Had a great phone conversation this morning with Sebastiaan Van Wessem. Sebastiaan planted a church in 2006 just outside of Amsterdam. He's had tremendous success and has his sights set on expanding into Amsterdam in a few years.
I've been in Amsterdam several times and have a deep burden for that city. It started in 2000 when I was there for Billy Graham's World Evangelism Conference. I stayed in a hotel just a few blocks away from the red light district. I remember walking through those streets in the evenings and praying for God to do something radical. Since then I've had a dream that at some point I could be a part of a partnership to see a church planting movement take hold in Amsterdam.
Yesterday I preached the third message in our What If series. This week's question: What if we turned our city upside down.
We looked at the Acts 19 account of city transformation in Ephesus. Ephesus was the Amsterdam of the Roman Empire. Large, influential, difficult...Yet a core group of 12 planted a church that disrupted sinful systems and indirectly shut down businesses that profited from the occult. It's one of my favorite stories in the Bible, and my dream for Metro Detroit.
It's so encouraging to see God calling young men to give themselves to transforming the great urban centers of our world.
thrilling!
Posted by: Chilly... | July 15, 2008 at 02:05 PM