Boerenroem blog

// May 16th, 2010 // No Comments » // Agapè, Rafael, sermons, thoughts

Today we closed the sermon series on Acts in our church. Acts is a fascinating book (the 5th one of the New Testament and the second by author Luke) describing the dynamic development of the first-century church.

The series was built around 10 main figures (or groups) in the story of Acts, each one representing a characteristic of the movement. This angle made up for a very diverse and interesting series. Listen to them on the Rafael Almere sermon pages.

The ten figures and the characteristics:

Acts in 10 figures

Also for your reading pleasure an article by bishop N.T. Wright on Acts (highly recommended) and the sermon outlines:

  Shipwreck and Kingdom - a summary of Acts (62.5 KiB, 38 hits)

  Tijdtabel Handelingen (178.9 KiB, 21 hits)

  Samenvatting Handelingen (226.6 KiB, 26 hits)

// April 26th, 2010 // No Comments » // Rafael, thoughts

Last week I wrote a blog called ‘Good news to the poor‘ in which I referred to the verses from Luke 4/Isaiah 61. This verse happens to be the motto for Athletes in Action‘s summer outreach to Africa. Good news for the poor, sight to the blind, freedom for prisoners. And because they had their spring event last weekend, Matthijs asked me to write on this theme also. Too late and unexpectedly, I got some inspiration yesterday – so here it is, Matthijs.

The inspiration comes again from a meeting in church – the same where I met Nermin last week. (He was there again, by the way; this time he had pain in his arm and chest because he had had a scooter accident just an hour before. Refused to go to the hospital and left the church premises before the service started…) Anyway. After the service yesterday, I got to talk to a visitor who told me a bit of his story. A guy with Middle-Eastern background, a political refugee who, as a student, had stood up for freedom for his ethnic group. He has paid for that ever since: imprisoned without any notice; tortured for six months, chained to hands and feet in a prison cell with Koran verses on the loudspeakers 24/7. Released after media pressure (through Amnesty International) and now in The Netherlands for already 20 years. The sad story is that his life is still heavily marked by his past. In recent years he lost his wife & family in divorce, his home, his job… and is in fact as much captive as he was back in the prison cell.

We talked about his first church experience. He was touched by the atmosphere, the people, the view of God and religion. ‘I’ve seen too much of the effects of true islam to be a muslim’, he said; ‘I know I should learn more about Jesus’. And that’s what we’re going to do the next few weeks – helping him to understand what it is all about. Good news for the poor of spirit, freedom to those captured in their own fears and hurts, sight to those that lost all hope…

The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners…

// April 19th, 2010 // 1 Comment » // Rafael, thoughts

Yesterday I met him again, my friend Nermin. Originally from the Balkan, now living in Almere in a beautiful part of the city. His place has 6 bathrooms, a huge pond and a basketball court. The only problem: it has no roof. And actually, the bathrooms are the public ones near the Weerwater lake and the basketball court is covered with junk and garbage as if it was the town’s dump. Nermin is homeless. All of his belongings are packed in a (stolen) shopping cart. On top of it a huge ghetto blaster, making it easy to identify Nermin wherever he is going.

So, there he was again. Sitting on the bench at our church, apparently enjoying himself with the people, the sunlight and an old cigarette. He stayed outside while we started the service, but obviously needed someone to talk to. So I sat down next to him, chatting with this homeless, psychotic, alcoholic, dirty, poor beggar. He was clearly in a bad state but also aware of it himself. As always, he asked for money, and as always, I said no. He told about the experience he had had many years ago that convinced him that God existed. I listened to his story, asked some questions, tried to debit a few thoughts to him, invited him to come in and be part of the service. As I prayed for him, he cried.

About half an hour later, I was back in the service, and as it turned out, Nermin had followed me. I noticed him talking to other people after service, but when I met him outside again, he was very confused and left the church, clearly very angry. Later I heard he had been begging inside the church, and that there had been an incident causing people to ask him to leave the building.

Why am I writing all this? Because I actually don’t know what to do. Should I have given him money? I don’t think so. Did it feel good not to give him money? No. Was it right to invite him into the service? I think so. Was it right to ask him to leave? I think so too. Do I want to help him? Yes. Can I actually, really, seriously help him? I don’t think so…

I really wonder: how did Jesus do this? In Luke 4, he starts his public appearance in a church by reading Scripture, applying it to himself and putting the words into practice when he meets a ‘Nermin’ the week after. And honestly, it makes me jealous. I wish Jesus was here to meet my friend Nermin. I wish I could be Jesus to him.

The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners…

// June 14th, 2009 // No Comments » // (uncategorized), Rafael

- Posted using MobyPicture.com

Baptism party on the city beach in Almere! Great testimonies, fun and food!

// December 17th, 2008 // No Comments » // Agapè, Rafael, sermons, thoughts

My life has been circling around the topic of money for the last couple of months. In Agapè we are still running the campaign of ‘Funding the Family Business’, dealing with the changes in our structure of staff finances. Not only will staff be employed in the near future, for many this is also the time to raise their income to a more healthy level. Of course this also has implications for our personal finances. Apart from that, those who follow my Twitter updates know that the 2009 budgeting process has taken a lot of my time, and those who are in the Agapè database know that we’ve been actively seeking support for different projects and initiatives.

And then there is of course the economic crisis. In the recent Agape Europe leadership conference we’ve been discussing the possible implications for our movement, and there is at least consensus that we are facing a time of radical change.What you see happening now in the world is – as I said before – in many ways the effect of greed and immorality. In economical terms, one of the problems we have created is leaving the gold standard as the basis for creating money. Today, the monetary system is not based on actual value of an underlying good (gold, for example), but on debt. See this simple but shockingly convincing documentary ‘Money as debt‘. Note by the way the remarkable parallel with spirituality, in which we have abandoned the ‘gold standard’ of an absolute truth and exchanged it for a myth of egotism and self sufficiency.

So, I thought it was a good idea to speak on this in church last Sunday. I tried to explain the ‘worldly’ concept of wealth, riches and money, and to contrast that to the ‘godly’ system. See my powerpoint (in the download section of this site) for a comparison of these two perspectives and/or listen to the sermon (in Dutch, of course).

// July 12th, 2008 // No Comments » // Agapè, Rafael, family

Off to France today, for a two-week holiday. Last week was crazy, with the SCET Almere week (check the website for many nice pictures and videos of the event) and finishing different things for Agape. And for some reason this week has been very special: we have been in the national news daily… Especially the Athletes in Action initiatives have caught on very well in the media, both christian and secular. Today colleague Liesbeth will be on the radio (Radio 5) to talk about AIA projects again.

We said goodbye to our Serbian friends Dusan, Zarko and Vladimir, who stayed with us this week. In the meantime we try to pack the bags… See you later!

// November 25th, 2007 // 1 Comment » // Rafael, video

It was my turn to speak in church once again. I chose the topic of forgiveness, on which I never spoke but I did blog about it. And as I wrote in that post, forgiveness is pivotal in maintaining relationships, but it is not the goal of it. The whole point of forgiveness is to get a life – literally, if we talk about forgiveness of sins by God, to us. Today’s focus was on that side of the story: understanding and receiving Gods total and once-and-for-all forgiveness, in order to live with Him and in order to extend forgiveness to others. You can find my sermon notes here and the bible verses here:

(more…)

// May 27th, 2007 // No Comments » // Rafael, thoughts

Back in the old days (“B.C.”), Pentecost was the celebration of the Giving of the Law. An interesting fact, if you take into account that there was not much to celebrate when the Law was actually given. Because of inobedience and ignorance, 3.000 people died after Moses had come down with the 10 commandments in stone.
No, I’d rather have the new days (“A.D.”), where Pentecost is the celebration of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. On the day that happened (about 1974 years ago) 3.000 people came to life!

More on this in the sermon I held in church today. Read it in Powerpoint or hear it at the Rafael Almere website!

// May 20th, 2007 // 1 Comment » // Rafael, leadership

Back after another event… this time the Rafael Almere leadership retreat. We were with some 50 people in Nunspeet for a long weekend to seek God, share vision, be trained and go out… The topic was The Great Commission, and Mira and I had the opportunity to share some (many) things around evangelism and discipleship. If you’re interested: Powerpoints and some other materials are on boerenroem.nl/rafael (in Dutch). It was a great time. On Friday afternoon some of us went into Nunspeet two by two to pray for people, and some others made ’60 seconds’ videos like we did on the Agapè conference. Fantastic results, if I may say so… Not the least because of the help of Jeroen, who wanted to be mentioned at this blog for sharing some food with us . Actually he did a superb job in staging and editing the videos. Thanks, man!

More good news on Saturday. We did not expect to have our car repaired before the end of next week and with a cost of at least 700 euro (which was already a bargain). Mira had received almost 350 euro through an offering on Tuesday, so we needed to find the other half. On Saturday afternoon I heard that the car was ready, and that we had to pay… 350 euros! This is one of those occasions that we Christians say: praise the Lord!