May 21, 2001
Did you hear the one about…? Probably not, because I’m making this up as I go along. You see, there was this imam – a kind of Moslem pastor – who last week dared to say on Dutch TV that homosexuality was a sickness. Poor man. Obviously nobody had told him about political correctness. Suddenly […]
May 7, 2001
… fell mainly on the Costa del Sol this last week, so it seemed. Romkje and I were being hosted by Garry and Anke Tissingh, our North Africa directors, in our annual meeting for the Europe, Middle East and North Africa field leadership, along with Lynn and Marty Green, and Mounir and Ruth Boctor. So […]
April 23, 2001
Today’s BBC World report that unidentified gunmen were holding guests hostage in a hotel in Istanbul arrested my attention as I brushed my teeth this morning. Mention of a number of hostages being held in a 5th floor conference room glued me to the TV. For, just a few days ago, I had joined an […]
April 16, 2001
A spirit of death hangs over our neighbourhood in Holland this easter. Flags fly at half mast from houses and farm buildings. Gloom, fear and anger dominate many domestic conversations. Rumours circulate of farmers going bankrupt. Shoppers horde milk and supplies. Red and white plastic tapes cordon off farms from visitors. Many children are unable […]
April 9, 2001
The Euro is coming. Soon the Euro will be money in our pockets. Like it or not, we will probably pay our fees for the next European Leaders Consultation (the last week of January 2002) in Euros. So what? How should we be interpreting these “ever-encroaching signals” of “ever-increasing union”? About ten years ago, there […]
April 2, 2001
Remember a couple of weeks ago when I lost my shirt over reports of Europe being ‘still the most Christian continent’? I concluded facetiously that David Barrett and Todd Johnson, editors of the World Christian Encyclopedia, must have been counting anyone who had ever seen a church building or could draw a cross when they […]
March 26, 2001
Last week I was back in the Black Forest, in southern Germany, where nearly twelve years ago I first met with a small group of leaders from other organisations. Stuart McAllister, then with Operation Mobilisation, had gathered us together to explore ways we could partner more in our efforts towards the evangelisation of Europe. I […]
March 19, 2001
Where do you think the geographical centre of Europe is? In 1989, the French National Geographic Institute announced the surprising news that Paris was NOT the centre! Instead, they announced, the geographical centre was a point just north of Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania! Another surprising fact I learnt last week visiting ‘the heart of […]
March 12, 2001
Great news!! I read the following headline in a Dutch Christian paper this week: “Europe is still the most Christian continent”! Statisticians David B. Barrett and Todd M. Johnson (a fellow YWAMer) had come to this conclusion from their research in an office somewhere in America. Isn’t that wonderful? This is the best news I’ve […]
March 5, 2001
This past week in Switzerland I heard encouraging reports about surprising experiences among ‘god-seekers’, or New Age folk. You may have heard me talk about ‘Harry Potter and the future of the west’, where I speculate on the phenomenal interest among adults in the children’s books about an English preadolescent who attends a school of […]
February 26, 2001
This Weekly Word comes from Switzerland, where the annual DAWN church-planting conference is under way near Interlaken. Today I met several fellow-YWAMers there, including Kari Tassia and Mika Piirku from Finland and Daniel Schaerer from France. Over the past decade YWAMers like Daniel, Lynn Green in England and Alv Magnus in Norway have played leading […]
February 19, 2001
Last week we wrote about what happens “when hope comes to town”; about what happened when Jesus brought a young man back to life in the small town of Nain. If ever there was a contemporary demonstration of this, it is here in Latvia. Some of you have met Maris Dzelzs, our YWAM leader in […]
