Two years ago, a man named Serge de Boer and I started planting a church in Amsterdam for people who do not go to church -  OASIS for Amsterdam New-West. In our multicultural neighbourhood, that means being Christian in a relevant way for 99% of the 40,000 people. There are only a few churches and around half of the people identify as Muslim.

 

Now, two years later, we thank Jesus for all the activities going on in the church, including a language course, a multicultural meal and a teen club. And we are excited to be a part of the City to City Europe network. In October 2011, we decided to get together a group from OASIS and make the trip to the City to City Europe conference in Berlin. Two and a half days later we drove back with new inspiration from other church planters with whom we spoke, and we felt encouraged by the brothers and sisters we met from other cultures and countries.

 

This European network broadens horizons. Not only because we found out that church planters in other cities of Europe face similar difficulties, but also because it helped us understand we are not alone in this way of pioneering. Our goals are not that impossible and weird after all! One practical lesson we learned from colleagues who are paying a price somewhere else in Europe is to have core values for your Christian community. We are glad to have a banner in our building with the five goals of OASIS, but now we are dreaming which three values we can formulate as the DNA of our community.

 

What really triggered us in Tim Keller’s talk on the holistic church was to persist in caring for the poor and needy. At OASIS we were seriously considering scaling back our multicultural meal from twice a month to once a month, just because it takes a lot of energy and it does not always bear tangible fruits. But that morning we believe we got a small wakeup call from God. We had to learn again from Jesus not to be focused on the results of our work and not to question our motives. With joy we decided to continue our meals we provide for the neighbourhood twice a month. Freely we have received, so freely we will give with love for God and love for people.