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 […]
October 5, 2024
A simple transferable idea is transforming the understanding of the gospel, church and witness in many churches across Britain. But as far as I know it hasn’t yet made the leap across the Channel (I’d be glad to hear I’m wrong). It’s called This Time Tomorrow, or simply, TTT. Briefly, it involves a short slot […]
September 28, 2024
From the opening plenary to today’s closing deliberations, the Lausanne 4 Congress on World Evangelisation held this past week in Seoul, Korea, addressed some of most pressing issues facing humanity today. Daily reports can be viewed here: Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, Day 5. The implications for missions of sexuality, creation care, […]
September 21, 2024
European delegates are right now arriving in Korea to join over 5000 Christian leaders from all over the world in the Fourth Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization, starting tomorrow (Sunday). Fifty years after the landmark Lausanne Congress in Switzerland, guided by Billy Graham and John Stott, the process of listening, consulting and collaborating through congresses, […]
September 14, 2024
Today I am celebrating my 75 years of pilgrimage on this planet with my family on a sailing outing. Our vessel is the 125-year old tjalk, or sailing barge, appropriately-named Jacobsschelp. For the ‘St James shell’ or scallop is the symbol of the popular Camino pilgrimage converging on the tomb of the Apostle James […]
September 8, 2024
September 7, 2024
We are privileged to be witnessing the greatest transition in world mission ever in history. The gospel is exploding in the Majority World. Missionaries from countries closed to the gospel when I was born, exactly 75 years ago today, are going to the least, the last and the lost in every corner of the world. […]
August 31, 2024
‘By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance; he went out, not knowing where he was to go.’ This verse from Hebrews 11:8 was foremost in my mind half a century ago as I left New Zealand for the first time. […]
August 24, 2024
Superhuman efforts by the some of the world’s fittest and ablest bodies riveted our attention on the Paris Olympic Games in recent weeks. These coming days, the Paralympic Games will bring us more athletic feats, this time performed by the heroic efforts of those overcoming disabilities. They are declaring to the world that social value and […]
