There are three reasons why we can face the New Year, or the next twenty years,  with hope.  They are: 1) the Father; 2) the Son; and, yes, 3) the Holy Spirit. 

Peter tells us to 'always be ready to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give a reason for the hope that you have'(1Peter 3:15).

So how do we answer those who ask us why we are hopeful about the future? 

Firstly, we can explain that our hope is not based on current prospects. As Paul says, who hopes for what he can already see? That's not hope. (Romans 8:24). Christian hope is not a promise of an immediate, rosy future. It is no guarantee of a 'happy and prosperous 2010'.

Yet it is a promise that ultimately, truth and justice will prevail; that all the past, present and future suffering will one day assume meaning; and that God's purposes in history will be fulfilled. This promise of ultimate meaning gives meaning to our immediate future, whatever it may bring.

While every river eventually flows into the sea, twists and turns in the course of its path causes it at times to flow in exactly the opposite direction. So too with human history. 

For the foundation of Christian hope is the Triune God, beginning with the Father. 

When God revealed himself to Abraham, and later to Moses, he showed himself to be so utterly different from all the gods of the surrounding nations. Think of the Egyptian gods, Babylonian gods, Greek gods, or Roman gods. In no way were they 'merciful and gracious, slow to anger, abundant in loving kindness and truth, forgiving iniquity and disobedience and sin'.

Greek philosophers like Socrates and Plato gave up on their gods because of their flawed characters. It's because of the Father's benevolent character that we have hope. If God the Father was not who the Bible claimed him to be, we would have no basis for our hope.

The Bible also claims to reveal the Father's purposes, which he swore under oath to fulfil. The writer to Hebrews, whoever he was, talks of these two unchangeable factors, God's character and purposes, as an anchor of hope, 'sure and steadfast' (Hebrews 6:19). 

Unfortunately, the popularity of alarmist literature about end-times in some Christian circles tends to obscure the many promises about God's purposes for planet earth. 

These include: that the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord; that the stone that smashed the image Nebuchadnezzar dreamed about will grow to become a mountain that filled the earth, a picture of the kingdom of God; that the kingdoms of this world become the kingdom of our God and of his Christ; and that Jesus was not teasing his disciples when he taught them to pray for his Kingdom to come. 

The Son's work at Calvary is also the ground of our hope.  Either he died and rose again in time and space, and we have hope for our ultimate resurrection of life and the restoration of all things; or he didn't, and we deserve  more pity than anyone else in the world, as Paul says.

For Christianity is all about death... and resurrection! That's true in the ultimate sense of history, but also in all the intervening chapters. The flow of history reveals a pattern of death and resurrection. A move of the Spirit is typically followed by complacency and decline, until a new faithful minority is raised up. A fresh cycle of renewal and decline follows. People of hope know then what to expect after a phase of decline: resurrection! For the Holy Spirit has a habit of breaking out in new life in unexpected quarters in the most depressed phases of church history.

Which leads us to our third reason for hope: The Spirit of God, who is described by Paul as the guarantee of the promise, the downpayment of things to come, the foretaste of the future. Long before William Carey, the Puritans looked to the future with hope as they read God's promises of global blessing. They believed that would come through successive moves of the Spirit, catalysed by prayer, bringing awakening and renewal. And so they began concerts of prayer, leading to the Great Awakening, which in turn ushered in the Modern Missionary Movement.

Today we witness the fruit of the global work of the Spirit the Puritans were never privileged to see. That surely is reason for hope, whatever the New Year may bring!  

So, till next year sometime (I'll be on furlough in New Zealand until after easter),

How did we then, as Christians, so lose our vision of what it meant to be human, he asked, that humanist intellectuals rejected Christianity as being too stifling? We had lost our vision of what it mean to reflect God's image on earth, he lamented, to be salt and light to the world.

The French artist Paul Gauguin had posed the basic life questions on what he had thought would be his last canvas before attempting suicide, explained Gerard. He then  projected the painting with the long title, Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?, on the screen up front in the English Reformed Church. The answers to these questions would describe what it mean to be human, he added. 

Our challenge-and opportunity-as we faced the coming twenty years, suggested Gerard, was to flesh out an answer to this question: what did it mean to be human? 

God was humanic! declared the preacher-poet. That meant he was mad about humanity, and valued every human: Muslim, Christian, whatever belief. Our calling as the church was to reflect God's heart for humanity.

Gerard began his address on 'speaking hope into the human future' with the statement, Hope was the bridge between the past and the future. Yet post-modernity had a problem with a history usually written by the rich and powerful: it was not reliable. So we didn't know who we were because we didn't really know our past, and didn't know where we were going. 

The Christian story was all about what it meant to be human. God had chosen humanity to help shape the future with him. We needed to return to this calling to show what humans were for.

Hope was the unity that rendered our diversity beautiful. Diversity was not an option for today's generation, said Gerard. They had grown up with it. If our faith was captive to a particular colour and culture, our children would reject it as being too narrow. 

Why was the world diverse? asked Gerard. God made it that way! So why did our children's discovery of his diversity so threaten us? The gospel was a universal story. Our faith was meta-national. How could our faith be trapped in one culture when our God was free of culture? 

Could we show this universality, this diversity, in our churches? Might we actually be the one group in Europe who could demonstrate this diversity, Gerard challenged his audience.

He and other speakers at the symposium can be viewed on ywam.eu/symposium, with the exception of Christine Schirrmacher. For security reasons, her talk on Europe and Islam was not recorded. Dr Schirrmacher, one of Europe's leading Islamologists, brought a much-needed balance to the debate on Islam's role in Europe. 

We Christians had missed many chances to make friends and help Muslims integrate in Europe, where many of them have been living now for 40 years. If we had more Muslim friends we would not be so vulnerable to the stereotypes depicted in panic literature. The integration debate only made sense if we could define what values Europe stood for, she said. Here was a further challenge and opportunity facing us in the coming twenty years.

Stefan, my son, delivered a lively and entertaining presentation on how the internet will continue to pervade our lives in the coming years. 'Scared yet?' he asked at one stage. Don't be, he continued. People were once scared of travelling at above 40 kph. What we needed, he concluded, was wisdom and understanding, an intergenerational task.

Michael Schluter, who had spent most of the day fog-bound in London, arrived just in time to share his vision of a biblical alternative to capitalism. Something was seriously wrong with our European societies, he began. We had a financial crisis, a family crisis and a culture crisis, among others. Dealing with symptoms was not enough, he warned. We needed to see the world through a relational lens. Capitalism's moral flaws were rooted in their neglect of the Relationship factor-the heart of being human.

Till next week,

The English Reformed Church was formerly the chapel for  a sisterhood of the Beguines, a 14th-century order of deaconnesses residing in an enclosed courtyard called The Begijnhof. The courtyard is entered through an inconspicuous archway making it a restful haven in the centre of the city. After the city sided with the Reformation, the church was presented to English-speaking Protestant dissidents living in the city, among them the Pilgrim Fathers. Since then, services in English have continued to the present day. 

The occasion was the transfer of the leadership of YWAM in Europe, an opportunity to reflect both on past and future. A symposium in the afternoon was followed by an evening reception, when we prayed for the team of regional leaders now carrying the European oversight together, under the chairmanship of Stephe Mayers. 

Dutch philosopher Evert-Jan Ouweneel began the symposium by reflecting on the nature of four values essential for Europe's future: equality, solidarity, freedom and peace. These were the 'Christian values' in which Europe had to be deeply rooted, according to the father of the European Union, Robert Schuman. 

Evert-Jan demonstrated how that, in each case, our autonomous human efforts to build a society on such values had failed. This presented us, he said, with the opportunity to demonstrate that true equality came from recognising we were all created in the image of God; that true solidarity sprang from the notion of brotherhood, being sisters and brothers in God's family; that real freedom was found in the context of love and accountability, not in individualistic self-seeking license; and that true peace involved discovering God's shalom, well-being in every aspect of human existence. For the sake of the future, he concluded, we needed to go back to our biblical roots.   

Prabhu Guptara, originally from India, and heading up a UBS think tank in Zurich. asked where globalisation was leading us. Until a few months ago, he said, that was easy to answer. One view of the future was, until recently, clearly winning; the view that said that greed was good. While Reformational values had shaped so much of the west, a great change took place around the 1908's. Ayn Rand's philosophy, that greed was good, was endorsed by conservatives on both sides of the Atlantic. The exponential growth in recent decades stemmed from this view. A new practical godlessness created the boom of recent years, claimed Prabhu, until the last few months.

 While World War 2 had produced a balance of power between the USSR and the USA, communism's collapse twenty years ago had left one superpower. But then 9/11 had introduced a multipolar world, accentuated by the latest crisis. 

What then lay ahead? Greater peace or increased regional conflicts? A new world war even? Competitive devaluation and increasing protectionism would lead to the second option, he believed. These were factors to watch closely.

Global society was being confronted with limited choices. A new feudalism could return, in which a few super-rich would keep the rest of population under control. Alternatively, biblical values could produce a world genuinely humane, just and environmentally responsible. We had for the first time the possibility and means of clothing and feeding everybody. 

Yet global society was facing a global civil war, between two sets of ideas: one stemming from the Reformation and even much earlier, going back to Israel; and the other rooted in human rationality, capacity and greed. 

The future would lead to a more explicit clash between these two values, predicted Prabhu, as he stepped from the podium.  

Next week, we'll share more insights from other speakers. 

Till then,

He recalled a comment from a well-known media personality in Holland who had fled from Czechoslovakia in 1968. Expecting to see happy people celebrating their free existence in the Netherlands, instead he saw 'gloomy faces', as if nobody really enjoyed being free. "It was like they wanted more of something they already had."

The question still puzzling the former Czech even today was: "What exactly is freedom?" 

A very good question, said Rouvoet. For many saw freedom as the maximization of the individual right to do whatever you liked as long as it didn't harm the rights of your fellow citizens.

The good side of this idea was the guarantee of political and economic freedom. The downside was that we seemed to had forgotten about the purpose of freedom. Western lifestyle was about 'buying things we don't need, to impress people we don't like', said Rouvoet.

This was also true for our economic life on a larger scale. The exaggerated pursuit of profit and of consumption had caused the current global financial and environmental crises. 

On the political level, freedom was also threatened by absolutization of individual rights: the right to insult, or the right to 'equal treatment', which forbade religious organizations to hire staff with the same convictions only. 

The liberal idea of freedom as maximizing individual rights offered only a negative concept of freedom. It led to a sense of purposelessness, he said.

So, our understanding of freedom needed rethinking: what was freedom for? Rouvoet asked if we could find a concept of freedom that served our economic needs instead of our greed; that enjoyed Creation instead of exhausting it; that honoured our neighbours, instead of hurting their deepest feelings; that listened to the voice of minorities instead of silencing them; and that defended the rights of others instead of trying to confine them.

Paul, he offered, wrote about such freedom to the Galatians: "You were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love". (5:13)

Yes, a man was meant to be free, but for that he needed to escape from self-centeredness. This was the missing link, said Rouvoet, the blind spot in the widespread negative concept of freedom. This was why Western culture tended to get off the right track, and did not enjoy the fruits of real freedom.

The Ten Commandments taught Israel about the good life. Yet to modern ears, it was hard to understand that the law was not a moral cage full of restrictions, but the path that led to freedom. 

Unless we stopped telling ourselves the lie that we were born to be autonomous individuals with the right to do whatever we wanted (a lie that justified our self-centeredness instead of redeeming us from it), our society would not be on the road to freedom but on the road to social degradation and even planetary self-destruction. 

Rouvoet also stressed the role of government officials as 'servants of God' (Roms 13), giving no room for totalitarianism. The separation of Church and State was a genuine biblical insight, but did not mean that government could be morally indifferent or neutral. Freedom of society was best guaranteed when government refrained from interfering in societal spheres. Only if people acted against the norm of public justice, should government intervene in the sovereignty of a sphere. 

Our voice in the public arena would be more effective, suggested Rouvoet, by showing compassion rather than judgment, and by putting the interest of others in the first place. We had to make it very clear why our ideas and proposals would make our society better off. 

Our personal lives should be freed from self-centeredness. Only then could we be what Paul called 'living letters', telling others about the love of God, and the freedom that living in relationship with Him could bring. 

Then, as followers of Jesus, we could start a conversation about 'real freedom' for Europe, Rouvoet told the gathered leaders.. 

Till next week,

Sometimes I wonder how many magazines serve the Body of Christ in America, creating conversation and dialogue across the continent. I can think of quite a few off the top of my head. How many serve a similar function in Europe? I struggle to think of any. 

Of course, the United States is just one nation, with one dominant language. That's a great advantage. Denominations and movements are mostly structured nationally, and in the US that's an advantage. In Europe, that is a disadvantage. 

For since the Reformation, the Body of Christ has been territorialised. National churches emerged along with national identities. Today, many national conversations happen through national publications. 

But in this season of growing European integration, how many pan-European magazines or papers are there? Even in the secular press, we have European ediitions of The Wall Street Journal, the International Herald Tribune, TIME and Newsweek, all American publications. But where are the European publications? 

One attempt to promote such European conversation is HOPE Magazine, the voice of Hope for Europe, a movement of networks connecting Europeans with similar ministries and visions across national  borders.

After four pilot editions, we have relaunched HOPE Magazine in a new smaller but thicker format with a more contemporary look. Our aim is to foster conversation about Europe among European Christians. 

Each edition attempts, firstly, to recover something of our forgotten Christian heritage. In the new edition, Tom Bloomer explains how the civic model pioneered by Calvin in Geneva shaped parliamentary governments in Holland, Scotland and England, and (via the Pilgrim Fathers and Puritans) in North America, and beyond. 

Geneva was known as the smelliest city of Europe, writes Tom, who is provost of ywam's University of the Nations,  and yet it was transformed into a city with global impact even today.

Calvin saw the need for a European conversation. His sermons were transcribed weekly, published and distributed immediately across borders, helping to spread his ideas especially into Holland, Scotland and England. Our lives have been impacted by the dialogue he started far more than we realise.

Tom will be speaking about Calvin's impact on Geneva  this coming weekend at the From Reformation to Transformation conference organised by Campus for Christ, Switzerland. (See www.genevaleadershipforum.org). 

Secondly, HOPE magazine addresses contemporary challenges facing us in Europe today. This edition challenges us to face up to our responsibilities to the New Europeans among us. 

Some Christians unfortunately are being swayed by populist voices who equate Christian with being anti-Muslim. Jesus tells us to love our neighbours, who may of course be Muslims. Migration involves tough questions. The Bible says much about how to treat sojourners in our midst. 

This past week I was asked to teach on this in Restenas, Sweden. I was reminded how crucial it is for us in YWAM and other missions, as well as in local churches everywhere, to recognise the unprecedented opportunities and responsibilities of current immigration developments.  

The Mapping Migration report on which the HOPE magazine article is based is an excellent starting point for such reflection. (See novaresearch.eu/index.php/resources)

Thirdly, each HOPE magazine edition focusses on a future shaped by God's unchanging character and plans, not today's ephemeral headlines. Wim Rietkerk, of L'Abri International, takes on a few sacred cows in an interview challenging popular eschatology, by saying that this world will not just perish; it will be transformed. How we think about the future shapes the way we live in the present. 

Several new regular columns in the magazine aim to broaden and deepen our continental dialogue-on cities, research, current news and theology, by Gea Gort, Andreas Wolf, Ruth Robinson and Thomas Schirrmacher.

HOPE magazine will be published three times a year. As the editor, I invite you to subscribe on a donation basis, via our soon-to-be-active site www.HOPEmagazine.eu., and to join this European conversation.  

Till next week,

Of course, the United States is just one nation, with one dominant language. That's a great advantage. Denominations and movements are mostly structured nationally, and in the US that's an advantage. In Europe, that is a disadvantage. 

For since the Reformation, the Body of Christ has been territorialised. National churches emerged along with national identities. Today, many national conversations happen through national publications. 

But in this season of growing European integration, how many pan-European magazines or papers are there? Even in the secular press, we have European ediitions of The Wall Street Journal, the International Herald Tribune, TIME and Newsweek, all American publications. But where are the European publications? 

One attempt to promote such European conversation is HOPE Magazine, the voice of Hope for Europe, a movement of networks connecting Europeans with similar ministries and visions across national  borders.

After four pilot editions, we have relaunched HOPE Magazine in a new smaller but thicker format with a more contemporary look. Our aim is to foster conversation about Europe among European Christians. 

Each edition attempts, firstly, to recover something of our forgotten Christian heritage. In the new edition, Tom Bloomer explains how the civic model pioneered by Calvin in Geneva shaped parliamentary governments in Holland, Scotland and England, and (via the Pilgrim Fathers and Puritans) in North America, and beyond. 

Geneva was known as the smelliest city of Europe, writes Tom, who is provost of ywam's University of the Nations,  and yet it was transformed into a city with global impact even today.

Calvin saw the need for a European conversation. His sermons were transcribed weekly, published and distributed immediately across borders, helping to spread his ideas especially into Holland, Scotland and England. Our lives have been impacted by the dialogue he started far more than we realise.

Tom will be speaking about Calvin's impact on Geneva  this coming weekend at the From Reformation to Transformation conference organised by Campus for Christ, Switzerland. (See www.genevaleadershipforum.org). 

Secondly, HOPE magazine addresses contemporary challenges facing us in Europe today. This edition challenges us to face up to our responsibilities to the New Europeans among us. 

Some Christians unfortunately are being swayed by populist voices who equate Christian with being anti-Muslim. Jesus tells us to love our neighbours, who may of course be Muslims. Migration involves tough questions. The Bible says much about how to treat sojourners in our midst. 

This past week I was asked to teach on this in Restenas, Sweden. I was reminded how crucial it is for us in YWAM and other missions, as well as in local churches everywhere, to recognise the unprecedented opportunities and responsibilities of current immigration developments.  

The Mapping Migration report on which the HOPE magazine article is based is an excellent starting point for such reflection. (See novaresearch.eu/index.php/resources)

Thirdly, each HOPE magazine edition focusses on a future shaped by God's unchanging character and plans, not today's ephemeral headlines. Wim Rietkerk, of L'Abri International, takes on a few sacred cows in an interview challenging popular eschatology, by saying that this world will not just perish; it will be transformed. How we think about the future shapes the way we live in the present. 

Several new regular columns in the magazine aim to broaden and deepen our continental dialogue-on cities, research, current news and theology, by Gea Gort, Andreas Wolf, Ruth Robinson and Thomas Schirrmacher.

HOPE magazine will be published three times a year. As the editor, I invite you to subscribe on a donation basis, via our soon-to-be-active site www.HOPEmagazine.eu., and to join this European conversation.  

Till next week,

Other events of 'people-power' not overtly faith-linked included a border-to-border human chain in the Baltics (photo 3); and the pan-European picnic with its unplanned 'breakthrough' in which hundreds escaped across into the Austrian border (photo 5).

Yes, the people were the heroes, particularly the people of faith. Truly, the world had much to celebrate twenty years ago.

Today, we should not forget the lesson of these world-changing events: that nothing is permanent, except God's Kingdom. And that means secularism's days are numbered too.

Till next week,