Remember 2007

It has been a while since I posted on my blog, I have been busy, but felt for a while I had to write again since a lot has happened. For the first thing our Jesus Freaks group in Amersfoort has been very blessed for the last half year. Before the summer we were with 6 people and the group has grown to around 15 at this moment in time. People are still being touched by the open atmosphere and encouraged by the need everyone feels to talk about Jesus.

Also in Utrecht there is a growing enthusiasm for the Jesus Freaks movement. In december we had a first meeting just to get to know each other and talk about our passion. It was very well visited by eight people, much more than we expected and we had a good time together. First it was just spending time together to get to know each other, but at the end of the evening we all were going deep in prayer. It was great to experience the enthusiasm to start JF in Utrecht into 2008.

But also on the JF Netherlands side things are really coming together. First we were more of individual groups but the last two months we all spent time together as Jesus Freaks Netherlands during our Jesus Freaks weekend in November and last week during our Christmas celebration in Den Dolder. It has really been the start of a hunger to get together as Dutch Jesus Freaks, since there was also a JF new years eve party in Den Dolder last night.

All this taken together we have had a very blessed 2007 and are longing to see where God will lead us in 2008. At the start of this new year we will start meeting in Utrecht regularly, so there's already a small sight of what 2008 will bring. Allthough I have not posted a lot the last two months, I still am eager to keep you all updated through my blog in the new year, so keep visiting my home page.

JFNL-Weekend

Just an announcement:

Dear Jesus Freak,

Jesus Freaks Netherlands will have a fellowship weekend for which you are invited to join. We want to take time to meet and get to know each other and have a good time of fellowship. And of course we want to share our passion for God and His word with each other. We want to have this time at a convenient location, for which we are still looking. There will be space to seek God in a lot of creative manners, so we would like to encourage you to be creative and express yourself! So, bring all your musical instruments and creative thoughts.

Where: To be announced.
When: fridaynight 16 november 19:00 o’clock until sundayevening 18 november
Costs: Approximately €60,-(including food) alcoholic beverages are not provided.

Please let us know soon ( before 10th of september) if you are coming so that we know how many people will be our guests. Official registration will be closing at the 24th of September.

For more information see www.jesusfreaks.nl
Registration through marieketenberge@gmail.com

We hope you will join us!

On behalf of JF Holland,

Max, Jeroen, Herman, Pieter en Marieke

Johannesburg 2

Friday is the day, then I will leave for Johannesburg, South Africa to lead a trip of Livingstone and work for the MES. I am very much looking forward to it. The group that went in july is returning home at the moment, their stories jou can find at www.expeditie07.nl. I hope and pray we will have a good time, see something of the world and come to know each other. The big question will be who will be helping who during this period...

Leadership @ Freakstock

One of the main topics @ Freakstock were the outcomes of the leadership crisis. There were a few meetings about the topic which I followed and I would like to give a (imperfect, since it is my interpretation) impression of the situation.

JesusFreaks has always been a chaordic organisation, but a certain part of the German JesusFreaks wanted a strong leadership. This has led to a leadership crisis withing JesusFreaks and a council was formed to address the issue. 100 leaders were asked about their opinions and to pray for God's guidance while addressing the topic. In the end the following decisions have been made:

#1: The structure of Jesusfreaks
JesusFreaks is to some respect a family, denomination, movement and a network. Officialy JesusFreaks will not be a denomination because it would mean defining much more than they want to define.
Officially JesusFreaks will not be a movement since a movement is temporarily and with a focused goal. JesusFreaks wants to be eternally focused and not striving a singular goal since following Christ can mean different things for different people. Officially JesusFreaks will not be a family allthough they want to be a family in the sense of being brothers and sisters in Christ. But to call the complete organisation one family is not a adequate term that addresses the relevant issues.
Officially JesusFreaks will be a network of independant churches which are cooperating together under Jesus Freaks International.

I was personally very glad with this decision because I think this line of thought serves the heart of JesusFreaks and emphasises the things that make JesusFreaks relevant in today's society. This basically comes down to seeing diversity as a blessing instead of focusing on singularity. I am glad that the chaordic nature of JesusFreaks will be preserved by the network structure. I think the network structure has a kind, supportive nature which encourages instead of controls.

#2 Leadership of JesusFreaks
The question of leadership follows out of structure. The chosen network structure allows no strong directive leadership, but asks for more subtile forms. Since churches are independent they will define their own leadership in their own way. The basis will be that the best way to define leaders is to let informal leaders (by personality or age for example) become formal leaders. But if churches want to formalise their leadership on their own way they can do so. JFI will accept by the group appointed leaders. Leadership of JFI will be supportive to the individual groups instead of controlling.

I am very glad with the decisions on both issues. Unfortunately the group wanting strong leadership left JesusFreaks because of it, but I think this has been unavoidable. Of course it is sad that this makes you realise JesusFreaks suffers from the same human diseases that are in all organisations. On the other hand I think it is very special to see to what answers JesusFreaks have hold on. I think it is rare that organisations stay true to their basics in this way in face of such great earthly temptations of becoming this big festival and stock market company. Allthough there is no crime in being a big festival or stock market company I do think that in the case of JesusFreaks it would have drifted them away from their basics in being a meeting and sharing point for followers of Christ finding ways to live out faith in a new century.

Freakstock 2007

I visited Freakstock Family Festival this weekend in Gotha Boxberg, Germany. It was great being there, talking to people and encourage each other in faith. I was really surprised by how much dutch JesusFreaks were there. I guess it were around 40 and we had a really good time together. It was great to see people between the dutch groups connecting with each other in a very good atmosphere. I hope these connections will grow in the forthcoming year.

At the friday of the festival I spoke in the JFI (Jesus Freaks International)-tent about the birth and growth of Jesus Freaks Netherlands. Although there was mainly a Dutch audience it was a nice experience for myself to be able to tell the story and share something personal.

It was also nice to meet a lot of familiar German people again and get to know them better. I will write about some of the meetings after this.

Grant freedom

Every once in a while you hear an interesting, refreshing thought on a subject. Someone has taken an angle to a subject you did not think of yourself. In the documentary Tegenlicht: "Het ei van De Soto" for me such an interesting angle was taken on the subject of fighting poverty. I saw the documentary based on a recommandation of a friend, and I think it is a must see if you are interested in globally fighting poverty. It discusses fighting poverty not through aid, but through law by granting poor people by law the possessions they already physically own. Maybe it is not the whole answer, and not everywhere and not anytime, but it is certainly a road that deserves much more attention than it gets.

Freakz

Jesus Freaks, Willowfreak, Freakstock and the World Wide Pizza Service: just a nice blog of Andrew Jones in which he paints a big picture and impression of Jesus Freaks. In this blog Andrew announces the speech which I learned so much from and inspired me to dive into the emerging movement. Very nice material to read for me. He also describes the Round Table in this post which was a international meeting of emerging church leaders. The Round Table was a very nice chance to talk to a lot of people doing special things. If I can I will sure visit Freakstock again this year.

De(v/f)ine discipleship

Discipleship is a term I could not grasp for a long time. During the Eurochurch conference I was pleasantly surprised a lot of time was spent defining the term. Below is the definition that was created:

1. There can be no discipleship without community, then it is instruction. This points to the necessity of a personal relationship with people as a prerequisite for discipleship.
2. Offer a reason or a goal for community (this is communitas), because to commit to something without a goal is no real commitment.
3. Understand the context where people live in, love and serve the world around them. This refers to that Jesus sends us as he was sent.
4. Be vulnerable, available and accountable.
5. It requires spirit, soul and body, none of them can be left out.

I have also seen it defined in another way:

• love people
• look whats happening
• truely listen to people, because we tend to fill in a lot of blanks
• live among people
• learn to connect
• link concretely to people locally

One thing is basic and clear among this term, that discipleship has to happen out of actual life. Sharing your life in an honest way with the people around you creates a natural setting for spending time influencing each other about deeper issues.

A more systemic view from Dawn European Network:

Denominational diversity

In my last blog I wrote about Ouweneel's talk about diversity within and between denominations. This reminded me of a talk at the Eurochurch conference in Switzerland. This talk was about the blessings of diversity, I looked at my notes and will share the examples that were discussed:

• In christ we unite in purpose, but we can diverse in everything else.
• Our arms have different, antagonistic muscles: stressors and flexors. It is even useful that these arm muscles are antagonistic, they produce a meaningful whole. One without the other would be unable to function.
• When you go fly fishing you have all sorts of bait. The differents sorts are for different fish whom require a different approach to catch them.
• We should value diversity out of humility: I see only a small part of the whole, you see another. We need another to create a whole.

Good examples to remember when we meet our antagonist in faith or life.

Ouweneel @ momentum

Last weekend I visited the momentum festival which was organised by Soulsurvivor and Navigators. At saturday drs. Willem Ouweneel spoke in depth about the workings of The Spirit. It was the first time I heard him and besides good content he had a lot of humour. It was one of the little topics during the larger setting that touched me the most. It related to the developments between denominations that are happening at the moment. He told that differences between denominations are less salient at this moment. He said that the cause of this is that within all denominations there are churches paying more attention to the workings of the Holy Spirit. So denominations become less differing and salient, but the churches are getting much more diverse within their denomination. Up until this point I was aware of this, but I thought the result of this would be more unity and harmony within christian Holland. Mr. Ouweneel said he expected more problems for the future. The differing thing was that he did not expect problems between the dominations, but within. He said that at some point the denominations will find that the greater differences within the denominations that are coming into existence today will be the problems of tomorrow. He said that at some point the new differences that start at the bottom of the denomination will at some point meet at the top and create tension. Based on this line of reason Mr Ouweneel said that he expects trouble in the future within denominations. Basically he suggests that the whole movement that is going with the PKN and broader with churches that are trying to cooperate and integrate is doomed to fail. This is what struck me and what I had not expected. It is just an interesting line of reason he made, I´ll keep it in mind and see what will happen in the future.

Asp on relationships

One of the subjects I really was eager to write about is about relationships. This is just because I think allthough there is spoken and written a lot about the subject we often miss te point. In the secular world a lot of communication is about eros or expression of eros and in the christian world we tend to only touch the surface and do not get our hands dirty. I often find we christians tend to produce a clean text about how we think things should be, but that we have failed to test it to the reality of 2007 and make it a live discussion subject for growth especially among the young. I think this is an allergy that's left over of the time getting our hands dirty meant that christians had very fixed views of relationships that often collided with society. A lot of friction came out of discussing fixed views and created the allergy or taboo. I think the allergy was a neccessity for a while, but that broader society and christians have changed to be less polarised by now which opens doors. Now it is time to reinvent ourselves and to start honest discussions about this subject. I think the value of the discussion should be valued more than finding the "right" answer everyone should obey. Because the discussion leads to growth in knowledge and understanding and I think acceptance can flow out of that. In the past the fixed views have proven to block the the flow of information, thereby blocking growth in knowledge, understanding and possible acceptance.

I often visit De Zolder and while surfing the internet I landed on the blog of Eric Asp. He's one of the church leaders of De Zolder. I found on his blog a series of what I think is a honest discussion about relationships and sexuality and by writing this I think he is getting his hands dirty. I found it to be interesting material to read and therefore liked to share it with you. It is not that I agree on everything, but I value his opennes, respect and honesty in the discussion he tries to start. I hope, if you read his work, you will also truely value his opennes and honesty and be mild if you do not agree with his views on sensitive subjects. I think he deserves this approach because of daring to be vulnerable in a brave attempt to start an honest discussion about relationship issues in the christian world in 2007.

Encouragement

I just would like to share with all you dutch-reading guys the weblog of my brother Arjen:

http://www.eternaltrust.web-log.nl/

I think it is great he writes about his relationship with God. You can immediately see the difference in personality; where my blog has more of an philosophical edge, his blog is much more in a poetic form. As he is probably the one amongst us brothers who is most in touch with his own feelings. This message is just an encouragement to him to keep writing. I hope some of you will take a look and enjoy his creativity.

Johannesburg Intro

Two years after my first trip with Livingstone to Victory4all in Jeffrey's Bay (SA) I am returning to the rainbow nation. In august of this year I will again make a trip to South Africa with Livingstone, but this time to Johannesburg (SA):

We will be with a group of 14 people and visit Johannesburg for three weeks. Goal of our trip will be to visit MES (Metro Evangelical Services):



MES is an interdenominal, multi-cultural, faith- and community-based organisation working from Hillbrow and the inner-city of Johannesburg, striving to change the heart of the city.

We will help MES for this period to work on a school building and next to that do some child work.

This is the first year groups of Livingstone will visit the MES, and we will be the second group. Jeannette, whom I met at the leadership training weekend, and I will lead this journey as a team.The first group is an existing group from a church in Amsterdam, our group is formed with people wo did not know each other. Jeannette and I have already had a training weekend for leaders and after that we had a Livingstone participant training day with the whole group. Yesterday Jeannette and I met the leaders of the MES (Francois Pienaard and his wife...) from South Africa in Amsterdam together with Johannesburg 1. It was a very pleasant meeting and every step makes me more and more looking forward to the actual journey to South Africa.

This is most of the basic information, look for more also on the Livingstone Johannesburg 2 2007 hyve. In the forthcoming period and during the trip I hope to keep you all updated through my blog on what's happening...

Atheism

I am still enjoying a lot of TED talks and discussing them with friends. An interesting talk is the talk of Richard Dawkins on militant atheism. I am a christian myself, but I think it is important to keep the connection with the world around and have some knowledge of alternate viewpoints. What surprises me is that I expected to feel much more of an attack to my faith, but this is not the case. Even if I would have experienced that, than the last sentence of his talk ("Let's stop being so *** respectful") would have wiped this away because it communicates in hatred, at least in my opinion.

His arguments are not convincing to me because the most:

• Attack the church, not personal faith in a personal God
• He does not answer the real fundamental questions; If things came into existence through evolution, how did the process of evolution come into existence and why?
• He violates scientific rules, for example when he states that 5,5 % of biology scientists and 7,5 % of physical scientists believe in a God and that he would be surprised if this percentage differed in other fields such as history or philosophy. I think this is a generalisation you cannot make this simple.
• States opinion instead of fact, for example:
  "The scientific world view is more exciting, poetic, more filled with shere wonder than anything in the poverty stricken arsenals of religious imagination"
  In my opinion the beauty in science states the grandeur of God because science only tries to explain what God has created. Science only worked with the material given by God, it never created by itself.

Richard specifies why he believes in atheism and not in:

• Agnosticism, who say they do not know whether there is a God or not. Richard says atheism is better because as an agnostic you would have to prove there is no God. He says as an atheist you state that it is the problem of the creationist to prove there is a God.
• Humanism, because it is not about humans, we are just one species among thousands
• Naturalist, because it is to vague and confusing
• Non-theist would maybe be better, because it is not a taboo, but the taboo mabye better because it has more impact if people can be reached with it.

Further I think his talk mostly communicates his faith in science. I call it faith, as faith is conviction or believe that surpasses what is objective measurable. We christians have faith in a God that is not objectively measurable. I think Richard has so much expectations of and confidence in science that it much more than is objectively justifiable. So I would say science is his faith.

Rick @ TED

For all of you having questions about why you're here and and what your doing here (so that 'll be practically everyone...), view the speech of Rick Warren (Author of Purpose-driven life) @ TED.

Rick says: The test of you're world view is not how you act in the good times but how you act on the funeral. There it matters what you believe.

Rick asks: What is it that you believe, what is the good life:

#1
Looking good
feeling good
having te goods

#2
being good and
doing good
giving you're life away

Giving breaks the grip of more through serving. The rest of his talk relates to this question. Just listen to hear more.

TED

I am always looking for new interesting places of information and a good friend of mine emailed me about TED. TED (www.ted.com) is a very interesting one with a lot of good talks about an enormous amount of subjects. From their own site:

"TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. Since then its scope has become ever broader."

There are speaches of Bill Clinton, Googles Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Wikipedia, Bono, Rick Warren, all just a few clicks away... Subjects are technology, religion, business, science, culture, and much more. There's just too much to start blogging about it, just take a look.

Spirituality @ De Zolder

Yesterday I visited "De Zolder" in Amsterdam. Todd spoke about spirituality. It is good to notice that one can learn so much from the lived through knowledge of non-theologian speakers (No offense to our theologians). He told he visited a trance party and asked the people there why they were going all through the night on this party. The people told him that there was so much pressure in our society to live up to all its norms and expectations that people wanted to escape. That they were looking for a spiritual experience in the trance music and drug using to escape from reality. The essence was that, when thinking about a spiritual experience people do not think about christianity. When they think about christianity they think about personal conviction and living along certain norms and values, but not so much about a spiritual experience. But Todd pointed out having a living relationship with God through the Holy Spirit is a spiritual experience of magnitude. How can it be anything else, if our belief is that God's spirit is in our hart and life.

The difference is, I think, instead of a shortlived spiritual burst, a so called "high", it is a life transforming spiritual experience that touches the roots of your very existence. It can for some people at some time be a very expressive experience visible for others. But it is not, like in trance, a highly expressive experience for all the people all the time. It is this deeper inner drive that is the very basis of christian life. Allthough the expressive forms are there and are valuable and relevant, I believe that in our personal faith it is not about the t(r)ip but about the iceberg.

Great works

Mike Pilavachi spoke at Soul Survivor about calling and it is always a blessing to listen to him. He spoke about hearing God's voice and acting upon it. That often we think we are not good enough to do God's work and follow His calling. He talked about the bible and that God used a lot of people who thought they were not up to the job. He gave three examples:

• Gideon thought he was not strong enough and that his army was nog big enough. He asked God for confirmation for a few times to be sure that it was God who spoke to him and to be sure about what was His will.
• Mozes, when God called him to speak, said that he was a bad speaker.
• Jeremiah, when God called him, said he was too young.

The essence of the story is that God called these three people despite or because of their weaknesses. Our modern world works through our strengths, but God often works through our weaknesses. This way we will be sure that it is His work being done and that we are working through His strength. It also tells us that we do not have to get an extra degree, to be older, to first have practiced more before we can do God's work. We just have to listen to his voice, get confirmation if we hesitate, and start acting on what we believe.

Nothing is totally true: comment on emerging movement blog

Although there is a lot of truth in the emerging movement blog of today, I still found one piece of criticism on the point that it says that people of today are very much interested in spirituality but not in religion. I there is at least a generational difference in this. Since I live among a lot of students in their early twenties and I find that they, maybe in contrast with older generations, have moved beyond spirituality and want to know about religion today here in the Netherlands. And not only religion, but very often are specifically interested in christianity, which they have come to value as at least interesting, valuable roots of our society. Where older Dutch generations were raised in a dominant christian society, their children were raised in a dechristianizing society which was dominantly allergic to christianity. A lot of todays young people are raised in a non-christian society, without much knowledge about christianity and without the allergy. But, very often nowadays, when they come aware of the christian roots of our society they become genuinly interested in what has driven so many people in christianity in past ages.

Emerging Movement

Welcome to one of my first blogs. In this blog I want to make a statement about why I am involved in the emerging movement and why I think it is relevant.

Since there's great material out there i used a statement from Motionsickness which formulates very well why I think the emerging movement is relevant today in our postmodern culture:

Postmodernism signifies the quest to move beyond modernism, specifically, it involves a rejection of the modern mind-set, but launched under the condition of modernity.” Particular is the rejection of the modern notions of knowledge as certain, objective and good. While modernity was a “rage for order, regulation, stability, singularity and fixity;” postmodernism is a “rage for chaos, uncertainty, otherness, openness, multiplicity and change.” Framed in different terms, postmodernism embraces centrelessness, lack of absolute truths, celebration of diversity, movement from an objectivist to constructionist perspective and signals the end of the ‘meta-narrative’ and the end of science. Another awareness is that in postmodernism, there is “extreme openness to spiritual things” - spiritual but not religious.

A recent response to this atmosphere is the emerging church development. Emerging churches, according to Eddie Gibbs, are “missional communities arising from within postmodern culture and consisting of followers of Jesus who are seeking to be faithful in their place and time.” He brings a warning as well. Emerging church seeks to:

“dismantle ideas of church that simply are not viable in postmodern culture. Neither the gospel nor the culture demands these expressions of faith. Emerging churches remove modern practices of Christianity, not the faith itself…many of us do not know what a postmodern or post-Christendom expression of faith looks like. Perhaps nobody does. But we need to give these leaders space to have this conversation, for this dismantling needs to occur if we are to see the gospel translated for and embodied in twenty-firstcentury Western culture.”

The emerging church response has been that:

“if you have a new world, you need a new church. You have a new world.” 

In terms of answering the question of how Christians relate to culture, the emerging church states that there is a place for ‘adapting to’ and ‘arising from’ culture.

“We won’t need a new religion per se, but a new framework for our theology. Not a new Spirit, but a new spirituality. Not a new Christ, but a new Christian.” There is balance of what must change and what must not.

From: Paper from Motionsickness, found on blog of Andrew Jones

Postmodernism

While modernity was a “rage for order, regulation, stability, singularity and fixity;” postmodernism is a “rage for chaos, uncertainty, otherness, openness, multiplicity and change.

Source