Something is happening..

WANTED
JESUS CHRIST
ALIAS: THE MESSIAH, THE SON OF GOD, KING OF KINGS, LORD OF LORDS, PRINCE OF PEACE, ETC.
> Notorious leader of an underground liberation movement
>Wanted for the following charges:
—Practicing medicine, winemaking and food distribution without a license.
—Interfering with businessmen in the temple.
—Associating with known criminals, radicals, subversives, prostitutes and street people.
—Claiming to have the authority to make people into God's children.

There is a revival of religion everywhere—except in the church.

In 1966 Beatle John Lennon casually remarked that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus Christ; now the Beatles are shattered, and George Harrison is singing My Sweet Lord. The new young followers of Jesus listen to Harrison, but they turn on only to the words of their Master: "For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them."

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.