The Hellands in Holland

 Last year I got a stack of World War II movies for a bargain at a local store. In that stack is the priceless true story of Hugh O'Flaherty during World War II. O'Flaherty was a priest in the Vatican in Rome. This ingenious priest was the mastermind of an underground movement to house and save over 6,500 jews and allied soldiers. He was so audacious that the nazi germans painted a large circle around the vatican saying that if O'flaherty crossed that line he would be killed. This did not hold him back. Instead he would disguise himself as a nun, a street cleaner, a beggar, etc. in order to get into travel incognito throughout Rome to help refugees. He was so daring that he even dressed up as a German general in order to go into a German prison and give last communion to a fellow priest who was to be exectuted. The stunts and risks that he took were amazing. For example, they housed many Jews and refugees in a house next door to the gestapo offices. They seemed always t...

As a young man, Phil did not know or really believe in God. However, one day something bizarre happened. He had a motorcycle accident where a car ran over both of his legs and he just got right back up and kept on riding. This was the beginning of his journey to discover that there was a God desiring to know him and use his life.  I went to school in Chile with Jenna and Aaron his two kids. It was in Chile where I got introduced to a truly Apostolic and Prophetic work. I remember Phil preaching with his American accent how a healthy church has babies. (It plants churches). This was more than a theory, it took place as now the Vineyard Churches of Chile have spread throughout that country as well as to other Latin American nations.  It was also at that church in Santiago when I was first exposed to the ministry of prophets and prophetic presbyteries. One guy told me simply how much God loved me and I recall feeling as if I was laying in the hands of God for the next 24...

Femke has revolutionized the course of my life. As a teenager I remember hearing horrible stories about Amsterdam and thinking, I will gladly go anywhere (Africa, South America, etc.), but I don't want to go there. Now that I have lived here seven years, I love it. We met each other at an internship at Metro Ministries (www.metroministries.com) in New York City  working with inner-city children in 2001. It was the same time as the Twin Tower attack. I remember seeing her and thinking that she was pretty, but I was sure I would go live in a Spanish speaking country. To my amazement, the moment I though that, she started speaking Spanish to a Mexican girl standing by her. This was just the first of many surprises that led me to discover that she was the woman of my dreams. After Metro, we had and year and a half long distance courtship with her in Amsterdam and myself in Oklahoma. When I visited her, I followed her around to the 4 to 5 children's clubs she did a week. She w...

  Upon first moving to Europe, I set out to find the top people who were presenting the gospel successfully in a secular, post-christian context such as Europe. My neighbor was an American guy who had come to know Christ through a Church in New York City with a Pastor called Tim Keller. He started giving me access to all of Keller's sermons and my world was rocked. I now have hundreds of his sermons on my computer, all of his books (in Dutch) and my teaching and ministry bare the fingerprints of this master teacher. What makes him so good you may ask:   Tim Keller does not ever preach with a us vs. them style. His intelligent discourses cross the huge intellectual gulf that is often present between secular culture and Christian (sub) culture. His constant hammering on grace saving us, not religious moralism or secular autonomy, really cause us to re-evaluate why we do what we do. He is one of the best at teaching with confidence and assertively, while showing res...

Neil Cole's book Organic Church has been very formative on my life and ministry. Through his writings, I now articulate that I want to become an expert on Prayer, Discipleship, Leadership Development, Church Planting, and starting a Movement (in that order). You can 't skip a step. However, the most powerful tool I got from him was his Life Transformation Group idea. ( http://www.cmaresources.org/files/Cultivating-NeilCole-chap8.pdf ). This is basically where you get groups of 2 or 3 who regularly go through 11 accountability questions, read 25-30 chapters weekly out of the Bible and pray for friends and family to meet Christ. The first year I did this I saw my one group multiply in many more. More importantly, it got me reading on a consistent basis large amounts of scripture and taught me what it is to have deep friendships with other men. I have only met him once in person in Germany at a conference, but his teachings have born much fruit in my life and ministry. I ...

A great example of a word of knowledge just flopping out of your mouth without you realizing it is when my mother years ago in Chile recieved a cake from the neighbor lady. Suddenly she said, "There is glass in the cake." She did not know why she said that, but when she cut the cake open, she found glass. The milk bottles were made of glass at that time and a bottle had broken. That sudden information coming out of my mother's mouth potentially saved someone from an injury or worse.

My parents and my sibling have had more formative influence on my life than anyone else. I grew up looking up to everyone of them wanting to be just like my father and my big brother Aaron. My father was an Evangelist and the co-founder of the Pentecostal Bible School in Chile. I remember traveling with him and watching him preach, teach, and pray for the sick. I wanted to be just like him when I grew up. As a young teenager, I was a carbon copy of my brother, Aaron. His prayer life was very formative of my own. Whenever my father had to travel for an extended period of time my mother would experience odd, inexplainable things take place around the home. One day after having left my father at the airport, a large glass light cover  fell where I normally played in my room for no apparent reason. My mother told my brother and it was then as a 14 year-old that he began praying every day for at least an hour. Nothing else happened in the months my father ...

Here is a useful teaching I got a few years ago at a New Wine conference here in Amsterdam on using words of knowledge in ministry. I use these notes to teach on this gift and more importantly to challenge people to step out and grow in hearing God's voice supernaturally (which by the way should be quite natural).   Words of Knowledge- Insight or information not known naturally but supernaturally.   One of the revelatory gifts which include words of knowledge , wisdom, prophecy and discernment.   1.        JESUS’ ENCOUNTER WITH NATHANIEL – John 1:43f   Ministry to   believer             Philip witnesses to Nathaniel about Jesus – but Nathaniel shrugs it off – “can               anything good come out of Nazareth?” v46 a)      He thought he understood scripture b)     He ...

34 Years Ago Today (Actually tomorrow, Jan. 12) Today is my birthday, and every year when I am home I get to hear the dramatic story of my birth retold by my mother. I was born in Chile , South America . The doctors had said I was dying and need to be pulled out immediately. The only hospital in the city that had an incubator was the military hospital. Therefore, they snuck my mom through the back door of the hospital. Once in, the doctor gave my mother anaesthesia so she wouldn't feel the cuts. Unfortunately, they gave her too much. After pulling me out of my mother's womb, my mother stopped breathing. They got her breathing again, but instead of watching her, they left her in the hall way all alone. My mother is a nurse and knew that it was very likely that she would stop breathing again. The only nurse who came by told her that her baby boy was going to die. As she lay there, all she could do was begin to pray Psalm 23 where it says,   "Yeah, though I walk through ...

7“For there is hope for a tree,  if it is cut down, that it will sprout again,  and that its shoots will not cease. 8  Though its root grows old in the earth,  and its stump dies in the ground, 9  yet at the scent of water it will bud  and put forth branches like a young plant. Job 14:7-9 This is a beautiful picture of the possible future of Christianity in Western Europe. In many ways, people may think that Christianity here may seem like a dead stump in the ground compared to what it used to be. Gert Maak, a dutch historian, writes in De eeuw van mijn vader   that in 1899, 97% of people in Holland said that they belonged to a church. Now in 2013, it is estimated that around 2-3% of people in Amsterdam go to church.   The Netherlands has a Christian heritage which is hard to ignore. For example Maak says in another publication that the reason the social system of Holland cares so well for the poor is because this was ...

Voetbal, Boosheid en Kinderen in Amsterdam West Zo geschrokken waren we naar aanleiding van het nieuws van het   overlijden van de grensrechter in Almere. En tegelijktijd ook zo’n gevoel van “hier moeten we iets mee”. Zes jaar geleden zijn we met een kinderclub in Amsterdam Nieuw - West begonnen. Destijds waren er in deze buurt zoveel problemen met jongeren. In de media lazen en hoorden we dat investeren in gezinnen en kinderen op jonge leeftijd preventief kan werken. We hebben vervolgens een k inderprogramma op gezet waarin we thema’s behandelen die deze kinderen helpen ‘op het goede pad te blijven”. Denk aan eerlijkheid, doorzetten, respect, geloven dat je grote dromen mag hebben voor je leven, stoppen met pesten. Wij doen dit vanuit een Christelijke identiteit, maar geven onze lessen op een manier waarop we de Islam respecteren. Dit houdt in dat we verhalen uit de bijbel gebruiken om onze lessen te bekrachtigen, verhalen uit het dagelijks leven en uit de gesch...