April 13, 2024
The stubborn myth that science and faith are diametrically opposed gets knocked about in the current exhibition on ‘the creation of science’ in the Catherijne Convent Museum I visited in Utrecht this week. Early scientific instruments, first editions of breakthough publications and arresting art illustrate the essential midwife role of the Christian faith in the […]
April 6, 2024
Easter, 2022, two months after the Russian invasion began, Volodymyr Zelensky led his nation in prayer for Ukraine from the St Sophia’s Cathedral in Kyiv in a pre-recorded video. Two years later, his prayerlist remains a highly relevant and concise guide for us as we pray for justice, peace and freedom. The president stood symbolically […]
March 30, 2024
He is risen indeed!! Christians have greeted each other with this confession on Resurrection Sunday since early in the First Millennium. The resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth is the climax of the Big Story, the turning point that has shaped European history and continues to reshape world history. Yes, there is a Big Story, despite […]
March 23, 2024
Who was the greatest artist who ever lived? A quick search online offers several lists of ‘greatest’ artists, frequently naming the following : Leonardo, Michaelangelo, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Van Gogh, Monet, Picasso, Dali,… Notably Dutch painters rank consistently among the world’s greatest. Even Philip II, the 16th century king of Spain against whom the Dutch rebelled, […]
March 16, 2024
‘YWAMers are known for thinking out of the box.’ YWAMers are ‘innovative’, ‘imaginative’, ‘creative’ and ‘visionary’. These were descriptions offered by attendees at a symposium held on Friday, evaluating 50 years of Youth With A Mission’s influence on church and mission in the Netherlands. The hundred participants – staff, alumni and friends of YWAM, representatives […]
March 9, 2024
My offspring have a new name for me: Europapa – after this year’s Dutch entry in the Eurovision Songcontest. Frisian singer Joost Klein topped the charts in the Netherlands after one week, scoring over eight million hits on YouTube and Spotify. The song is also very popular in Belgium and Poland, and is already number […]
March 2, 2024
The macabre spectre of death confronted us this week on various fronts. A tragic road accident in Tanzania, caused when a truck’s brakes failed, killed a dozen international YWAM leaders returning from a field study trip near Arusha. The victims were key leaders of YWAM across Africa and beyond. The worst tragedy in the mission’s […]
February 24, 2024
Remember the shock and feeling of dread exactly two years ago when we woke up to the news that Putin had mobilised his army to invade Ukraine? Few of us imagined that the Ukrainian resistance would last long against the feared might of the Russian army. Memories were stirred of the German invasion of the […]
February 17, 2024
We are waking up these days to the shift from the post-war era of peace and prosperity to a pre-war phase in a new Cold War. This is new terrain for most of us. For two generations now – over seven decades – we have taken our peace for granted. Yet those of my boomer […]
February 10, 2024
While praying for Ukraine this week in a zoom connection with YWAM colleagues, I remembered a story once told by the late Argentinian-born evangelist Luis Palau. A concrete wall on his property needed to be demolished so he called in a contractor. Expecting him to turn up with some heavy machinery to do the job, […]
February 3, 2024
A giant three-metre-high replica of an ordinary torsion spring clothespeg arrested my wife and me while walking through a sculpture garden in New Zealand some time ago. The ‘sculpture’ was simply labelled ‘Marriage’. Marriage? Why, of course: two separate entities joined together by the spring creates a brand new entity – a clothespeg! Without the […]
January 27, 2024
Hold on to your seats, folks! A ‘sharp right turn’ is coming up fast as we approach elections across Europe this year, at both national and European levels. Last week the European Council on Foreign Relations published a report warning that populists and nationalists will top the votes for new members of the European Parliament […]
