Mark de Boer
We held an internal seminar this morning on the subject of this post – that seems to be somewhat lost in translation. The english sentence seems to ask why in the world God is in The Netherlands, but we talked about what and where we see Him working in our country. Probably the first interpretation is much easier to answer than the second. At least, this morning the three people we had invited all held different views on this. That is to say: they all see God at work in Holland, so that was a good starting point. We had Marc van der Woude, as ever sharing from a more or less prophetic, forward looking point of view, with a presentation that challenged us (Agapè) to find ways ‘out of the box’ to fullfil our mission. We had Bram Krol, taking more of a historic route, sharing the developments within the more traditional church environment of the last decades. He sees a growing evangelical influence in those churches, but also growing confusion. Amd we had Arnold van Heusden, who shared stories of today that show God at work. One of his observations was that there is a growing number of Christians taking their place in society. He mentioned for example Cees Dekker, a respected scientist who leads the debate on Intelligent Design.
It was an interesting gathering, not the least because of the fact that the different speakers did not agree on all points. When I have the handouts of the meeting I’ll try to post a little more in-depth on what has been shared.
