Our first service was held at Heilige Geestkerk in Amersfoort Dec 21. Petra Gillies was there with a camera to record the historic service! (her daughter, Anouk, read and husband, Peter, interceded)
Posts from 2015
My eldest daughter, Ruth, used to work for a famous high street retailer. Sadly, the stress in and around Christmas was one of the reasons that she left them. The long hours in the run up to Christmas, the packed shops and stressed shoppers, and the night shifts just before Christmas Day itself when the shop had to be turned around rapidly into Boxing Day ‘sales’ mode, piled huge pressure on assistants and management alike.…
In Utrecht East, the traders association Puur Oost, a day care for people with disabilities, De Wilg and some of the local churches have once again joined hands to organize a lights tour through the neighborhood and the Wilhelmina Park on Friday 18th December. In Utrecht Oost the Christmas story comes to the streets in scenes and narratives and with Christmas music by choirs with candle flames along the designated route. In order for this…
Greetings from Callum, Thirza, Jolanda and Grant! We wanted to share some words for the December newsletter. Thank you for your warm welcome to the Netherlands and to Utrecht and Amersfoort. It probably seems a long time since the interviews happened in June – with all the sun and beautiful weather – and now we have arrived in typical Dutch autumn weather, cold windy and rainy! We wanted to thank you for your prayers over…
Inspired by the name of the new church in Amersfoort, and also because we’ve just celebrated the feast of All Saints, I’ve been thinking of the communion of all saints, as we say in the Creed: I believe in the holy catholic Church: the communion of saints. It is a wonderful thought that God gave us all a place in a community that is held together by our shared love for Christ and each other.…
Advent Bible Study 2015 Tuesday November 24 we started with a weekly Bible study for the Advent. In our days we know about travellers like Joseph and Mary and coming from other cultures like the wise men. Flight to Egypt, Giotto What’s different if we compare our time with 2000 years ago? We are 2000 years closer to what the prophets prophesied about the kingdom of peace. We are 2000 years closer to the fulfilment…
Anglican Church Zwolle Leadership Team has been organizing with Marleen Hengelaar-Rookmaaker some public lectures on Christian Art for this November and December. Please note these dates in your calendar and join us if you can! Dates: Thursday 5 November, Marleen Hengelaar-Rookmaaker speaks on Looking at Art. The first evening will lead us into the world of art, a world that many find quite incomprehensible and hard to enter. Marleen Hengelaar-Rookmaaker will give some guidelines for looking…
We have had a break from our Study Group over the summer, but will return on Friday, 20 November 18.30, to look at Aelred of Rievaulx’s great work called “Spiritual Friendship”. Aelred was the Abbot from 1147 to 1167 of the great English Cistercian Abbey of Rievaulx, near York in the North of England. From the back cover of a translation comes this description: “In a three-book Ciceronian dialogue Aelred defines human friendship as sacramental, beginning…
“I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ lives in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me” Gal. 2:20 The words “not I, but Christ lives in me” have always been rather a stumbling block to me. How can God promise us new life, and at the same…
Peter Gillies is a member of the Taskforce for an Anglican Church in Amersfoort, better known as TACA. He will be providing updates on the progress with new church plant in Amersfoort. This is his contribution for November. The Rev William Archibald Spooner, Warden of New College Oxford, was especially likely to make this sort of malapropism (the title above should read: “The Lord is a loving Shepherd”). And so it is with TACA (Taskforce…