May 17, 2010
Dare we dream, like Robert Schuman, about Europe becoming a ‘community of peoples deeply rooted in Christian values’, as we wrote about last week? Today that sort of talk raises eyebrows in many political and academic circles in our multi-culti world. Well, let’s ask ourselves, honestly, what other roots are there? Roots are not […]
March 28, 2010
ww29mar2010.pdf Sixty years ago, Europe was a mess! Hitler’s defeat did not automatically guarantee peace across a devastated and divided continent. Chaos threatened on all sides. Hatred and bitterness towards the enemy poisoned grass-roots attitudes among conqueror and conquered alike. Hunger, poverty and unemployment added to the miseries of injury and upheaval. My generation and […]
March 22, 2010
ww22mar2010.pdf 22 mar 2010 Now here's a remarkable twist! Ayaan Hirsi Ali, darling of the liberal crowd, a modern day hero in Richard Dawkins' book, is now appealing to Christian churches to wage a propaganda battle against Islam by starting new Christian schools, sending Christian volunteers into city neighbourhoods and spreading the Christian message! […]
March 15, 2010
ww15mar2010.pdf If New Zealanders focussed on spiritual fitness as much as they do on physical fitness, this land would experience continuous revival. Yesterday, 40,000 participated in the ‘Round the Bays’ run in Auckland city, reputed to be one of the world’s biggest sporting events. Imagine that crowd engaging together in spiritual exercise! In reality, such […]
December 28, 2009
ww28dec2009.pdf There are three reasons why we can face the New Year, or the next twenty years, with hope. They are: 1) the Father; 2) the Son; and, yes, 3) the Holy Spirit. Peter tells us to ‘always be ready to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give a reason for the […]
December 21, 2009
Hope, Gerard Kelly told his listeners at the Next 20 Years symposium in Amsterdam ten days ago, was the answer to the question, ‘what did it mean to be human?’ How did we then, as Christians, so lose our vision of what it meant to be human, he asked, that humanist intellectuals rejected Christianity as […]
December 14, 2009
Under a barrel ceiling dating back to before Christopher Columbus, and facing a stained-glass window depicting the Pilgrim Fathers praying as they left Holland for America via Plymouth on the Mayflower, some 200 friends and staff of YWAM gathered in one of Amsterdam’s oldest churches on Friday to ask what the next twenty years […]
December 7, 2009
A fundamental rethink of the idea of freedom was needed today, twenty years after millions of East Europeans had been freed from oppressive government. André Rouvoet, Holland’s Deputy Prime Minister, told this to an audience of leaders from politics, church and business last week in Brussels at the European Parliament Prayer Breakfast. He recalled […]
November 30, 2009
Sometimes I wonder how many magazines serve the Body of Christ in America, creating conversation and dialogue across the continent. I can think of quite a few off the top of my head. How many serve a similar function in Europe? I struggle to think of any. Of course, the United States is just […]
November 23, 2009
No, I’m not a doomsday prophet, but it is true. The end draws nigh–at least, of my twenty years as leader of YWAM in Europe. Next month in Amsterdam, Friday December 11, we hold a symposium and a reception to mark the transfer of leadership to the European Leadership Team, to be chaired for the […]
November 9, 2009
Twenty years ago today was probably one of the most significant historical events of my generation. For those too young to remember at the time, or now younger than twenty, it is hard to imagine the sense of incredulity, relief and euphoria felt around most of the world, especially in Germany. This truly was the […]
October 12, 2009
Paul’s landing on Malta nearly two thousand years ago was a great deal rougher and wetter than mine was last week. But our separate visits to the island had something in common: we both experienced the ‘unusual kindness’ from the ‘islanders’ referred to by Luke in his detailed account of the famous shipwreck. My three-day […]
