Navigators and Newsletters

Yesterday, I spent the afternoon visiting with one of the directors for campus ministry with the Navigators in the Netherlands. They have their offices in a small suburb of Utrecht called Driebergen, in the same building as the Wycliffe Bible Translators. The Navigators have experienced significant growth in student ministry in the Netherlands over the last few years and are needing to add more staff to spearhead various programs. The whole organization is a bit different from its U.S. counterpart in that the university groups are organized like fraternities. One of their needs at the moment is for someone to work with international students.

Some of you have already downloaded my recent newsletter. I had to update it a bit after I discovered that one of the graphics doesn’t display properly if you’re downloading it from a Windows-based computer (specifically, in the article about the Alpha group, the Alpha logo — a man carrying a large question-mark — doesn’t show up). So, when you have a chance, take a look at it again (and if someone can tell me whether or not they see a man carrying a large question-mark, that would be helpful!).

Balloons, Burger King, Bicycles, and Bible Study

On Saturday, I spent some time with a Polish man about my age who survives mainly by doing odd jobs here and there. The evening turned out to be somewhat bizarre, but also one filled with opportunities to extend basic pastoral care. Soon after I met my friend in the center of the city, he discovered that he had lost about 50 euros (about $65). We retraced his steps back across the Willemsbrug (William’s Bridge) to a small hill that overlooks the River Maas. When we got there, a small group of school children were preparing to launch a hot-air balloon about the size of a small child. We watched as it sailed up, up, and away into the sky until we could no longer see it. It was just around sunset and we were concerned that flights over the country could possibly run into it! Just then, the children launched a second one. It, too, followed the same path as the first and disappeared into the night. A few people on the bridge stopped to look. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a camera with me, otherwise I would have taken a picture. But I do have one of the Willemsbrug below.

When we returned to the city center (the 50 euros were long gone), we decided to have a little snack at the Burger King , not the most exciting meal, I know, but it was cheap and we weren’t in the mood for anything fancy. While we were eating, a woman who looked a bit disheveled came in and asked us for a cigarette. We didn’t have any, so she bummed one from someone at another table. She sat down at the table next to us, however, and I noticed she was shaking and seemed nervous. My friend and I engaged her in conversation and discovered she had run away from home in France and was wandering around the Netherlands. When I started to speak in French to her, she began to open up a bit more, but I was careful not to press too deeply about why she had run away. After a while I offered to buy her something to eat, which she accepted, and invited her to come to the lunch that we have every Wednesday at the church.

Just a word about Burger King and other fast food restaurants here. In most of Europe, you have to pay for each little packet of ketchup or mayonaisse that you want and there are no free refills on the soft drinks or coffee. Everything costs something! Normally, I would have opted for something better than Burger King, but its the only thing open really late in the city center. And, in this case, going to Burger King turned out to be an opportunity to be the presence of Christ to someone who needed it.

After my friend and I left, I went to retrieve my bicycle wich I borrow from the church. You may already know that biking is a popular (and cheap!) way of getting from place to place in the country. There are bike lanes everywhere and even at intersections there are separate traffic lights for the bike them. In fact, the Netherlands has the highest porportion of bike users of any country in Europe (Denmark is #2, in case you were interested). Unfortunately, bike theft is rampant in the country. So, most people ride well-used bikes that no one would want to steal anyway rather than something nice, new, and shiney! My bike from the church is no exception. The gears stick from time to time; part of the frame is starting to rust, and it makes a grinding noise from time to time. But for cheap transport, you can’t beat it! Here’s a picture of one of the stoplights along a bike path. In the photo you can also see a little sign to the right with a picture of a bicycle on it indicating that the bike path has traffic in both directions.

Finally, a word about the Wednesday night Bible study group that I’m leading. We had quite a lively discussion during out last session as we took a whirlwind tour of the four Gospels. One of the questions in the study guide we’re using suggested that “the most important event in history was the life of Christ.” One of our group members sparked a lively discussion by saying that she felt the book was wrong. “Why,” she asked, “would the life of Christ be any more important than other events in the Bible such as the creation of the universe, or the Exodus out of Israel?” Her question provided a good platform for showing how in the Christian faith Christ is at the center of history and of our lives. The Bible study group always keeps me on my toes!

Babies, Bullets, and Hair salons

One of the big events in Dutch news over the past few days has been the birth of a third child, a daughter, to the country’s Crown Prince. In the rest of the world, no one takes notice, but in a small country like the Netherlands with a royal family, this is big news. Newspapers and television stations across the country have already carried pictures of the little girl and her proud parents.

Speaking of news, the other item of note here has been the recent deaths of the students at Virginia Tech. One of those who died was a Dutch man who was on the university’s basketball team. When I went into the post office the following day to mail some letters, I told the man behind the counter that “I’d like to send these four letters to the United States, please.” He said something to me in Dutch that I didn’t entirely understand but I caught the gist of it which was, “let’s hope they make it through the bullets.” The woman who normally works behind the counter just rolled her eyes at him.

On a lighter note, I decided I needed a haircut this week. There happens to be (or so I thought) a hair salon within walking distance of my apartment that I’ve passed by many times. The sign says “Cafe, Kapsalon, Kebab, Pizzeria” (Kapsalon means “hair salon” in Dutch). I was always a bit unsure about the place because I could clearly see people eating in what looked like a Turkish cafe, but there never seemed to be any sign of a hair salon. This time I decided to walk-in and ask.

Well, I walked in, and asked the man working there if I needed to make an appointment to get my hair cut. He just looked at me like I was crazy. Realizing that something was wrong, I nicely pointed out that the sign outside his shop says “kapsalon.” He started to laugh hysterically and explained that a “kapsalon” is also the name of a Turkish dish which for some strange reason just happens to be the same name in Dutch for a hair salon. We had a good laugh over it together, and he offered me a free taste of a “kapsalon.” Needless to say, I won’t be going there for a haircut (but I will return for some yummy food!).

Easter Monday

As I write this, we are in the wee hours of Easter Monday, a holiday throughout much of Europe. I’ve just put the finishing touchs on my first newsletter which you can dowload by clicking on the “Newsletters” tab above.

Blessings,
Brian

Gelukkige Pasen! Christus is toegenomen!

Happy Easter! Christ is risen! As I write this, it is just after midnight on Easter Day here in the Netherlands and I’ve just come back from an Easter Vigil service at one of the Dutch-speaking churches here in Rotterdam. As we departed the service, each person was given a gift of a white rose as a symbol of new life. One could hear the bells of the church ringing out over the city just before the start of the service. That may not seem unusual, but it attracted a lot of attention from people gathered in nearby cafes and restaurants. The site of horde of people going into a church at 9:00pm on a Saturday night is not a common site in the Netherlands (nor is the site of them coming out again at 11:00pm carrying white roses!).

The last few days have been spent getting caught up on all kinds of stuff (I won’t bore you with the details here) just after the Covenant EuroRetreat in Iruz, a small village near the northern coast of Spain. The retreat was an opportunity for all the personnel from the Evangelical Covenant Church working in Europe to come together for a few days. We stayed in an old monastery built in the 9th century that had been modernized and converted into a facility for public use. Fortunately, much of the place still felt ancient, and on more than one occasion a few of us used the excellent accoustics in a bell tower to belt out a few ancient hymns in four-part harmony. Before we knew it we had attracted a small crowd who came to listen to our “concert.”

I was blessed to be able to re-connect with my good friend and seminary roommate who is currently working in Sweden, and another classmate who just recently arrived in Belgium (we’re practically neighbors, since she’s only 2 1/2 hours away by train). In fact, someone at the retreat told us that we were in a news article from the denomination’s news service. You can read it by clicking here. Of course, there were opportunities to connect with new colleagues as well and to hear about there work in various parts of Europe.

Before running off to Spain, however, I received a visit from the denomination’s new regional coordinator for work in Europe. As it turns out, he had lived in the Netherlands several years ago in Amsterdam and attended the English Reformed Church, the sister church of the Scots International Church. They’re a few years older than us, having been founded in 1607, while we’re simply the younger sister, having been founded in 1643.

I had hoped to have a real newsletter available by now, but other projects have been screeming for attention. But, it will come soon enough!

Blessings,
Brian

Washing Machines and Television

Regular readers of this site will have noticed that I’m mainly concentrating on day-to-day life, and less on the actual ministry going on here. There are a couple of reasons for that: 1). It gives me something to put in my “real” newsletter which should be mailed out by email or postal mail within the next few days (I hope), and 2). Writing about everyday life gives one a glimpse into the “little things” about life in the Netherlands….

….such as the startling discovery that instead of washing my clothes in what I thought was laundry detergent, I’ve actually been using fabric softener! Kirsteen, a member of our church (and one of the few Scottish folks in it), came over to my apartment the other day to have a look at the washing machine that had been acting up a bit. When we were ready to test it out, she asked me for some detergent and I proudly handed her my lovely blue 750ml bottle of “wasverzachter” from Spar. She took one look at it and said, “this is fabric softener.” I have to confess, when I went into the shop to buy it, I took one look at it and thought, “Wasverzachter…hmmm…sounds like the word ‘wash’ at the beginning…must be laundry detergent.” We had a good laugh over it (after which I went back to Spar and bought some proper detergent).

Television her offers some interesting options. The Dutch generally prefer British television to their own stolid networks, and so BBC1 and BBC2 are available everywhere. Flipping the channels, we also have the Discovery Channel, two German networks, a Turkish-language channel, the local Rotterdam TV channel, the Dutch version of MTV, RTL5 (a French-language station), and the national Dutch networks: Nederland 1, Nederland 2, and Nederland 3 . There’s also something called Z@PP, which isn’t really a channel, but has more youth-oriented content between 3:00pm and 7:00pm on Nederland 3. Nederland 1 mostly offers news, dramas, and human interest shows. Nederland 2 offers more news, dramas, and human interest shows. Nederland 3 is geared to a young adult audience with a mix of sports, reality shows, films and programming similar to FOX in the States. Oh yes, I almost forgot, there’s also Nederland 4, but its a digital-only station and since I don’t have a digital TV set, I can’t really say much more about it.

As for me, on Sunday nights at 22:30, I’ll be watching “Spooks” on Nederland 3 (Its a BBC spy drama based on MI5, the British version of the FBI).

A visit to Nijmegen

I had a chance to visit a friend this past weekend, from way back in 1999 when I worked for a summer as a volunteer at a refugee center in the city of Nijmegen, near the German border. Although she finally received her permission to stay in the Netherlands — after 10 years of waiting! — I have decided not to mention her name here for her own security. She was a journalist in a Middle Eastern country who had to flee after writing some unfavorable things about the current government in her country at the time. Although she writes a weekly column for a Dutch newspaper now, she uses a pseudonym.

On Saturday, while we were strolling through the center of town, we bumped into a family who looked strangely familiar. As my friend talked, I recognized them as an Armenian family who had invited me for dinner in their room one night at the refugee center! It was strange bumping into them after so much time. The asylum center itself has changend into a center for “integration and naturalization” for persons who have a strong chance of being granted permission to stay in the Netherlands, offering language courses, and other programs aimed at civic integration.

Here’s a picture of an old destroyed church located in a park in the middle of the city. The city itself dates from Roman times and there are still a few surviving ruins from when the city was part of the far-flung reaches of the Roman Empire (although I suspect the church is probably from later in history).

Gibraltar

A few of us from the Scots International Church flew down to Gibraltar for a few days for the gathering of representatives from the Presbytery of Europe. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this terminology, the presbytery is like an association of churches in a geographic area. In this case, the fourteen churches in continental Europe connected to the Church of Scotland. As you may already know, Gibraltar (a.k.a. “The Rock”) is a little piece of land at the southern tip of Spain owned by Great Britian. About 30,000 people live there and you can walk from one end to the other in about an hour at a brisk pace downhill. Uphill is another story! The flavor of the place is like a little bit of England, a little bit of Spain, and a little bit of North Africa thrown together (although with the current state of the U.S. Dollar, prices are quite expensive: I peeked into a Burger King just to compare what a value meal would cost and realized it was almost $9.00). Instead, I went to a small cafe run by the local Methodist Church and ate a full meal of spaghetti and salad for about $6.00. We stayed, worshipped, and convened together in the Europa Retreat Centre. From my room I could look out over the Strait of Gibraltar and see the northern tip of Africa (Morocco). Here’s a picture for you. Gibraltar is in the foreground; Africa is in the background.

 

Our hosts for the weekend were the minister and congregation of St. Andrew’s Church in Gibraltar who provide such wonderful and gracious hospitality. They arranged for us to have a meal at the Rooke Officers Mess at the British Forces Base in Gibraltar (the Royal Air Force, Navy, and Army). We had some free time to wander around the town and I took the opportunity to walk across the border into Spain. To walk across the border, you also have to walk across the airport runway. Special signs tell you to please move quickly and when a plane is getting ready to land or take off, the border is temporarily closed. Here’s a picture of Gibraltar as viewed from the town on the Spanish side, La Linea de la Concepcion. Gibraltar (“The Rock”) is on the right, Spain is on the left, and the airport runway (not visible) is in the thin spot in the middle.

One item on the agenda directly effects my work here in Rotterdam. The Presbytery voted to ask me to undertake a research project and report back to them in October. I will work on compiling a directory of English-speaking churches and services in continental Europe. Others have produced smaller but incomplete directories and the hope is that we’ll be able to produce something that is as comprehensive as possible. We found that often people are not aware of what English language options are available to them where they are living, moving, or visiting. Such a directory will also help to connect other like-minded churches with each other.

Nacht van Kerken // “Pure Gold”

Well, I have to say that I surprised myself! I went to the organizing meeting for the “Nacht van Kerken” as the representative from the Scots International Church. There were about 14 other people there from other historic churches in the city. The conversation was all in Dutch, but I was able to pick-up about 20% of it, enough to get the important pieces. The real test came when I had to introduce myself and talk about what our church’s contribution would be….in Dutch! Somehow I got my point across (I attribute it to God’s grace) and everyone was patient with my linguistic limitations. The other churches are working to fill their slots with all kinds of events ranging from organ concerts to a coffee house to theatrical productions to film to debates on the current government in the Netherlands. Our own church’s contribution to the night is a little “fluid” at the moment, but whatever it turns out to be, we want it be something that will reflect the presence of God in our church, and reflect our unique international identity to those who might not ordinarily darken our doorsteps!

Speaking of historic churches, here’s a picture of Laurenskerk (St. Lawrence Church), which survived the German bombardment during World War II (while virtually everything else around it wa destroyed). The church has a sister relationship with Coventry Cathedral in England and other historic churches that were rebuilt from the ashes of a bombardment, or survived one. The picture, unfortunately, doesn’t really give you a sense of the interior.

I was happy that one of the guys who comes to the Mamre Project events — a man from Poland — came to the “Pure Gold” Bible study tonight. I walked the group through the whole sweeping arc of how the Bible came to be, some of the key historical moments, and so forth. Discussion was so lively that we were only able to get through half the material. The questions were good — and highly theological. The group had all kinds of questions about the connection between Abraham, ancient Israel, and the Church; about whether God’s promise to bless Abraham extended to all people (not just Christians), or was it only for a particular group?

Tomorrow I will have my first adventure getting a haircut in the Netherlands, at a little shop just down from the church. We’ll see what happens. If it turns out badly, you’ll have to wait for any pictures of me on this blog!

The confirmation class

Just after finishing my last post, I discovered that the article on the church’s confirmation class was just released today in Nederlands Dagblad. Clicking on the banner below will take you to the story — which is all in Dutch — but it essentially remarks on the international nature of the church and its English-speaking character. I’m quoted (or talked about) about 1/3 of the way down the article, and again about 2/3 toward the end of it.