La Grand Place

From a few days there in the summer of 2012. Beautiful and strategic city.

BRU and AZ favorites

Click to enlaaaaaaaarge.

Also, I'm starting my annual blog sabbatical a little early. It's been a bit crazy since I returned. I'm also writing a report about our time in Europe, contact me if you would like a copy. See you in September.

Reflections - 2012 Belgium

I consider my time in Europe last week to be extremely valuable on a lot of levels - for our vision team from Grace, for my role with Ember and how we could possibly continue to help student mission ventures and personally, as a futuristic developer. Here's a few quick reflections:

+ Our time worshipping with the Flemish speaking church was just fun. It gave me a new appreciation for what spiritual communities look like in a city that is unreached. Certainly it was one morning with one faith community, but if that was any representation of other Christ followers, there is a vibrancy and hunger that's captivating.

+ I'm still inspired from our time with the team in Bielefeld, Germany. I don't want to sound old, but those leaders look so so young. And that's the gist - four 27 year olds who started a new church to reach their friends and change their whole city. They are serving and being released with an organization with some solid leadership development process and a history of provable results. They are indigenous and have an inherent understanding of their context. They are wholly committed - all in - and believe that they can transform their city on the way to changing the world. It might be tempting for us to help encourage or fund or support them. Those all might be possible or we may just need to cheer them on as we get out of their way.

+ 40% of the population of Brussels leaves the city every year. As Carlton Deal said we should see this as growing and sending them instead of a loss due to transition. Highly applicable to our suburbs outside of DC.

+ STC Brussels is on to something - it is a clear example of the flip between believe->belong versus belong->believe. I had a very spiritual conversation with a very kind Italian middle aged woman who was in Brussels because of her work with the EU. She wasn't interested in church at all, but came to STC because she cared about her community and wanted to serve her city.

+ Leadership in trios - groups of 3 leaders that work together.

+ What is God's mission for this city and how can we align ourselves with that?

Still a Good Idea

I'm leaving with an Ember team for Queen Creek, AZ later today. It's been kind of a whirlwind between returning from Europe earlier this week and AZ today. Jet lag, re-entry eating, a swim meet for my kids, and getting a few hours in at the day job to burn as little vacation time as possible - I thought it was a good idea at the time.

Actually, I still think it's a good idea. There is a small group of students that are going to have the trajectory of their lives clarified through this experience and it's Ember's responsibility to catalyze that as best we can. If it means slugging through jet lag to get on another plane a few days later to eventually watch these kids impact human history, well you agree - that's a small price to pay.

Thanks for thinking of us this week as we serve with some leaders that are sold out to bring the love of God to their community.

BRU - The Grand Place

The Grand Place. Voted the most beautiful European city square. Every other year, they line up the center with a huge flower carpet. Belgians love their flowers. It is a stunning sight, obviously the photo doesn't do it justice.

BRU - church buildings

We went in a good number of old church buildings. Almost all of them did not have a faith community to speak of. One of our hosts said that even though you hear church bells ringing all the time, they are museum pieces.

This was a church in Leiden, The Netherlands, that was only used for weddings.

BRU - coverings

There is more observable religious diversity in Brussels than probably most places in the US. We noticed a lot of head coverings in Brussels, like this one in an old church, but not so much in Leiden or Bielefeld. Mohammad has been the most popular boys name in Belgium for the past few years. Brussels will be the first EU city to be majority Muslim if current trends continue. And not such a great idea to ask two Muslim ladies, "Where is the City2 Mall?" No, nothing bad happened, but you would think I would know better.

BRU - Daily Debrief

We had multiple times where we as a team decompressed what we observed. Some days, we did this more than once, some days we didn't at all. We used these four questions to frame our discussion:
- What did you observe? [fact]
- What does that tell you about the culture? [meaning]
- What could that mean for partnership? [joining]
- What does that project for the future in the United States? [futuristic]

Photo: Overlooking the Marollen neighborhood, from the Palace of Justice, which was the largest building constructed in the 19th century.

Brussels - Tuesday

Last full day back in Brussels where we spent time taking a rest day, seeing the sights and both formally and informally decompressing ideas about what we have seen. Lots more to say at a later time. Carver and I fly home tomorrow, the rest of the team the day after.

Here's some stuff off the top of my head:
- the tasks of a vision trip are much more complex than a missions trip - lots of layers, complexities.
- there is lots of cool stuff going on in this part of the world. we all leave definitely inspired about what could be possible.
- this was a very fun team to work and observe with. they all have lots of gifts, talents and experiences that add value to each of us and our task before us. that's not ordinary.

Monday - Bielefeld

Manuel Pohl, lead pastor for ICF Bielefeld, 27 years old, married, no kids. Been in existence for one year, 40-50 people in the community.
Bielefeld - small to medium sized city, 200,000 people, 20,000 university students, city is growing, no tourists come here. Many German Russians eventually settle here, biggest church is Russian - 4000 people. Insulated culture - not interested in even making eye contact with other people.
People get married and have children later. German birthrate [1.7] is true, Turkish are having lots more babies than Germans. 120 churches in the city, 15 or 20 are growing, 20,000 are churched.

We do church for our friends, not to please other churches.
a lifestyle of Vision + Fellowship + Action = anything is possible.
6 values
- at the heart beat of time
- excited about life
- experience fellowship
- developing potential
- giving the very best
- nothing is impossible

Haven't seen many teams this young that have such a passion for reaching their city.

ICF - Leiden - Arie Spannderman

Arie
vision of young generation, 1000 people, church that plants churches, first plant in 5 years - healthy things reproduce
principles the same but church in European style - celebration, style, quality, creative
VIP lifestyle - if a person is a VIP for God, they should be a VIP for us as well
looks for in leaders: chemistry, charisma, potential, obedience to God
you need an open feedback culture
Attending church every week is a big commitment for Europeans
classify themselves as an early adopter church
At the heart beat of time - you are at the heart of people like Jesus wanted.

Lieden -Sunday

we took a train today to lieden netherlands to meet up with a church plant there from the icf movement. they were incredibly hospitable which included lunch a walking tour of the city center, dinner and a qa session with their lead planter arie.

lieden is a small university town of about 200000 people, 10 minutes away from the north sea.

icf started in zurich and has been exploding new churches all across europe. the most intriguing core value of theirs: 'at the heartbeat of time.'

church was two celebrations this evening at 5and 7pm staged in a community theater. they also set up a lounge with drinks to try and build community. very young gathering with high energy worship.

more on arie later.

Brussels - Saturday

Very rough notes from a vision team I am participating on to research possible partnerships in Europe for my church.

church service in the am - church svc with a flemish comm. profound to worship with a community in an unreached city. makes church in the us look dead

STC Brussels - kick off day
Marolles neighborhood - poorer and more marginalized
the Palace of Justice over looks this neighborhood
clean up day - meant to clean but also to have a presence
"We weren't just picking up trash, we were ______"

Carlton and Shannon Deal
[who I met in 2007]
church:
1 - faith - believe
2 - community - belong
3 - mission - purpose
mission first - STC

all expressions of The Well - once a month
different expressions - other three times
trio of leaders - equipping normal people - church in the neighborhoods
worship expressions - 3 per week
practice expressions - 9
like to meet in public space - 15-40 people
learning reproducibility

we have no back row
what is god's mission of this city? we should align with that.

lots of friendship needs - 25% muslim, 10% growth in 8 years, 2030 - first EU city to be majority Muslim
higher percentage of Christians than other cities - 10% - due to migration, African, Brasilian, etc Christians
gather and scatter
40% of population leaves every year - see this as growing and sending them
STC has partnerships with Intl Bacc schools for service requirements
Very uncommon for Belgians to talk about faith in public.
Belgian kids have off of school every Wed aft.

Some pictures here.

Brussels - Friday

Very rough notes from a vision team I am participating on to research possible partnerships in Europe for my church.

1.1M people
.2 to .5% evangelical
center of Europe

Dan - EFCA, Global Reach, Serve the Church, pastors an Armenian church.
avg size of a church here 30-50 people.
The Church has let them down or they hate the church.
tons of ethnic churches in Brussels.
200 people in a French speaking Belgian church - that is a megachurch here.
lots of Buddhism, mysticism, fortune tellers.
Pockets of neighborhoods here:
Morrocon
Turkish
Polish
Itailians are everywhere

downtown - mostly business, govt offices
new business - out by airport, near new NATO offices
no God consciousness
Belgians love flowers - flower carpet in the grand square every other year.

Scott - EFCA, Global Reach, pastors a Flemish church.
Flanders area of Brussels is #1 in suicide rate in Western Europe.
There are church bells going off all the time but they are just museum pieces.

Olivier - church planter, 60 people.
his church hosted Willow's leadership summit the last 3 years.
Some people have started using 'CC' - code for Christian community, instead of the word church
'Gospel' is a nonthreatening word here. They only know it as Gospel music.
Volunteerism is not a big value in Europe.
2 Christian bookstores here in Brussels - combined the size of a small restaurant. Avg cost of a book is 30E.

Better practice our team is thinking through - every city we send a team to has an Advance Vision team go - scout, meet with people, prayer walk.

Some pictures here.

2012 Brussels team

Here's the 2012 Brussels team. From the left, Wayne, Lisa, Kristen, Ken, Alex, Carver, moi.

Thanks for praying for our team. Please pray for clarity, discernment and learning postures for all of us. Additionally, I'll be doing some thinking in these filters: symbols, heros, structure, concepts, context and execution.

Final Brussels Prep Meeting

+ Logistics: airport, packing, who is going where when, credit cards, passports, schedules, cell phone expectations

+ Goals - what are you trying to learn when we have time with ministry leaders
- vision
- passion
- how can we help
- lessons learned - what did and did not work
- demographics - current and target
- how can we encourage them
- how they think
- consistent and repeatable behaviors and why

+ Values - GRACE's core values and how they fit

+ GRACE's strengths - what does GRACE do well and can those things transfer to partnerships

+ Schedule intentional processing time for our team, 2 or 3 times a day after a significant time
- include a set of consistent questions that we work through each time.

For those of you that might not know, this is a vision team that is going to Brussels next week to explore possibilities for partnerships for our church. Not your standard missions trip.

Photo: Kristen our leader on the left, Wayne one of the team, on the right.

[Related: 2012AZ mtg #1, 2008Hungary mtg #3, 2007Hungary mtg #3, 2006Cameroon mtg #3, 2005Brasil mtg #1.]

Global Vision Team - Belgium

I'm traveling to Belgium in late June on a vision team with some global strategy leaders with GRACE. Our purpose is to scout out some faith communities, ministries and social enterprises for some potential long term partnerships as part of GRACE's efforts to in Europe. This partnership also has some specifics like focusing on the emerging generation, being involved in a church planting movement and helping us learn about post-Christian culture. I'm excited to both go there and to participate on a team like this - I've never been on a vision team before but read lots of vision team reports. It's a unique purpose that requires some interesting skills so I'm looking forward to learning a lot.

The first part of something like this is similar to traveling for other reason - check out the demographics. For instance, Brussels has a population 1.8M with a population density of 16857/sq mile. Compare that with where you live [DC is 617K and 10065/sq mile; Baltimore is 619K : 7671/sq mile.]

But what we are going to be doing is a lot of observing and discerning. Here's some of the big things I'm thinking through:
cultural icons - symbols; heros; organizational, environmental and physical structures - what do these things tell us about the culture.
concepts, context and execution - which of these are transferable and which ones aren't and why not.
handles - where can people step in and tangibly get involved.
serving vs. systems - like handles, getting people involved in serving is easier than systems for serving.
reciprocity - can we go to them is a simple question. can we host them in our context is much more complex.

Here's some vision-type stuff I've been reading of late.
Observing Tokyo
Edinburgh, Scotland