Reinhold's Journey

A new way of looking at my life

Today in our exercises, I realized a new way of looking at my life. In Switzerland, we stare at the age of 65 where you get your pension and "everything is finished". I am 56 and must have unconsciously come into some kind of final panic, something like  "only a few more years - and so many detours and so many unfulfilled plans, and here comes the pension guillotine". Today, I suddenly realized that God's kairos arithmetics are very much different from our chronos thinking. Look at Moses: 2x 40 years of hidden preparation, then another 40 years of public activity. Jesus: 30 years of hidden preparation, "only" 3 years of public activity. It seems the more important a life's task is, the more preparation time God allows.

In God's service there is no pension. In that light, I suddenly realized that, after 30 years of ministry, I might be right in the middle. 20 personal years of "church growth" and 10 years of strategizing and paradigm shift. Now, a new phase of glocal simplexity.

But most important: no need for panic. The best is yet to come. It's still worth and not too late to learn new things.

And then, when our life here is finished, "the foreword ends and the First Chapter begins" (C.S.Lewis). Man, what a breathtaking perspective!

Week of Ignatian exercises in Ticino

You won't believe it: I registered, together with my wife, for a week of exercises, following Ignatius of Loyola, in a remote mountain village in Ticino (our beautiful southern Italian speaking canton). The village is called Rasa, has maybe 10 inhabitants, no cars (accessible only  by cable car) and has been preserved mainly by Christians who run a retreat center here. Stunningly beautiful environment. This is the view from our balcony.
The week includes silence and meditation. Either will I die here or come out a different person. Maybe both.

Update: Silence is such a blessing for a multimedia talker.   

Incarnate 2009

Spent 2 days for a quick meeting in Birmingham. Every other year, the European DAWN team and eurochurch.net sponsor a common conference. Next year, it will be called "Incarnate" and will take place May 5-7 in Rome. We will have Gerard Kelly from Crossroads Church Amsterdam as well as Prof. Johannes Reimer from Germany - missiologist, autor, evangelist and church planter. I suggest you reserve the dates - promises to become a thrilling and challenging meeting. 

Quick visit to Norway

I am sitting on the veranda of Ansgar School, the largest Bible institute in Norway. We had a One Day DAWN Europe team meeting: Marc van der Woude (NL), Andrew Jones (GB), Paulo Pascoal (Portugal), Andreas Wolf (D) and Ovind Augland (NO). We reconfirmed our working together as a team - a matrix of regional and special area coordinators. We do not know what the best way of creating more Jesus communities in Europe is, but we are together and believe that God is weaving us into HisStory in Europe. You are welcome to connect to us if more, better and new churches and whole nations are your concern.

I love Norway. The freshness of the air and the beauty of land and people is special. Will fly home today, then to Birmingham on Wednesday.

Honest questions about the Lakeland revival

Found this honest and well-balanced report about the Lakeland revival by the author of Charisma magazine today.

Jesus of the Scars

 

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by Edward Shillito

If we have never sought, we seek Thee now;
Thine eyes burn through the dark, our only stars;
We must have sight of thorn-pricks on Thy brow,
We must have Thee, O Jesus of the Scars.

The heavens frighten us; they are too calm;
In all the universe we have no place.
Our wounds are hurting us; where is the balm?
Lord Jesus, by Thy Scars, we claim Thy grace.

If, when the doors are shut, Thou drawest near,
Only reveal those hands, that side of Thine;
We know to-day what wounds are, have no fear,
Show us Thy Scars, we know the countersign.

The other gods were strong; but Thou wast weak;
They rode, but Thou didst stumble to a throne;
But to our wounds only God's wounds can speak,
And not a god has wounds, but Thou alone.

 

 

 

 

Meditated on these words during the last few days. Struck a very deep chord. Maybe "Thomas the doubter" knew intuitively why he wanted to recognize Jesus by his scars.
Congregationalist minister Edward Shillito wrote this poem from the viewpoint of the maimed and suffering British soldiers returning from WWI in 1918.

Zwitsers plukken voetbalfans kaal

Dutch football fans feel that they get ripped off in Switzerland - understandably so. My nation was always good at taking money from others.
Much less good are we in giving: Only 0.4% of the national income will be spent for the poorest of the poor of the earth - that is among the least of the rich nations, still topped by the USA (0.17%)

In 1970, 22 of the world's richest countries pledged to spend 0.7% of their national income on aid for development. 36 years later, only 5 countries have kept that promise: Denmark, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden - all of them above 0.7%. See the whole overview on the Millennium Campaign here.
I am deeply ashamed for Switzerland.

But we keep our image clean: 100.000 football fans left 20 tons of garbage on Monday night in downtown Bern. Next morning, everything was clean again. Oh yes, at that we are good.

Football Almighty

Switzerland is under a ban. It is round and black and white and overwhelmingly omnipresent. 45000 Dutch yesterday in Bern!!!

Windows offline editor and new photo albums

I am writing this with Windows Live Writer - great little offline blog editor. And: I put new photo albums on Picasa - see the links on the left side. Welcome to browse and to spy on my life :-)
Note: Google is so almighty that the links sometimes do not work. Keep on knocking at the door...

time for photos

I got myself a practically new Nikon D80 for very little money. Fantastic camera, pure fun to make good pics immediately. Hope to grab creation, beauty and people around me in a better way. 

A week away in the mountains - Newbiginning

I retreated for a week to our house in the Graubünden mountains to work on my dissertation and come to rest. When you have 4 or 5 jobs, you easily feel ruled by authorities and powers :-) - I am re-learning to live a rhythm where my soul can breathe freely. Which is indispensable for creative intellectual work.

Among many good books, Lesslie Newbigin is outstanding. I am reading "Foolishness to the Greeks - The gospel and Western culture" and enjoy it immensely. I now understand why he has influenced so many thinkers lately. I realize how small many of the protestant / evangelical / charismatic concepts are and how they have followed the schism dictated by enlightenment: that you can cherish your values, your private spiritual life and church, as long as you leave the public sector to the world of facts. I do not yet know how to deal with this, but its an eye-opener.  How does this view relate to the classical German / Swiss Free Church? What changes need to come about so that churches become really missional? That's the question of my thesis.

Between the times

Crazy time. Another revival to deal with (o Lord...). At least, it has been "extended indefinitely" (as their website promised). Well, I have to go to Florida in 2 weeks, maybe.....

This week, we had a family vacation: my 4 brothers and sisters and our spouses spent 3 days together in the Black Forest. Great time!!

Then, back home, I organized 2 or 3 meetings, worked for my Hotel job, talked and skyped to several people all over the world, and try to get ready for our next appointment - we take a workshop "writing celtic prayers" in Einigen. Thats gonna be a very different weekend again...

Sometimes, in between, that soft, still, voice: what is all this for?

Social engagement, female and male worship

We are sitting in a living room in London - 9 leaders worshipping Jesus in unison male voices. We meditate on John 12 - Mary anointing Jesus. Answering the male critics, Jesus remarks that "you always have the poor among you, but you will not always have me". We will always have poors - a world that desperately needs our help. But Jesus still is something special.
Missional church is reaching out to a world of "poors". However, we must not forget the times where we worship the King of Kings - specially, exclusively, focused. Otherwise, service among the "poor" can spiritually dry us up. Ideally, service among the poor grows out of / is another expression of worshipping the One who made Himself poor for our sake.

And: here is a woman expressing her love to Jesus in a very feminine way. Fantastic. I just wonder: how would a man have expressed his deep love for Jesus? Much of the "worship" in churches is very feminine. I often watch men during worship times; some sing, some dont, many look not very much at ease. I think its a reduction to have so many  feminine worship songs.

London - a new network?

I sit in Steff Nash's living room in London together with 8 other SCP leaders. We need new forms of international networking in strategic church planting, and we are talking and praying in what direction this will go, starting with Eurafrasia, but maybe later beyond that. Special joy to meet my old friend, prayer leader Brian Mills, again after several years.
I enjoy the fellowship but feel that global networking is no longer as high on my personal priority list as it used to be. I feel I am definitely going back local and regional.

Eurochurch and Roxburgh

I spent two days in Portugal at the eurochurch.net conference, with Alan Roxburgh as one of the main speakers. I had liked his material from his extensive website, and after listening and having a breakfast conversation with him on missional church, I was quite impressed. He shared an interpretation of Luke 10 with us which puts a high confidence in the God who is active "out there", as well as in the conversation that we are supposed with people in "their home". Gave me a lot to think.

Here you find Alan's reflexion on the Portugal conference and the situation of European leaders.

Great weekend in Germany

This was fun in Germany. I spent the Saturday with 40 leaders, pastors and elders of a German denomination - all men and women who want to move forward and change something about the way the do church in the future.

Then 2 nights with my Brother Hans-Werner and his wife Barbara - enjoying church with them, visiting my parents' cemetery place, going out and enjoying a movie. Great time!

Then, on Monday, we had the second German Church Planting Leaders' Round Table in Frankfurt. After some discussion on paragraphs, vision and strategy, we felt that this is going to be a very valuable tool. Planting new churches in Germany is just not only one denomination's thing - so sitting at a table, complementing and learning from each other makes real sense.

Returned home late night - great travelling thanks to the German ICE's.

On the road again

Finally, on the move again. Last night, a fantastic Katie Melua in Zürich - hmmmmm. My son and his wife had given me the ticket for my birthday - thanks Markus and Martha!

Katie is such a fantastic artist, optically and acustically :-) An when I read this morning that she loves the unforgettable Eva Cassidy, I appreciated her even more.

After a night in the ICE train (sleeping on three seats), I am sitting in Köln Main Station right now, having a good German breakfast and looking forward to this day. I will be spending the day with leading pastors of a small German denomination helping them to understand what all this paradigm shift is about. Tomorrow, I stay with my brother Hans-Werner, and on Monday we have the 2nd German Church Planting Round Table in Frankfurt.

After coming home late for a night, I will then start again going to Portugal to attend the Eurochurch conference near Lisbon.

A new calling

Last night it was decided: From July onwards, I will work 50% with "Sport Life" in Thun. Grown out of a sports mission, they are a growing group of mainly young adults trying to find a way to grow and further the Kingdom, without being "church" in the classical sense. I will help them as a trainer, discipler, motivator. I have known this work and their leader for some years and look forward very much to travelling the Journey again in closer connection to a community. Hope they will challenge me physically,too :-)

Are we losing something?

We just had a little informal meeting of missional leaders of our region in my house. The main question: how are we personally dealing with the transition to the postmodern / postchristian "church"? How do we deal with our brothers and sisters in the region? Thun is spiritually quite an interesting and alive region, almost a kind of "Colorado Springs" of Switzerland :-) Some questions we tackled:

- Language: How do we develop a language that makes it possible to communicate to other Christians and church leaders what we are doing - without giving them in every sentence the impression "we are no longer good"? For a modern person, "new" means "better than the old" - therefore they feel they have to defend the "old"; for a postmodern, "new" can be "just a different way of expressing it".

- Mission: When Church is being "pulverized into society", how do we maintain the communal effect of public presence and impact? Is it OK to radically "individualize" the evangelistic effect - only? What about public proclamation?
And: We do no longer "only" save souls but we try to impact society. Are we saving any souls any more? We have not noticed a significant higher rate of bringing people into the Kingdom. Not yet? Or is the "missional" way in the end less evangelistic than the old style of EE or the 4 Spiritual Laws or the Seeker-sensitive Church?

- Transcendence: In our incarnational meetings, we experience the immanence of God well. He is amongst us and expressed in what we are doing. But do we also experience his transcendence - those moments where the veil opens, where you touch - or are touched by - heaven? I had this at times in times of communal prayer or worship; it often has to do with a larger crowd (why, btw??). Today, I am lacking it.
Of course - many have matured and have developed their own prayer life and style. No more need for a worship "leader" and his band. Yet, in the end of the day the question remains: where do we experience God's transcendence? Where are we awe-inspired in the missional church? We try to be no longer dualistic. Is there the danger to become "monistic" - only one world? We force our eyes to remain open to the world around us. Can we still close them (except in sleep)?

CRM

A few weeks ago, I met Mark Reichmann in Karlsruhe. We spent two hours in conversation, mainly in his NUN coffee house (go and check it out if you are ever in this town). He gave me some informations on Church Resource Ministries (CRM) which I am reading through. Quite an influencial movement, very balanced and multi-dimensional. Sam Metcalf is their president, today I found his blog http://www.undertheiceberg.com which has much excellent material. A treasure of wisdom for leaders.