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