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 […]
January 20, 2024
Olga is a survivor. The first time she escaped death was before she was even born. She was a Chernobyl baby. That is, her mother gave birth to her soon after the world’s worst nuclear disaster occurred in Chernobyl in 1986, just 40 kilometres north of Kyiv, close to the Belarusian border. After the reactor of […]
January 13, 2024
What 2024 will bring us, none one can yet say. We pray it will bring resolution to conflict in Ukraine and Israel. We pray the many elections coming up across Europe and in America this year will result in more justice, compassion and seeking of the common good – despite current prospects. Whatever challenges the […]
January 6, 2024
Today, January 6, is the 12th day of Christmas in the traditional church calendar, the official end to Christmastide and the start of Epiphany, which lasts through to the day before Lent. The Feast of Epiphany commemorates the visit of the Magi, or Three Kings, from the east who experienced the revelation, or ‘epiphany’, of […]
