April 29, 2023
This week it was the Dutch. Next week it will be the Brits. Honouring their kings, that is. Last Thursday was the annual Koningsdag in Holland, Willem-Alexander’s birthday. The day was less about the king himself, whose popularity has waned some twenty per cent over the corona period. Koningsdag was more about celebrating a nation-wide […]
April 22, 2023
Last weekend the church Romkje and I attend, the Noorderkerk, celebrated 400 years of Christian presence in the city of Amsterdam, with concerts, tours, exhibits and a mayoral visit, among other activities. On Easter 1623, fifty-five years after the city chose to become Protestant, the doors of the Noorderkerk opened to its largely migrant neighbourhood. […]
April 14, 2023
What an intriguing city Stockholm is to explore! This week I began to discover one of the best-preserved medieval districts in Europe, the Gamla Stan or Old Town, with its cobbled pedestrian streets, picturesque alleys strangely reminiscent of Malta’s Valletta, and its famous royal palace, one of the largest castles in the world. Gamla Stan […]
April 8, 2023
Imagine a military cemetery with rows and rows of little white electric chairs marking the graves of the fallen. Or hospitals and pharmacies displaying neon-lit electric chairs to welcome those seeking medical relief and healing. Or first-aid stations and ambulances embellished with large emblems of electric chairs. Or bodies tattooed with electric chairs and necks […]
April 1, 2023
What are the roots of the freedoms and the rule of law that makes the European Union still so attractive to Ukrainians, Moldovans, Georgians and other neighbouring peoples to Russia? Why have so many Russians fled their own country, fleeing the prospect of being sent to the Ukrainian frontlines as cannon-fodder? They all want to […]
March 25, 2023
Exactly fifty years ago this week, a young Dutch woman registered a new organisation in the Netherlands aimed to launch youth into global mission. The Dutch name was Jeugd met een Opdracht, in English: Youth With A Mission. For some, mobilising untrained young people was irresponsible and unprofessional. Yet five decades and five generations later, […]
March 18, 2023
On a recent interview with a Christian radio station in England I was asked to choose a song to play. I chose a golden oldie, ‘The Servant King’, by popular English song-writer Graham Kendrick. For three reasons. Firstly, I was personally involved when the song was originally recorded in 1984 in the Netherlands. The vocal […]
March 11, 2023
Peace and freedom are constantly recurring themes in Scripture. Not surprisingly, for they are characteristics of the Kingdom of God. They are God’s purposes for the human race. They are deep longings of the human heart. They are part of what we pray for when we pray the Lord’s Prayer: for God’s Kingdom to come, […]
March 8, 2023
Tonight at 6pm CET I interview Daria Kaleniuk of the Anti-Corruption Action Centre about how she and others are fighting on another frontline for the future of Ukraine. In addition to the military and the politicians, there is an army of civil society activists who need our support and prayers. She will explain how corruption […]
March 4, 2023
The story of Jesus is the single greatest factor in shaping Europe’s past. Each time I take masters students on a ‘heritage tour’ through Europe, I am overwhelmed by the profound transformation the arrival of the gospel message brought to people groups across the continent. A worldview in which a God of love created humanity, […]
February 25, 2023
The past three hundred and sixty-five days have been a year of acute suffering for over 40 million Ukrainians. Of course, their suffering did not start on February 24. Ukrainians have been afflicted for centuries by brutal Kremlin policies, particularly Stalin’s efforts to starve the nation in the 1930’s. Putin’s illegal annexation of Crimea in […]
February 18, 2023
One of the most dramatic months of my life ended last Sunday evening when our plane took off from Auckland Airport, just hours before it was shut down by the worst cyclone in New Zealand’s history. As reported in past weeks, the month began with my wife breaking her arm two days before departure to […]
