John Maxwell once said: “Everything rises and falls with leadership.” In the couple of years that I have been the lead pastor of Thousand Hills International Church I have found that this is so true. The person who takes the lead over a ministry or an event can either make it or break it. Last season I started a little experiment with a new approach to leadership training.

Creating a leadership pipeline

Mac Lake, who at that time was the leadership development pastor of Seacoast Church told me about the mentoring approach that they had been taking. This really helped them develop a large pool of leaders who could help support the continued growth of their church, which now has close to 13.000 people in attendance each weekend. They successfully created a leadership pipeline that helps potential leaders develop into the leader that God has called them to be.

Mentoring

In the last season I led two small mentoring groups, each of 3-4 people. Each of those groups met 5-6 times and we talked about general leadership principles, as well as the vision of the church and ways in which the participants could plug into that vision with their gifts and talents. Especially the personal connection we were able to build with each other was something that was really encouraging to me and to them as well.

When you spend time with each other, you learn to appreciate each other and trust each other more and more. And you’ll learn from each other as iron sharpens iron. The results are far better than when you train potential leaders in a classroom setting and you and they automatically assume that they will be good leaders because they learned the theory. The best way to grow in leadership is by doing it, not by hearing about it.

Leadership development is a slow process, but you can’t shortcut it. After doing these two small mentoring groups I feel that I can never ever leave out the mentoring aspect anymore. But how do you mentor people on a larger scale if we want to increase the pool of potential leaders quickly? We need more and more people to step up and take key roles of leadership if Thousand Hills is to help grow the Kingdom of God in Hilversum and around the world.

JumpStart

This is the idea I came up with, the idea that is now called JumpStart:

1. Read a chapter of John Maxwell’s book Developing the Leader Within You;
2. Come together about once a month on an evening or a Saturday morning with the larger group of people interested in leadership development;
3. During that evening, I will highlight the most important concepts from the chapter we just read and explain the importance of those concepts for the life of the church;
4. Allow time for some questions and answers;
5. All the participants will then split up in their small mentoring groups of 3-4 people (you’re part of the same group during every session);
6. The mentor will facilitate some more in-depth discussion about the concepts that are being studied and what that means personally in the life of the potential leader;
7. Close in prayer, asking God to help us grow in these leadership principles.

If this resonates with you, if you are interested in developing the leader within you, if you would like to hear other leaders’ thoughts on leadership, maybe you should join JumpStart – Developing the Leader within You! These are a few of the other subjects that we will study:

• Integrity: The most important ingredient of leadership
• Problem Solving: The quickest way to gain leadership
• People: Developing your most valued asset
• Vision: The indispensable quality of leadership

How to sign up for JumpStart?

Send us an email if you would like to join JumpStart at info@thousandhills.cc. We will be meeting on 23 September, 30 October, 2 December, 27 January, 3 March, April 14, May 26 and June 30. All of these dates are Thursday evenings (20:00-22:00). Only October 30 is a Saturday morning (10:00-13:30). On that day we’ll have Greg Surratt and his sons Josh and Jason Surratt as guest trainers!

Integrity is what you do when the lights are off and nobody can see what you are doing. As followers of Christ we have to bring our actions in public in line with our actions in private. Many people see Christians as a bunch of hypocrites. Sadly enough, many times they’re right. In Psalm 101 King David talks about living a life of integrity, a blameless life (v.2 NLT):

I will be careful to live a blameless life—
when will you come to help me?
I will lead a life of integrity
in my own home.

So where was the place for David to begin living a blameless life? It was in his home! You might put on a nice mask on Sunday mornings, but your spouse and children know the real you. They see how you respond to difficulty. They know what books you are reading, and what shows you are watching. They hear your unpolished language.

If our right living get thrown out the window the moment we step inside our homes or into our cars, we have a serious issue in the area of integrity. Now what do we need to do if we want to live that life of integrity, a blameless life that is pleasing to God?

1) Ask God to help you

In verse 2 David said: “I will be careful to live a blameless life – when will you come to help me?” David went back to the source. God is the one who could help him lead this blameless life. So the first key towards living a life of integrity is to ask God to help us. Now how do we do that? By submitting our lives to God in prayer! When we pray and ask God to help us, we open our lives to the Holy Spirit to change us from the inside out, not only when people can see us, but also at home.

The apostle Paul said: “Walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh” (Gal. 5:16 NASB). There is a cause-and-effect relationship here. When we focus on walking by the Spirit, we automatically will no longer do things according to our sinful nature. You don’t focus your attention on those desires anymore and don’t spend time nurturing them. Instead, the Holy Spirit will produce this kind of fruit: “Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control” (Gal.5:22).

So: the first step is asking God to help us live a life of integrity!

2) Watch out for stuff that influences you negatively

In verses 3-5 and 7-8 David gives a lot of attention to the kind of people he does not want to hang out with anymore. He hates “all who deal crookedly,” does not “tolerate people who slander their neighbors,” and “will not allow deceivers to serve” him. He didn’t want his life to be influenced negatively by these people.

You might say: “How can I ever share the Gospel with those people if I am not allowed to spend time with them?” Good point. We do live in a new day. I guess the questions we all need to ask ourselves is: “Who influences who?” If they do not influence you, but you are able to influence them in a positive way, I guess there is no reason to not spend time with them. But if they pull you back into the lifestyle you lived before you came to know Christ, it’s probably better to stay away from them… at least for a while.

So… watch out for people who influence you negatively… don’t let them pull you back into gossip, sexual immorality, bitterness, alcohol or drug addictions. But David also said: “I will refuse to look at anything vile and vulgar… I will reject perverse ideas” (v.3-4). I think if David would live today, that he would immediately surf away from a pornographic page on the internet. And if the TV would start showing sensual images, he would zap.

Let’s do the same thing and avoid those kinds of temptations! Instead, let’s fix our thoughts (and eyes!) on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise! (cf. Phil.4:8).

So: the second key to living a life of integrity is that we need to be careful with people and things that influence us negatively and pull us away from our relationship with God.

3) Surround yourself with positive people who hold you accountable

You might think that I am really legalistic after reading the previous point… Well, I am not. These were David’s words. He has a strong point there, though! However, he does not only suggest a couple of things that we should NOT do. He also gives some great positive direction.

The first positive directive was that we need to ask God to help us live lives of integrity. We already saw that. The second positive directive can be found in verse 6: “I will search for faithful people to be my companions. Only those who are above reproach will be allowed to serve me.”

When we want to live a life of integrity, the last thing we should do is isolate ourselves. Other followers of Christ are not perfect. Neither are you. Only by the grace of God we can work towards a closer walk with our Lord and Savior. We should strive to be more and more like Him every day. So: we need to surround ourselves with faithful, positive people who hold us accountable, so that when we stumble we have a lifeline to help pick us back up.

When we live in community… when we surround ourselves with other faithful people, we can learn from each others’ mistakes and gain support from those around us. We can weed out the things that tempt us or try to lead us down the wrong path and help each other to stay on the right path.

Now how do you find those faithful, positive people who will help you lead that blameless life? What are the characteristics of healthy friendships? What do we need to look for in a friend who will encourage us to live blameless and in integrity? Here are a few characteristics that you should look for:

• True friends love sacrificially (remember what Jesus has done for you!)
• True friends  accept unconditionally.
• True friends trust completely.
• True friends keep healthy boundaries.
• True friends give mutual edification (they will also say the things you need to hear, but don’t want to hear!)

Iron sharpens iron

On your quest for integrity, remember that you need to ask God to help you, be careful with negative influences and look for friends who hold you accountable. Proverbs 27:17 says, “As iron sharpens iron, so a friend sharpens a friend.” This is as true today as ever! So if you are part of Thousand Hills, be sure to look for those friends, maybe in your Life Group, Alpha Course group, ministry or service team, or anywhere! You need it! They need it!

This blog post is based on a message I preached at Thousand Hills Hilversum on August 22, 2010. Below is the full sermon video:

Living a Life of Integrity (“The Pretenders” series) from Thousand Hills Int'l Church on Vimeo.

You probably heard the news… Thousand Hills International Church has identified new core values! Since we changed our name from Hilversum International Christian Center to Thousand Hills the banners with our core values have disappeared.

We felt it was very important to revise the core values without throwing out the great heritage that we have as a church since the start in 2006. And we did not want to rush the process. Rather, we wanted to have as many people involved in redefining our core values. Klaas van Mill has done an excellent job in guiding this process.

In an earlier post, on June 17, I presented those core values – exalt, connect, grow, reach and serve – but did not have a chance to elaborate on them. So that’s what I’d like to do in this post and in some posts I will be writing in the coming few weeks. Why on earth did we pick THESE core values? Let me give you a little bit of insight in the first one, Exalt.

Exalt – because God deserves all the glory

In the past the first core value of our church was “Experience Based Worship.” Although I firmly believe that we can experience the presence of God when we seek His face in worship, the goal of worship is not that we experience something. The goal is we please God  with what we offer to Him, our songs, our music, our gifts and talents, our tithes and offerings, but even more than that: He wants us to offer our whole lives to Him!

The world “Exalt” may sound a bit old-fashioned. It is not very common. The reason we picked it is that the word “worship” has been used so often in relation to music, that it now seems to be the name of a musical style. Actually, there is a musical genre called Praise & Worship. The idea you may get is that you can only worship God if you have a great voice.

We can worship Him with our voices (as good or bad as they may be), instruments, but also with our actions if they are pleasing to Him. “Exalt,” because it is fairly unknown, doesn’t have that association with just worship music. When you use a not-so-common word it also allows us to define what we believe “exalt” is really about.

This doesn’t mean that we think having great worship & praise music in church is not important. Not at all! Music is one of the primary vehicles of communication in our current society and people expect the best quality because that’s what they hear on the radio, on TV and download on iTunes. The better the musical quality is of the worship in church and the more the musical style is in line with current musical tastes, the better we will be able to communicate God’s love through our music to our Thousand Hills folks as well as the people outside.

Let’s exalt the Lord together, because He deserves all the glory!

How do you heal the pain in your life? Many people are suffering from emotional pain and it seems they just cannot move on. So they fill their lives with whining and complaining and it gets harder for them everyday to enjoy life. When they talk to others, often they hold 30-minute monologues about all the things that they are struggling with in their lives. As a result, they become lonely because very few people want to hang out with people who suck your energy.

That doesn’t mean we’re never supposed to complain. Many of the Psalms are filled with complaints as well, but the writers of those Psalms bring their complaints to God before they bring them to anyone else.

King David was an expert complainer, and Psalm 69 is one of the prayers he prayed asking God to turn things around in his life. In this Psalm we can see how he turned his pain into praise. It seems that here he expresses the feelings he had when he was hurt by people who doubted his integrity when he raised an enormous amount of money and resources to build the temple in Jerusalem.

A great summary of this Psalm are verses 29 and 30 (NLT):

I am suffering and in pain.
Rescue me, O God, by your saving power.
Then I will praise God’s name with singing,
and I will honor him with thanksgiving.

What are the some of the things David did to turn all the pain he was suffering into praise?

1) He acknowledged his situation

David said to God that he was in suffering and in pain. A big part of the Psalm puts more words to these feelings of David (see vv.1-4,7-11). It even got so bad that David said: “I am the favorite topic of town gossip, and all the drunks sing about me” (v.12). When was the last time the drunks in your town sang about you? That’s what I mean… it got pretty bad for David!

Before David could receive any healing, he needed to look in the mirror and stop pretending! He needed to acknowledge to God that his situation was pretty desperate. And he did! And so should we if we want the pain we are carrying around to be turned to praise.

2) He prayed, prayed and prayed

Psalm 69 is a prayer interjected with lots of complaining (or the other way around: lots of complaining interjected with some prayers). He said: “Rescue me, O God, by your great power!” This was a very short prayer. But short prayers work when you have a solid relationship with the Lord. Why? Just compare how you sometimes only need to look in a certain way or speak one word and your spouse or your best friend immediately knows what’s going on in your mind.

David prayed other kinds of prayers in this Psalm:

• Prayers of confession: “O God, you know how foolish I am; my sins cannot be hidden from you” (v.5)
• Desperate prayers of supplication: “But I keep praying to you, Lord, hoping this time you will show me favor… Rescue me from the mud; don’t let me sink any deeper! … Answer my prayers, O Lord, for your unfailing love is wonderful… Don’t hide from your servant; answer me quickly, for I am in deep trouble! Come and redeem me; free me from my enemies.” (vv.13-14,16-18)
• Angry prayers: “Come and redeem me; free me from my enemies… Let their eyes go blind so they cannot see… pour out your fury on them; consume them with your burning anger… pile their sins up high, and don’t let them go free. Erase their names from the Book of Life…” (vv.18,23,24,27,28). Ssshhh… don’t tell anyone if you ever prayed prayers like this… they make you seem really immature and unspiritual… Just one thought, though: it is much better to communicate with God in anger than not communicate with him at all!
• Thanksgiving: “I will honor him with thanksgiving” (v.30). Always good to be grateful what others do for you, especially if the other person happened to create the universe…
• And then praise…

3) He did not withhold his praise

After he experienced that God had not forgotten him, David said: “Then I will praise God’s name with singing” (v.30). The word used here in Hebrew is “halal” but has nothing to do with food that is ritually clean for Muslims. Here are some of the aspects of the meaning of that Hebrew word: to shine, to praise, to boast, to glory, to act like a mad man, to be clamorously foolish, to rave, to celebrate.

I don’t know about you, but to me that sounds like a big and loud party!!! Sounds like the party we would have had if Holland had won the World Cup! Or it sounds like the party the Spaniards did have! God is not offended at noise; we are offended when people are noisy. When we are truly full of joy, it’s hard to keep quiet. Let’s praise God with all the strength in us! Let’s learn from David, whose pain led him to pray and his pain finally turned to praise.

David knew that God had called him to build the temple. His son Solomon eventually ended up building the temple with the resources his dad had gathered. This didn’t stop David from writing Psalm 30:11-12:

You have turned my mourning into joyful dancing.
You have taken away my clothes of mourning and clothed me with joy,
that I might sing praises to you and not be silent.
O Lord my God, I will give you thanks forever!”

Our mourning will turn into dancing, our pain will turn into praise when we acknowledge the situation we are in to the Lord, when we pray, and when we don’t withhold our praise! Why? Because Jesus gave us the victory when He died on the

This blog post is based on Sebastiaan’s message last Sunday in Thousand Hills International Church. If you would like to view the video of the whole message, check it out here:

Turning Pain into Praise (“The Pretenders” series) from Thousand Hills Int’l Church on Vimeo.

“Nothing lasts, except for change.” That’s what Dutch author Jan Greshoff once said. This is so applicable to the phase of life that Eva and I have ended up in. You probably heard that Eva gave birth to our twin boys Miles and William on March 10.

Our little boys are growing really well and bring lots of joy to our house, but also lots of change. We’re happy that they have been sleeping through the night for quite a while now. But during the day they are not always to happy if we put them down for their nap. In the beginning of September Eva will go back to work and the boys will go into daycare for three days a week.

Three Church Planters Roundtables… one more to go!

Because of the birth of our boys I have been able to travel considerably less since the beginning of this year. The only things I did outside of Holland were co-hosting some Church Planters Roundtables (CPR) for Europe Advance in Zürich (Switzerland) and Stenungsund (near Gothenburg, Sweden) besides the one I hosted in our church in Hilversum.

In total, about 80 pastors and (potential) church planters have attended these CPRs so far. We’ll do one more this year in Braunschweig, Germany, on October 28/29. My good friend Greg Surratt from Seacoast Church in Charleston, South Carolina, will be the main trainer.

Austria trip next week

In just a week from now we’ll drive the 1000 kilometers (600 miles) to Eva’s home town in Upper Austria. This will be a family visit and vacation, but I will also speak at the Freie Christengemeinde Linz, Eva’s home church, on August 15. It’s a great church pastored by Martin Griesfelder, a young, visionary leader.

US trip from October 4-11

And in October I will be traveling to the US to connect with pastors in the Atlanta area about church planting in Europe on October 5, speak at Seacoast‘s First Wednesday service on October 6, connect with pastors in the Raleigh area about Europe on October 8, spend a day with John Siebeling at The Life Church in Memphis on October 9 and share about church planting in Europe during the Sunday services at C3 Church, pastored by Matt Fry, in Clayton, NC. It will be a busy time, but I am really looking forward to it. I will really miss Eva and the boys…

My goal with all of this is that people in and outside of Europe will be inspired to believe that our continent can again be reached with the life-changing message of Jesus Christ. I believe with all of my heart that that is possible. Things do need to change. We need to really focus on planting many new life-giving, relevant churches and revitalize existing churches if we want to see breakthrough happen. Change is needed and you can be a catalyst in bringing that change!

Support needed for our upcoming transition

One more thing that will change is that in November my second four-year term as General Secretary with the Dutch Pentecostal movement (the VPE) will end. I really enjoyed serving this movement for those eight years, but I am sensing in my spirit that I need to focus my energy on my roles as Lead Pastor of Thousand Hills International Church and Lead Team member of church planting network Europe Advance.

I am glad that I get paid part-time by Thousand Hills, but I need to raise funds for the one to two days per week that I will work with Europe Advance and the expenses that I will incur in conjunction with this role.

Before November I still need to raise a significant part of the 1200 euro (1500 USD) that we need per month. Would you pray with us and consider helping our family on a monthly basis? Click here if you want to find out how you can give by credit card, PayPal, bank transfer or check.

Probably one of my favorite Psalms is Psalm 32. It seems like David had been hiding from God. He was trying to hide from God and the effects of his sins and the guilt he felt as a result were so heavy on him that he even suffered physically. But he knew how to experience from that heavy load. Check out verse 5 (NLT):

Finally, I confessed all my sins to you
and stopped trying to hide my guilt.
I said to myself, “I will confess my rebellion to the Lord.”
And you forgave me! All my guilt is gone.

Finally…

I love it how this verse begins with “finally.” You just feel the tension that has been built up in the life of David. He tried hiding from God as long as he could until in the deepest of his being he knew that everything is naked and exposed before God’s eyes. There was no point in trying to hide his guilt from the Lord. So he confessed his sins and rebellions and he experienced God’s forgiveness. David had a clean slate once again. God wiped his sins away!

Now we all are able to experience God’s forgiveness, just like David. But how do we make sure we don’t fall back in our old ways, in the sinful patterns that kept us bound, maybe even for years? How can we live with a clean slate? What do we need to do if we want to experience the forgiveness, the joy, the unfailing love and the victory that God wants to give to us? Here’s three keys for you:

1) Listen to the Spirit when He convicts you of sin

Sin is a silent murderer. Sometimes we know that sin has crept into our lives, but often we don’t even realize it. James 1:14-15 says: “Temptation comes from our own desires, which entice us and drag us away. These desires give birth to sinful actions. And when sin is allowed to grow, it gives birth to death.” Sin starts as a cobweb, becomes thicker and thicker and becomes a rope thick enough to strangle us.

Don’t allow your sins to strangle you so your body will waste away and your strength will evaporate like water in the summer heat. Keep your ears open to that still small voice of the Holy Spirit who convicts you of sin and keeps you from falling.

When we consistently ignore that still small voice of the Holy Spirit, our hearts will become callous and indifferent. It will become harder and harder for us to turn around and come back to God again. So may we be quick to hear when the Holy Spirit confronts something that is wrong in our lives! A little side-note: the Holy Spirit often uses God’s word or people to point out these things… It doesn’t always need to be a voice from heaven. In fact: it usually is not!

2) Stop hiding your sins and confess them to God

So what do we do when the Holy Spirit confronts us? Again these powerful words from David: “Finally, I confessed all my sins to you and stopped trying to hide my guilt. I said to myself, ‘I will confess my rebellion to the Lord.’ And you forgave me! All my guilt is gone” (Psalm 32:5).

God forgives our sins when we confess our sins and stop trying to hide our guilt. It is God’s nature to reconcile and forgive. But we need to confess our sins and repent from our evil ways. Make sure you realize that repentance is more than just feeling sorry in a superficial way for the effects of your sins. Instead: repent of the sins that caused those effects!

Everyone of us has sinned. Everyone of us still sins, albeit in our hearts. But the good news is that “the blood of Jesus, his Son, cleanses us from all sin” (1 John 1:7). Because of the blood of Jesus that was shed on the cross we can be cleansed of our sins! Our disobedience can be forgiven, our sin put out of sight. Our record can be cleared of guilt!

John then goes on to say this: “If we claim we have no sin, we are only fooling ourselves and not living in the truth. But if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness. If we claim we have not sinned, we are calling God a liar and showing that his word has no place in our hearts.” (1 John 1:8-10)

Confession and repentance are key here and James even suggests that it is a good practice as believers to confess our sins to each other and pray for one another so that we may be healed (James 5:16). Don’t walk around with unconfessed sin in your life, but confess it and repent of your ways. Don’t give the devil an opportunity to harden your heart.

3) Walk by the Spirit

So what do you do when you have a clean slate, when your sins are no longer in the way between you and the Lord? Repentance takes you further than confession, because you not only acknowledge your sin, but you now turn from your sin.

You’re heading in a different direction now. Which direction though? Gal 5:16 (NASB) says: “Walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh.” Let the Holy Spirit determine your direction. He is the Spirit of holiness who helps you to become holy.

How do you do that, walking by the Spirit? Psalm 32 gives us some valuable insight here:

• Live in accordance with what you believe: may your life “be lived in complete honesty” (v.2)!
• Always have an attitude of prayer (v.6). See also Ephesians 6:18 (NLT): “Pray in the Spirit at all times and on every occasion.”
• Allow God to “guide you along the best pathway for your life” (v.8). He will “advise you and watch over you”!
• Trust the Lord in everything (v.10).

Results of living with a clean slate

Check out what the results are of living with a clean slate (Psalm 32:10-11 NLT):

Many sorrows come to the wicked,
but unfailing love surrounds those who trust the Lord.
So rejoice in the Lord and be glad, all you who obey him!
Shout for joy, all you whose hearts are pure!

May we all experience that unfailing love and may all our hearts be full of the joy of the Lord!

This blog post is a summary of a message Sebastiaan preached in the “The Pretenders” series in Thousand Hills Hilversum. Make sure you check out the video below:

No Longer Hide From God (“The Pretenders” message series) from Thousand Hills Int’l Church on Vimeo.

All of us have felt let down by people. And all of us have let people down. Often the feeling of being let down can cause us to withdraw from people and even become bitter against them.

King David experienced that many times. In one of the Psalms he wrote, Psalm 62, he describes those feelings, and lays them all bare before God. David found out that that’s the best way to find freedom from burdens that weigh you down.

Look at how David expresses his trust in God when he found out that you need to be careful with trusting in people (Psalm 62:5-8):

Let all that I am wait quietly before God,
for my hope is in him.
He alone is my rock and my salvation,
my fortress where I will not be shaken.
My victory and honor come from God alone.
He is my refuge, a rock where no enemy can reach me.
O my people, trust in him at all times.
Pour out your heart to him, for God is our refuge.

In times of trouble, affliction or opposition by our enemies, we need to turn to God who is our ultimate refuge and deliverer. In the Psalm, David gives us three keys if we want to live a life that is marked by trusting in God:

1) Don’t allow trouble to shake your confidence in God

“He alone is my rock and my salvation, my fortress where I will never be shaken” (Psalm 62:2 cf. v.6). It is so easy to lose trust in people and even in God when things don’t go the way we hoped them to go. If we want to live a life that is marked by a consistent trust in God, we need to make a decision to not allow trouble, crisis or suffering to shake our confidence in God.

Not only does our salvation come from God (v.1), but He himself is our rock, our salvation and our refuge!

2) Pour out your heart to God when you are going through trouble

“O my people, trust in him at all times. Pour out your heart to him, for God is our refuge” (Psalm 62:8) The last thing you want to do sometimes when you have lost all hope is to pour out your heart to God. You just want to keep it to yourself and have a little pity party. Still, the best thing you can do in times of distress or threat is to commit ourselves to Him, stop pretending that all is well, and by earnest prayer tell him all that is in our hearts. Draw as close to Him as you can. The more you know Him, the more you can trust Him!

3) Wait for the Lord to act on your behalf

“I wait quietly before God, for my victory comes from him” (Psalm 62:1 cf. v.5). A third decision we need to make if we consistently want to trust in God is that we choose to wait for the Lord to act on our behalf, knowing and trusting that He will respond in love and compassion for our difficulties. This is not a passive waiting, but more a type of expecting. You know that God is going to come through. It may be earlier or later, but He will do it!

Moses had to learn this lesson himself and teach it to the Israelites. When they were pursued by the Egyptians and everybody lost hope they would survive when they were standing in front of the Red Sea, he told them to hold their peace and allow the Lord to fight their battles (Ex.14:14)!

Trust in God because He will never let you down!

This post is an excerpt from last Sunday’s message at Thousand Hills Hilversum. Here you can check out the video:

Trusting in the One who never lets you down (“The Pretenders” series) from Thousand Hills Int’l Church on Vimeo.

Last Sunday I preached on Acts 6 and I identified three major threats that can endanger the future of any church, especially an international church such as Thousand Hills. In Acts 6 there were “rumblings of discontent.” You wouldn’t expect this in a church where everyone is filled with the Holy Spirit. But the truth is that when a church grows, it will not always be pretty. So what are these three major threats?

1) Disunity

The early church was in some ways very much comparable to Thousand Hills. It was an international church and the two main cultural groups were Hebrew-speaking Jews and Greek-speaking Jews. In Thousand Hills the biggest cultural group are the Dutch, even though it’s an international church. Besides the Dutch we have many other cultural groups. As a total they probably make up 40% of the church, but each of those groups are relatively small in size.

We have to be careful that a church does not become divided along cultural lines. Why? There is a tendency for the largest groups to impose their culture on the church as a whole. While the international flavor is what attracted many Dutch people to our church, their tendency is – probably without even realizing it – to pressure the church to move in a direction that they have been comfortable with in the past. And all of a sudden, we could turn into a Dutch church with services in English and alienate all the internationals.

So we constantly need to guard the vision so that the church remains international, in the language that is being used, in the style of the services and in the organizational structure. We need to do everything we can to stay on the international course, which is the thing that makes us so unique.

In our case, in order to avoid disunity between all the different people groups, it is so important that we create a “third (church) culture” where everybody needs to give something away, but gets a great multicultural experience in return. This third culture needs to be attractive to people who are part of the local culture because we want to reach them, but it cannot be the local Dutch church culture.

Internationals are often so immersed into the Dutch culture that they would like to have a break from that on Sundays. Instead of focusing on fitting into the culture, they need to be able to focus on God and meet others who are going though a similar cultural experience.

That third culture can neither be the culture of one of the other cultural groups in the church. I remember that in the beginning phase HICC was often referred to as the American church. Why? Because so many of our full-time team members were Americans. And that is not a particularly good thing, because there are many people around the world who are not such a fan of American culture.

Even after I took over the role of lead pastor and most of the American team members had left, still many referred to the church as the American church while the Dutch, the South Africans and the Nigerians were all much bigger groups. I think that we have successfully changed the idea in the community that we are the American church and the fact that we have a multicultural pastoral leadership team (Dutch, Australian, American, Scottish and Greek) really helps to communicate this. It also helps us to attract people to Thousand Hills from all over the world. I think we are now more international than ever in the history of our church.

So would you be sensitive to people from other cultures and to people who do not speak your language? Be open to them and try to speak English as much as you can. That way we don’t alienate people who do not speak Dutch or any other language than English when we’re in a conversation. Help us build a church that is united in spite of all the differences! The Holy Spirit makes us one, no matter what culture we are from and which language we speak!

2) Disorganization

A second threat to any church is disorganization. In the story of Acts 6 the success of the gospel leads to an overload of work for the apostles in their administrative skills. They couldn’t cope any more with all the work, so the rumbling started.

We have quite a bit of organization at Thousand Hills. We’re not overly organized, but have as much as is needed for a growing church of about 300 people. I am so happy that we have people on our leadership team who are very structured and organized because if I would be the only person leading the church, I am sure there would be a lot of disorganization. I am a visionary and a connector. But I have learned that organization is not very high on my skills list.

There are two school of thought concerning church organization:

• Some believe the church should not have formal organization. It should not have buildings or paid staff. The house church model is the preferred model. The people who love this model believe that when the church gets organized it programs the Holy Spirit out.
• Others think the church should be like a well-oiled business. It needs all kinds of boards, committees, sub-committees, etc. If God wants to speak, he needs to get a place on the meeting agenda at least two weeks before the meeting…

Both extremes are wrong. God is highly organized, yet fluid. The size of the church determines the need for organization. The church in Acts was several thousands, so they needed quite a bit of organization. But they chose to organize it by relying on men full of the Holy Spirit. Let’s learn from them!

3) Distraction

The third threat was distraction. The apostles must have been tempted to solve the problem the wrong way. Their solution could have become worse than the problem they were trying to solve. I can almost hear the rumbling of the people against the apostles. They were probably thinking something along these lines: “If they wouldn’t spend so much time behind their desks praying and writing messages, they could do so much more for these poor widows.”

So they had to come up with a response: “So the Twelve called a meeting of all the believers. They said, ‘We apostles should spend our time teaching the word of God, not running a food program.’” (Acts 6:2 NLT)

Often when I tell people what kind of job I have, they always wonder if I do that full-time. It seems like a waste of good time to only preach and teach (I wish I had that luxury at this point… I still do lots of admin stuff). How hard is it to prepare for a message of 30 minutes on Sunday? I should… spend 3 days per week counseling people… teach three Bible studies each week… evangelize… do social work… take care of the accounting… make coffee… take care of the building. There are probably lots of things that people think I should do.

I think one of the main reasons for burnout among preachers is the fact that they are doing everything EXCEPT for the things God has called them to do. And the same is true for people who are not preachers. What is God’s unique calling on your life? Don’t be distracted too much by other things!

The apostles could have come up with a solution that was worse than the problem by changing their priorities to help solve the current crisis. The church would have suffered. False teaching would have abounded and the church would have stopped growing. It could have affected us even today! So instead they said that they “should spend [their] time teaching the word of God, not running a food program.”

So be careful the things that are threatening the effectiveness of your church. Learn from the stories of the early church in the book of Acts. Deal with disunity, disorganization and distractions. And learn from any conflict that may come your way. It’s your chance to grow if you deal well with it!

The above blog post is based on the message I preached last Sunday in Thousand Hills Hilversum, called “Growing Pains.” I hope you have a chance to check out the full message. This is the video:

Growing Pains (“It Starts With One” series) from Thousand Hills Int’l Church on Vimeo.

Our church Thousand Hills has now run a number of Alpha Courses and it seems that the more often we do them, the more impact this course is making in the lives of the people attending. I am so thankful that David & Margaret White have been a driving force behind setting up this course in our church. Every time I am amazed when I hear the stories of what God has done in the lives of the Alpha people. Half of the people we baptized on May 30, 2010, went through an Alpha course!

This Fall there will be another Alpha Course starting at Thousand Hills. I really would like to encourage you to sign up for this course in the coming few weeks. It will help you discover the basics of the Christian faith if you don’t have a Christian background or it will help you re-discover these basics in a fresh way if you have been a believer for a long time. Below is a video with some testimonies of people who were part of the 2010 Spring Alpha:

Alpha Testimonies – Spring 2010 from Thousand Hills Int’l Church on Vimeo.

Say you had a passion or a vision to start something new within Thousand Hills or another church. It could be a new Life Group, an outreach ministry or an event. What would be the questions I would need to ask you to determine whether or not we could go ahead with starting this new ministry in our church? They’re very simple, yet straightforward:

• Does it fit within the vision and mission of Thousand Hills or the church you are part of? Remember, vision is like a one-way street. As long as you move in the right direction and don’t fall in the ditches on the side of the road, you’re fine. Don’t cause an accident!
• Are there others who share your passion? Most of the times, you’ll need a team to pull it off. Probably, if God has been speaking to you about this new ministry, He has spoken to others as well! Identify these people!
• Is there qualified leadership to pull it off? We can learn from Acts 6:3 that we need to look for people who are:
  • Well respected
  • Full of the Holy Spirit
  • Full of wisdom
• Will it depend on me or Thousand Hills to recruit people for it, promote it and fund it? If so, the answer to the question if you can start this ministry will most likely be “no”. If you have the vision and passion for a ministry, we will give you lots of room to develop it and the covering as a church that you need, but you will need to take responsibility to find the people and funds you need and get the word.
• Are you willing to become accountable for it? This is so important if your ministry is to become an integral part of the church.

If you’re walking around with a vision and a burning passion to start a new ministry right now, why not share it with one of the pastors or ministry leaders? They can give you some good advice! We would love to see you step out in the things that the Lord has called you to do. It’s out job to equip believers for the ministry (Eph. 4:12)!

This blog post is based on a message I preached in Thousand Hills Hilversum on Sunday, June 27. This is the full video of the message entitled “Growing Pains.” This message is from Acts 6.

Growing Pains (“It Starts With One” series) from Thousand Hills Int’l Church on Vimeo.