June 7, 2021
The widespread condemnation of the recent forced landing of the Ryanair flight over Belarus led me to ponder the influence of a Dutchman considered to be the father of modern international law: Hugo Grotius. Just 250 metres from our apartment, his statue stands by the former Amsterdam exchange building looking out towards the harbour. Grotius, […]
May 30, 2021
Author, speaker and urban missions pioneer Floyd McClung Jr passed away in Cape Town early Saturday morning, May 29th, after battling an illness that had left him incapacitated and unable to speak for over five years. Floyd and his wife Sally arrived in Amsterdam late in 1973 with their baby daughter Misha after a long […]
May 22, 2021
Pentecost is a feast to celebrate the birth of the 2000-year-old Jesus movement, and the hope of the fullfilment of God’s purposes for humankind. Yet it is one of those events on the calendar many enjoy as a holiday weekend but few understand. Like so many aspects of western life, Pentecost is an indelible part […]
May 15, 2021
I learnt a new word this week: agnotology, the study of the deliberate propagation of ignorance. Agnotology comes from the Greek work agnosis, meaning ‘not knowing’ or ‘ignorance’, and ontology, which deals with the nature of being. The word was coined 25 years ago by researchers who discovered a secret memo revealing the tactics of […]
May 8, 2021
Tomorrow is Europe Day, May 9, a day to reflect on belonging to the diverse European family. It is a day both celebrated and ignored in different European nations. To trace the story of this day, we go to a village called Caux, a thousand metres high in the Swiss mountains overlooking Lake Geneva and […]
May 1, 2021
This coming week European countries will commemorate the end of World War Two in different ways. The Netherlands, for example, will hold solemn ceremonies across the nation on Tuesday, May 4, to remember those who lost their lives. In Amsterdam, the king and queen – without the usual public crowd – will lay wreaths on […]
April 24, 2021
A generation ago, Corrie ten Boom was one of the most famous women in the Christian world. Last week, 15 April, would have been her 129th birthday. It was also the day she passed away in 1983 after five silent years in a coma, her 91st birthday. This week her Dutch publisher Uitgeverij Gideon reported […]
April 17, 2021
Three politicians, a Frenchman, a German and an Italian, walked into a monastery chapel, knelt at the altar and began to pray fervently for the future of Europe. This may sound like the beginning of a joke, but the three men had never been so earnest in all their lives. Exactly seventy years ago today, […]
April 10, 2021
Yesterday I sent out the weekly word with a request for help with post-graduate research I am presently engaged in on evangelical attitudes towards the European Union, and the factors that have shaped them. The email address I gave for those willing to help was incorrect. (I am having complicated problems with my email account […]
What does theology begin to look like when taken out of the ‘gathered church’ by the ‘sent church’ into the public square: the neighbourhood, the boardroom, the newsroom, the courtroom, the living room, the hospital ward, the studio, the cinema, the town hall and the street demonstration? Theology for the public square is called public […]
April 3, 2021
This second easter of the Covid-19 pandemic is a good time to ask ourselves what good God might bring out of this global tragedy. And the story of the German town of Oberammergau is a good place to start. The Passion story is a tragedy ending in the unforeseen and the unexpected, in surprise and […]
March 27, 2021
We are experimenting with sending Weekly Word on Saturday mornings to give you more leisure time to read it. Suspicion and mistrust towards government has been aggravated across Europe by a pandemic with no clear end in sight. Anger towards authorities has fueled riots in various locations, triggered by a range of events. Some churches […]
