Archive for sermons

A brief history of the largest movement ever

// February 8th, 2010 // No Comments » // jesus, sermons

Just imagine for a moment you live in the 1st century. You’ve hung out with this guy called Jesus, seen him do stuff you’ve never seen before and say stuff you’ve never heard before. Imagine you were there in 29 AD, when he was crucified after a hectic and very unfair trial. You probably looked at it from a distance, not knowing what to think or do. Imagine you were there with the other guys, afterwards, just to sit down and talk, when Jesus shows up again – looking differently but unmistakenly Jesus. Imagine hear him breathe over you and say: receive the Holy Spirit. Chances are you hardly know what he’s talking about – one of those Jesus things again. And then. A few days later, another place outside, you and your friends again. Jesus basically repeating what he said, then disappearing in the clouds… What a scene!

Imagine you are Dutch. Or not, but you know your way around Google Translate. Then read on in the sermon outline to read the rest of the story…

  In Gods Missie - een missie vol hoop (55.0 KiB, 36 hits)

Money, money, money

// 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).

No condemnation!

// August 11th, 2008 // No Comments » // sermons, thoughts

During the summer, I was struck again by the radical message: in Jesus, there is no condemnation anymore! Everything that needed condemnation and punishment was dealt with at the cross two thousand years ago – even our future sins! When we accept Jesus’ sacrifice, we don’t have to live with guilt or shame anymore. On the contrary – we ‘live a life of love’ (as some song put it), nothing can separate us from the love of God and therefore there is nothing to be afraid of – not even death. All this is explained to great length in Romans 8 (and other places like Galatians and Hebrews), and I did a little effort to convey this message last Sunday in the ‘Christengemeente Amsterdam‘, a small evangelical church in Amsterdam.

Sermon outline: Geen veroordeling meer!
 (Word, 44Kb).