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 […]
March 22, 2021
Walking home through Amsterdam’s historic centre on Saturday evening, my wife and I encountered the strange sight of green lights where previously red lights had indicated prostitutes at work. Had something changed during our three-month absence from the city? We knew that the Covid-19 lockdown had forced brothels to close down exactly a year ago, […]
March 15, 2021
Last Friday, almost exactly a year after the World Health Organisation declared COVID-19 to be a global pandemic, my wife and I boarded a plane in Auckland to return to Europe after three months in the abnormally corona-free environment of New Zealand. Our arrival back in Amsterdam – after passing through three eerily-quiet airports – […]
March 8, 2021
What is it that makes ‘evangelicals’ so susceptible to conspiracy theories? This question has occupied many recent articles in the international press, usually about the state of the church in America. Yet also in the Netherlands this week, similar discussion has been triggered by the appearance on doorsteps nationwide of five million copies of a […]
March 1, 2021
Opened in 2001, the Federal Chancellery (Bundeskanzleramt) in Berlin is the largest government headquarter in the world, about eight times the size of the White House in Washington. The eighth floor, 200 square metre apartment in the official seat of the German Chancellor was immediately occupied by the then chancellor, Gerhard Schröder. His successor however, […]
February 22, 2021
For the past two Sundays, my home church in Auckland has been exploring God’s fingerprints in history. Last week, Anna, a member of the church leadership team, gave an inspiring talk on ‘God’s fingerprints in Aotearoa New Zealand’. She recalled the Māori prophet, Toiroa, who in 1766 prophesied about the arrival of the Europeans: ‘The name […]
February 15, 2021
Twenty years ago this week I wrote my first ‘Weekly Word’. Given a few gaps here and there, that is about one thousand columns, all still accessible on www.weeklyword.eu. Scanning back through the archives over two decades, I realised how many key global and European developments of the new millennium they chronicled, stretching back to […]
February 8, 2021
Religion and politics can make for a toxic mix, as we have sadly seen in recent days. Jonathan Sacks, the late Chief Rabbi of the British Commonwealth, once advised: ‘Don’t mix religion and politics. You mix religion and politics, you get terrible politics and even worse religion.’ And yet until his premature death just months […]
February 1, 2021
Weekly Word generally focuses on European issues but today I want to explore responses to the global influence of the American Civil War of Words. The credibility of American evangelicalism globally has been hugely damaged over the past four years, especially among youth. Politicians in other nations, like Italy, Hungary and Brazil, have been emboldened […]
January 25, 2021
How the world has changed since my last Weekly Word before Christmas last year! Four weeks ago today, Romkje and I stepped out through the security fence of our managed isolation hotel in Auckland into a world of hugs, handshakes and unrestricted gatherings. Here we began to catch a glimpse of the post-corona society: with […]
December 21, 2020
After a surreal 35-hour journey from Amsterdam, Romkje and I were entering New Zealand this time last week as I write these words. This is day eight of our 14-day isolation period. Our journey led us through the ‘ghost-towns’ of Schiphol, Singapore and Auckland airports and onto planes where flight crew outnumbered passengers. Empty seats […]
