November 15, 2004
A NEW GUINNESS WORLD RECORD FOR DOMINOES WAS ATTEMPTED LAST FRIDAY EVENING IN HOLLAND. Eighty-four specially-selected volunteers from fourteen European countries had been setting up set up 4,250,000 domino stones over the past two months with painstaking concentration in a large exhibition hall in Leeuwaarden. The official Guinness record they were aiming to beat was […]
November 8, 2004
AS THE PLANE DESCENDED TOWARDS MALAGA AIRPORT IN SOUTHERN SPAIN, I scanned the surrounding slopes in search of the orange-tiled roof and the white plaster walls of Villa Isabel. How many thousands had passed through this training centre and meeting place over the past 14 years, en route to work in North Africa? I wondered. […]
November 1, 2004
(see part 1 – Aug 9/04) SO THE EU CONSTITUTION HAS NOW BEEN SIGNED, WITH GOD CONSPICUOUSLY ABSENT FROM THE PREAMBLE. Does that mean those of us who are EU citizens should all vote ‘no’ when a referendum is held in our country sometime in the next eighteen months? Last Friday, 25 heads of government […]
October 25, 2004
HOW DO YOU BEGIN TO MEND THE LIVES of those who have suffered the triple trauma of leaving one’s home, dangerous travel, and hostile rejection in their hoped-for country of refuge? Athens, for example, is the ‘off-ramp’ for many travelling the ‘Refugee Highway’ from the Middle East and Africa. Yet having left hopeless situations, and […]
October 18, 2004
RAMADAN IS UNDERWAY THROUGHOUT THE MUSLIM WORLD, including here in Europe. While some surverys show muslims in Europe becoming more secularised, that perspective is not reflected in the high proportion of the Turkish and Moroccan populations living in Holland, for example, observing this annual religious season. Since 1992, YWAM and later other missions have called […]
October 11, 2004
THE SEARCH FOR EUROPE’S SOUL has been championed these days from various quarters: the Vatican, Brussels, and most recently in an email this week, from Nicky Gumble. Nicky is inviting leaders to London in late November to seek how to “work together in the battle for the soul of Europe”. This is not the first […]
October 4, 2004
LIKE A BLADE OF GRASS PENETRATING THE CONCRETE, it was a small but perhaps significant sign of an unexpected breakthrough of the Kingdom. For almost forty years, Enver Hoxha ruled Albania with an iron fist, implementing a rigid Stalinist programme of nationalisation and collectivisation. From his Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired luxury villa in the capital, Tirana, […]
September 27, 2004
“IF THERE WAS A COLOUR to express going deeper with God, it would be deep blue.” Now, there’s a thought. I read it on the postcard of Marine Reach’s unique new Discipleship Training School, called the Bluewater DTS. As someone who used to race on sailboats in New Zealand, the imagery snagged my attention. Around […]
September 22, 2004
A most interesting response to the last w e e k l y w o r d, from David Pott. David, a YWAMer from London, is project leader of the Lifeline Expedition (see www.lifelineexpedition.co.uk) which is a series of reconciliation journeys responding to the legacy of the Atlantic slave trade. The distinctive features of their […]
September 20, 2004
“HOW I LOVE THE PRACTICAL REALISM of the Christian faith!” Such positive words spoken with conviction about Christianity are unusual for Dutch television in these postmodern times. The occasion was last Sunday’s memorial service for those fallen during the Battle of Arnhem 60 years ago, live on national television. Queen Beatrix and Price Charles joined […]
September 13, 2004
A DRAMATIC FIRE RAZED THE CITY OF √ÖLESUND (say ‘Orlesund’) on Norway’s west coast, exactly one hundred years ago. Today, √Ölesund-host to last week’s YWAM Viking Arts Festival-owes its famous Art Nouveau architecture to this disaster. And therein lies a fascinating tale. √Ölesund grew up as a fisheries town clinging to a rocky promontory, like […]
September 5, 2004
I’VE HARDLY HAD TIME TO WATCH THE NEWS let alone write w e e k l y w o r d s the past couple of weeks. This is the season for bumper-to-bumper YWAM conferences: firstly our Global Leadership Team meeting in Harpenden, north of London, when we commissioned Lynn Green and Iain Muir as […]
