December 28, 2024
The familiar nativity story was especially topical this year, carrying associations with current headlines. Passages read or recited by children in Christmas plays; by narrators in special Christmas services; or by volunteers playing angels, kings, wise men and shepherds for groups of children and adults on nativity walks through city neighbourhoods, reminded us that the […]
December 21, 2024
During these long dark nights of winter (tonight is the longest) we find ourselves drawing hope, light and inspiration from the stars. When the cloudy night sky hides the stars from our sight, we make our own. They appear in street decorations, shop windows, as cookie shapes and atop our Christmas trees. Stars have always […]
December 14, 2024
Last Sunday at 4.30am, my deep slumber was rudely disturbed by honking car horns. Half-awake, I drew the curtains to glimpse a convoy of cars draped with Syrian flags driving through the centre of Amsterdam. Something dramatic obviously had happened in Damascus. A quick check of the headlines on my mobile confirmed that, while […]
December 7, 2024
Europeans suffer amnesia on at least two crucial developments in the story of Europe. Firstly, Europeans have forgotten the singular role of the story of Jesus in making Europe ‘Europe’, and in laying a common foundation of values and understandings of human dignity and sanctity, and meaning of life. Secondly, Europeans suffer memory loss concerning […]
November 30, 2024
A massive monument to the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ will open to the public this week in the heart of one of Europe’s great capitals. For Notre Dame Cathedral has itself been resurrected, five and a half years after being ravaged by fire to the horror of the French, believers and unbelievers alike. […]
November 23, 2024
Loren Cunningham’s teaching on ‘the seven spheres’ is being distorted by a movement some warn could become a great religious threat to American democracy. Weekly Word focuses on issues facing Europeans today, occasionally touching on American issues when they affect us here in Europe. As Loren is often quoted as a source of the controversial ‘Seven […]
November 16, 2024
A gleeful atmosphere pervades the Kremlin these days following the US elections, while gloom and desperation are growing in Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities. Ukrainian Christians draw little comfort from knowing that their American brothers and sisters voted for the ‘anti-abortion candidate’ when, as they see it, the election outcome ‘gave Putin hope to establish […]
November 9, 2024
What a week! Wednesday, early morning, I reluctantly prise my eyelids open to peak at the headlines on my phone. Aghast, I bury my head in my pillow and want to go back to sleep – for the next four years. But hibernation is not an option. • Not for anyone concerned about the future […]
November 2, 2024
The celebrations of Halloween this week and Guy Fawkes in England next week underscore what we focused on last week in the Schuman Centre masterclass on ‘the making of Europe’: that Europe and European culture had been shaped overwhelmingly by the gospel story. You probably never learnt at school that Halloween triggered the Reformation, for […]
October 26, 2024
Last week I joined a group of YWAM leaders from across Europe to visit a leafy glade just outside the city of Zwolle on what the Dutch optimistically call a mountain. Mount St Agnes (Sint Agnietenberg) would not even qualify as a hill in Switzerland, but here on this ‘mountain’ was written one of the […]
October 19, 2024
Volodymyr Zelensky’s five-point ‘victory plan’ presented in Brussels this week to leaders of the EU and NATO calls for stronger and clearer support from his allies. Yet the Ukrainian comedian-turned-war president appealed to an authority higher than Brussels and Washington when, two months after the Russian invasion began, he prayed on national television for the […]
October 12, 2024
This week, while revisiting the Van Gogh Museum here in Amsterdam with friends, I was struck again by how much Vincent’s deep religious faith is ignored and misunderstood by the ‘experts’. Take van Gogh’s Still life with Bible, shown here above. The text displayed next to the painting explains that the picture supposedly ‘symbolizes the […]
