‘YWAM Together 2024’ convened 4,500 folk from 110 nations in Manila. Missionaries from countries closed to the gospel 75 years ago today, are going to the least, the last and the lost in every corner of the world. 

What amazing growth has happened both in YWAM and the majority world church in these past fifty-plus years! 

Paralympics are declaring to the world that social value and human dignity are not rooted in physical perfection. 

While some worldviews may be closer to a biblical understanding of reality than others, they are still the wrong map.

Herrnhut, recognised as a World Heritage Site, was established by refugees fleeing from the Catholic Counter-Reformation in Bohemia and Moravia.

Throughout the centuries, Christianity and the Olympic Games have had an ambivalent relationship. For good reasons. But today  Christians have come to see major sports gatherings as God-given opportunities for evangelism.

July 17, 2014, was the Dutch 9/11. More Dutch were killed on that day per head of population than Americans on 9/11.

The instinct to withdraw into isolationism and nationalism is understandable, yet it plays into the hands of authoritarian, anti-democratic forces.

Keir Starmer’s parents reportedly named him after Keir Hardie, the radical Christian co-founder of the Labour Party. Unlike Hardie, the new UK prime minister belongs to the 37% of Brits who tick the ‘no religion’ box.

For those of us who have grown up so familiar with stories and images of the cross, we are not shocked, horrified and repulsed by the reality it represented.

Russian propaganda that Vladimir Putin is ‘protecting Christianity’ against Satanism flies in the face of reliable reports from numerous sources of the ruthless persecution of Christians.

Only in relatively recent times has much of education become secularised. Compulsory and universal education is simply taken for granted. But how did we get there?

As we go to the voting booths this week to decide who will represent us in the European Parliament, we need to vote for candidates who understand both the calling and responsibility of Christians to be light, salt and leaven in society.

May our votes in the upcoming elections go to those whose worldview promotes long-term sustainability. 

We live in a fallen world. All of us – our politicians, our leaders, ourselves – are tainted by sinful tendencies. Which is why we need institutions to keep power in check.

The workings of the EU institutions can seem distant, foreign and boring. Yet so much happens there that shapes our European way of life, whether we realise it or not.

Few Europeans today could tell you what these days stand for. Fewer still would have ever thought about the link between the two. 

‘Mosaic’ and ‘house’ were inadequate images for Europe, Bob Goudzwaard argued. Jesus’ parable of the prodigal son, however, did justice to a continent which had declared its autonomy and was quickly spending its inheritance.

There may be various historical and theological reasons why evangelicals are ignorant about European history, the EU story, and about what the Bible tells about politics.

The Dutch microscope pioneer, Jan Swammerdam, saw the magnificence of God displayed even in the despised and lowly louse. To a friend he wrote: ‘I present to you the almighty finger of God in the anatomy of a louse’.

The resurrection of Jesus is the climax of the Big Story, the turning point that has shaped European history and continues to reshape world history. 

Despite the popular impression that Van Gogh discarded his faith in Christ when he became an artist, his letters reveal that Jesus remained his chief inspiration.

As Europe re-armed leading up to World War Two, a Lutheran evangelist named Frank Buchman called the nations to moral re-armament. His Christian-initiated movement failed to prevent war but helped win the peace.

Ukraine’s struggle represents the third phase of the liberation of Europe. It’s outcome cannot be taken for granted.

When the guns fell silent in 1945, peace did not automatically follow. Europe was suffering a severe case of post-trauma stress disorder over the five fearful, bitter and anxious post-war years.