Destination: Nijmegen

Today, we leave for Nijmegen. And I'm excited.

Our home group is traveling together with five people from a church in America as "Spies in the Land (a reference to the expedition of twelve Israelite spies sent out by Moses to explore the Promised Land). This spring and summer, the five home groups of Zolder50 are visiting five different cities across the Netherlands: Rotterdam, Nijmegen, Maastricht, Utrecht, and Groningen. In each city, we're seeking interaction with as many Christians as we can find -- soliciting their input relating to the spiritual climate of their city -- and we're trying to pursue meaningful conversation with the average “person on the street,” asking non-believers for their opinions about God and church. The idea behind these visitations is that maybe someday, God might use these excursions to multiply churches like Zolder50 throughout the Netherlands.

So my home group gets to go to Nijmegen... Starting this evening... On the 19:47 train out of Amsterdam's Centraal Station.

Nijmegen (roughly pronounced “Ny-may-gen,” for those not-so-familiar with the Dutch language) is a city of 160,000 people in the eastern part of the Netherlands, on the Waal River. It has a very interesting history, going all the way back to the days of the Roman Empire -- and I'm especially interested in its history from the Second World War (and I somehow feel that I should also mention the fact that the 1980s rock band Van Halen originally hails from Nijmegen). But we're not going to Nijmegen is not to study its history...

Rather, we're going to Nijmegen take the spiritual temperature of the city, as it is today. And we want to avail ourselves to hearing from God in how he might use us to be a part of living out Jesus' Great Commission. We're not exactly sure what to expect for our time in Nijmegen, but we're excited to simply venture out in faith.

So please pray with us for this expedition. Pray that we’d meet the right people, ask the right questions, and listen with the right ears to hear what God might be telling us. Pray that we’d have eyes to see the true spiritual situation in Nijmegen and that our hearts would be burdened -- not with our own desires or ambitions -- but with God’s heart. Pray that we could encourage the Christians that are already there in Nijmegen and bring non-believers into an encounter with the living God...

Nijmegen, here we come!