July 6, 2015
Utrecht was the centre of the cycling world this weekend with the start of the Tour de France. This two-thousand-year-old city is usually the starting point for the Continental Heritage Tour which also got under way this weekend. For obvious reasons, we avoided the crowds lining the streets as the megastars of cycling sped through […]
June 29, 2015
Imagine a network of 70 students and young professionals living in fellowship houses and apartments across the inner city, attending a discipleship programme oriented to engagement with society. Further, two hundred young entrepreneurs, lawyers, journalists, politicians, civil servants, academics, educators and healthcare workers meet in a Monday evening study group committed to covering the whole […]
June 22, 2015
In the land of the midnight sun (last night was the shortest in my life) here above the Arctic Circle in northern Norway, the Pope’s new encyclical on the stewardship of the environment takes on special relevance. A barbeque was awaiting me at the YWAM centre in Borgen after a 90-minute drive arounds fjords and […]
June 15, 2015
Tribunals are being constructed on the battle field of Waterloo to seat the hundreds of thousands coming this week to watch the re-enactment of the battle which shaped 19th century Europe 200 years ago this Thursday. I climbed to the top of one tribunal on Saturday to take the accompanying photo. The Dutch-built Butte du […]
June 8, 2015
Over Pentecost weekend, I was invited to speak at a seminar during the Opwekking Conference on the topic, ‘Europe: battlefield or mission field?’ To my surprise, the seminar tent was full. For, as I told my audience, ‘Europe’ traditionally has been a blind spot for Protestants and Evangelicals. If we have ideas about Europe, […]
June 1, 2015
You could mistake him for Gandalf, with his long grey beard and priestly robes. And you will very likely see him mixing with magicians, wizards, seers, fortune tellers and spiritual seekers in Body Mind Spirit fairs and festivals. But Ole Skjerbæk Madsen is actually a Lutheran priest serving in the downtown Bethlehem Church in […]
May 25, 2015
A generational gap seems to have emerged in my circle of Christian friends in response to the Irish referendum on same-sex marriage. After the majority of those who turned out to vote supported the YES vote, Facebook comments and ‘likes’ revealed a (for me) surprising degree of support for the outcome from the younger generation […]
May 18, 2015
After the more serious reflections of the past few weeks, its time for a personal story–about the new Schuman Centre mobile office. As my sixty-fifth birthday approached last September, my wife Romkje said she needed to confess to scheming together with our boys since the previous March. Knowing that what I missed most about […]
May 11, 2015
The end of World War Two 70 years ago was commemorated on Friday in London, Paris and Berlin, and on Saturday in Moscow. In Riga, where this year’s State of Europe Forum was being held on these same two days, native Latvians recalled the German capitulation in sober style on Friday while the next day […]
April 27, 2015
European children are dwindling. Everybody knows however that without children there is no future: even the makers of The Simpsons children’s choir clip. What is obvious is that this demographic factor is going to have major consequences for Europe, economically, socially and politically. Yet few politicians seem prepared to address this issue. It’s just not […]
April 20, 2015
Exactly seventy years ago, Canadian troops liberated the towns of our region in the Netherlands from the Nazi occupier amidst scenes of jubilation. Commemoration events and parades in a sequence moving northwards from town to town are stirring memories of the elderly and creating memories for the young. Some memories are painful. In our town […]
April 13, 2015
Where Jesus hung out after his resurrection and before his ascension is not explained in the Gospels. Two of the Gospel writers are clear however about his appearances to the disciples during this forty day phase of the church calendar we are in right now. While Matthew and Mark end their gospels rather abruptly after […]
