowling Green, Ohio (Go Falcons!), and Will and Jenni Lafferty, from Austin, Texas—are serving in Amsterdam for an extended period of time, both to help our church out in very practical ways and to gain exposure and experience in their own lives.  Additionally, for the first time in our church’s history, we’re hosting interns from within the Netherlands, who want to learn within the context of Zolder50 in hopes of one day being further involved in full-time ministry within their native country.

Specifically, we've been given the opportunity to host an intern from the Christelijke Hogeschool Ede (Ede Christian College) for the months of February and March.  A young man named Kor Grit is serving full-time with Zolder50 for these two months, as a part of his Godsdienst Pastoraal Werk (Practical Christian Ministry) training. It's been an interesting and invigorating experience.

Kor has seemed genuinely pleased with the opportunity to learn from our ministry, and he says that the experience has already been immensely beneficial. He's sat in on strategic discussions about the worship aspect of Zolder50. He's blended in with two different home groups, to get a deeper sense of the community aspect of our church. He's observed the operational outworkings of coaching sessions with various members of our staff team. He's in the process of working to help us pull off a neighborhood outreach, where we can bring the ministry aspect of Zolder50 to bear on a senior citizens' center that's just around the corner. And he's even taking a crack at some small-scale teaching and Bible instruction. All in all, it seems like Kor is getting a fairly well-rounded perspective on church leadership, and he's learning a lot.

The truth is that I'm learning a lot through mentoring Kor as well.

I'm getting a fresh look at our church community, through the eyes of an inquisitive “outsider." I'm learning how to better describe and explain the various elements of our core beliefs, casual customs, and church culture in general. I'm learning how to connect with and envision young Dutch Christians for the task of following Jesus and participating in the Great Commission, here within the Netherlands... Of course, I feel like I still have much to learn about ministry myself, but it’s an amazing blessing to be in a situation to help train and develop young people to be a part of building God’s Kingdom in Amsterdam (and beyond)!  It is, in fact, the reason we followed God’s calling to Europe…

Thank you so much for all your prayer support and financial support that allow us to be in full-time ministry, helping to develop the Church in Holland.  It's hard to make such words of gratitude sound sincere and meaningful month after month... but seriously, we want you to know that we deeply appreciate everything that you do for our family and our ministry!  You're a brilliant testimony of God's faithfulness and provision for our lives.  We love you, and we'll continue to be in touch...

Eric

We have shared together the blessings of God…
defending the truth and telling others the Good News.
(Philippians 1:7)

Greetings from Amsterdam!  Can you believe that it’s been exactly three years since our family moved from Northwest Ohio (Bowling Green) to Northwest Europe (Amsterdam)?!?!  To us, “three years” feels like both a surprisingly long time and a surprisingly short time to have been here.  We continue to be encouraged by God’s work in and through our lives.  With this prayer letter, I am following a tradition that I’ve established through my years of ministry with GCM—using the first prayer letter of a new year to write a more extended overview of our lives and our ministry.  Please feel free to skim or to read in-depth.  We are extremely grateful for your partnership in prayer and finances, so we just want to keep you informed.  Without a doubt, it a privilege to report all that God has done and is doing…

Cultural Assimilation

The last twelve months included several significant milestones for our family’s assimilation into Dutch culture.  It could be said that our first year consisted largely of making the actual move and setting up our home.  The second year, then, was defined by a process of learning the language and becoming more acquainted with the culture.  And this third year of living in the Netherlands proved to be a time for greater establishment and exploration into new territories of the culture…

Elliot began peuterspeelzaal (pre-school) in September, and his introduction into the school system has taken our family to a new level of immersion in our neighborhood and in Dutch culture as a whole.  We also successfully navigated through the medical system to have a tumor surgically removed from Olivia’s forehead in December; and this gave us increased confidence (following many doubts) that we can effectively operate on the most practical levels of Dutch society.  Interestingly, it just seems that more and more of life seems to take place in the Dutch language.  We’ve decided as a family to implement “Nederlandse ‘s vrijdags” (Dutch Fridays), so we can practice Dutch at home one day each week (although we continue to maintain English as the primary language of our home).  Continually, we seek to find creative ways to maintain a solid footing in two cultures.  As time has passed, we’ve felt less and less like strangers and more and more like Amsterdammers.  We still have much to learn, and we continue to miss the USA at times.  Yet all in all, we’re glad for the life that God has given us in the Netherlands.

Church Growth

Of course, the whole reason that our family (and others) subjected ourselves to this process of cultural assimilation was to help establish a new church for young people in the secular stronghold of Amsterdam’s city center.  By God’s grace, we can say that we experienced much progress in 2005.  We started the year by multiplying Sunday worship gatherings (having one gathering at 4:00 in the afternoon and another gathering at 7:30 in the evening), and already both gatherings are packed full again.  It’s amazing to realize that the majority of international church plants struggle just to survive in the first five years, and it’s often decades before there’s any significant increase in the number of people being affected by the ministry.  However, less than three years after its establishment, Zolder50 continues to expand exponentially.  Our weekly large-group gatherings now include a total involvement of as many as 250 people.  The church also multiplied two home groups in 2005, and we’re seeing the potential for much more to happen in the months and years to come.

It’s so encouraging to see God moving.  More than just being excited about the bigger crowds and positive statistics, we’re thrilled to see genuine life transformation.  Many have come to faith in Christ.  Men and women are experiencing healing and growth in the areas of deepest hurt and dysfunction.  Plus, more and more Europeans are taking responsibility for serving and leadership within Zolder50.  Our desire has always been for God to continually multiply believers, home groups (5-15 people), and neighborhood churches (50-150 people) throughout Amsterdam, relying largely (if not eventually entirely) on Dutch leadership.  And by God’s grace, it’s already happening! 

Special Projects

Throughout 2005, our ministry schedule included a series of special projects to reach out within the city and beyond.  In the spring and summer, Zolder50 organized several events to bring us into closer contact with the multitude of non-believers in Amsterdam.  From an arts and music festival to a large-scale distribution of approximately 3000 flowers in the Vondelpark, God blessed us with many opportunities to spread seeds of God’s Kingdom.

In the fall, our home group sponsored an “Alpha Course”—teaching the basics of the Christian faith to an eager group of seekers and new believers.  Although it was our first such venture, the course actually turned out to be a highlights of the year.  At least one young woman became a Christian through the course, three others decided to be baptized, and our home group effectively doubled in size as a result of people wanting to continue their process of spiritual development following the Alpha Course!

Then at the end of the year, Amsterdam played host to GCM’s first-ever pan-European conference:  Awaken 2005.  Honestly, it was stressful to figure out all the logistical details for housing, feeding, and involving 230 participants from eight different countries—but by God’s grace, the conference went smoother than we ever could have imagined, and it turned out to be an amazing success!  People were challenged by in-depth teaching from JR Woodward, Noel Heikinnen, and Kolya Skopych; they were inspired by in-depth worship, sharing songs and traditions from multiple cultural backgrounds; and they were invigorated by in-depth fellowship with European believers from Spain to Ukraine, united under the banner of Christ.

In 2006, we look forward to a number of other outreach projects.  In particular, one exciting initiative is to couple the church’s five home groups with five short-term missions teams from America to serve as “Spies in the Land” (see Numbers 13:1-25), scouting out five other cities throughout the Netherlands to determine the potential for eventual church planting beyond Amsterdam…

Ministry Team Development

We cannot help but be amazed by God’s ongoing provision for our material needs.  For seven years now, we’ve been supported in full-time ministry through the generous giving and faithful prayer of individuals, families, and churches from the United States—our ministry team.  We are so thankful for this team, which provides the practical and spiritual foundation enabling us to be a part of the ministry of Zolder50 in Amsterdam’s city center.  Thank you for your role on our support team.  Even last summer, when our family faced an imminent crisis in our financial support situation, we were amazed to see how God provided for us through the continued (and increased) faithfulness of so many on our ministry team!  We appreciate you more than you could possibly know.

Our Personal Lives

Our family has been an ongoing source of encouragement (and occasional challenges) throughout the last year.  We are so thankful to God for the basic blessings of a stable home, an ever-deepening marriage, and wonderful children.  Not only do we encourage and support each other, but we’ve found that a godly family in the center of Amsterdam can be a powerful mirror for reflecting the light of Christ; thus, our home presents many opportunities for ministry.

Olivia is now 16 months old.  Her hair has grown long and thick in recent months (completely covering any residual scarring from the surgery to remove her hemangioma in December)—and she looks more like a little girl and less like a baby these days.  She loves to run around the house and do whatever her big brother is doing.  She is naturally effervescent, curious, and passionate, and it’s neat to watch her personality emerge as she constantly improves her verbal communication.

Elliot is now almost four years old.  His experiences in school have helped him to develop greater self-assurance and social skills, and he increasingly enjoys being the center of attention.  His Dutch comprehension is almost as good as his English comprehension, though he still prefers to express himself in English.  As he’s grown, we’ve really come to admire his intelligence, creativity, and faith.

Marci is (and has long been) a resourceful and resilient woman of God.  Whether it’s caring for our family of four or caring for the multitude of young Amsterdammers who pass through our home for ministry events or casual conversations—everyone knows that Marci can be counted on for wise counsel, compassionate listening, and delicious baked goods (yet even with those wonderful baked goods, she managed to lose about 20 pounds in 2005)!

As for me, I continue to enjoy my role in leading Zolder50 and in leading our household through life in Amsterdam.  It can be very challenging at times, but also very rewarding.  In 2005, I rediscovered a latent passion for creative writing, developing a new outlet for creative self-expression and communication through establishment of a web log (www.amsterdamasp.blogspot.com), and I look forward to possibly even trying to write a book (or a compilation of short stories) in 2006…

Please keep praying for us.  There is much hope and excitement about everything that God is doing in and around us in Amsterdam, and we look forward to keeping you informed as developments occur.  Thanks again for everything.

Love in Christ,

Eric

 

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ABOVE: our Home Group; Marci and the kids on the bakfiets; Alpha course weekend session; our crazy staff team

BELOW:  Asp family portrait, January 2006 (couldn’t get the kids to smile at the camera, but you get a glimpse of reality!); 17^th Century cathedral restored to use as place of worship for Awaken 2005; Elliot’s first day of school

       

           

ABOVE:  Olivia’s progression through hemangioma treatment

LEFT:  Todd Watkins and I baptize a young man named Thomas (August)