Ten Thousand Coffees (Part 6)

28 01 2008

by Lisa Neef

[This is the final part of a series of six reflections on finding Christian Community in a new city. You can view Part 1 here, Part 2 here, Part 3 here, Part 4 here and Part 5 here.]

December: God is full of surprises. With an Italian couple from the Crazy Bible Study, I’ve been attending the local Catholic church. It is here where I’ve found –for the first time since I left Toronto, and flying obscenely in the face of my 22 years of good Lutheran upbringing– reverence for the God who gives and takes away.

The people who attend are not all white, and not all couples, and not averse to talking to strangers. Worship is steeped deeply in scripture, and it is beautiful to know that every other Catholic on the planet that Sunday is reading the same passages.

The mystery of God, for what seems like the first time, is considered, meditated-upon and basked-in. And, when I come for after-church coffee, and find that they all look like they just fluttered in from the cold, to seek solace in a house of prayer, I find that God smiles, then laughs, shakes my face and says, “I am with you; you are home.”


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Ten Thousand Coffees (Part 5)

24 01 2008

by Lisa Neef

[This is the fifth in a series of six reflections on finding Christian Community in a new city. You can view Part 1 here, Part 2 here, Part 3 here and Part 4 here.]

November: My Canadian friends point me to the other Christian student group, and when I email them for info, they invite me to a weekly Bible study. I am tired of being a newb, but I go because there is promise of homecooked Italian food.

I’ve come to call it the Crazy Bible Study. It’s a mess. People attend and drop out again. Catholics are mixed haphazardly with Proddies. I hear that even Muslims who want to learn more about the Bible have been known to attend. Denominations aside, the members of the Crazy Bible Study don’t fit together and don’t always even like each other.

There’s an old Catholic who likes to talk about how the Lord will rain fire and brimstone on Amsterdam one day. The German New Testament PhD student in the group likes to toss around words like “exegesis” but has about as much charm as a piece of lint. And one girl in the group always has the same prayer request, which is that God would return to her the lying boyfriend who beats her up.

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Ten Thousand Coffees (Part 4)

22 01 2008

by Lisa Neef

[This is the fourth in a series of six reflections on finding Christian Community in a new city. You can view Part 1 here, Part 2 here and Part 3 here.]

October: A connection from a Christian friend in Canada leads me to a wonderful Canadian couple, scientists like myself, who point me to the Vineyard. Like the Hip Church, the Vineyard comes from outside the Netherlands and about half their service is in English.

Everything about the Vineyard is user-friendly: the songs are musically simple, people dress however they want, and if you have questions about Salvation, you can buy a book about it from the table near the front. If you want to wave a banner or let your kids dance in the aisle, you can do that too.

But don’t get too meditative, because there’s another coffee break coming up. They love them some coffee breaks at the V —in fact, even the welcome package and worship CD they send to new members includes a postcard which shows a big steaming cup of coffee.

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Ten Thousand Coffees (Part 3)

17 01 2008

by Lisa Neef

[This is the third in a series of six reflections on finding Christian Community in a new city. You can view Part 1 here, and Part 2 here.]

September: With the beginning of the academic year, the two existing Christian groups at the university reconvene, and because they have a better advertising campaign, I hit up the weekly worship service run by the Ecumenical Student Union.

They worship in one of the original 5 churches around which my town was built, renting the old building from the Dutch Reformed church, which has no congregation to fill it.

The music is beautiful because it’s made by academics who study music. The sermons – though Dutch – are more or less understandable. Generally, the message is something true and inoffensive, like that being friendly is good and that lying is bad. It feels like a gathering of academics who all agree that the Bible is a nice text to discuss once a week.

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Ten Thousand Coffees (Part 2)

12 01 2008

by Lisa Neef

[This is the second in a series of six reflections on finding Christian Community in a new city. You can view Part 1 here.]

August: There is a hip, young church plant in Amsterdam, the project of a group of Americans who decided a few years ago to bring the Emergent Thing to Sin City. They have a band and the people who attend are young and good looking, and during worship people raise their hands sometimes, and the pastors wear jeans and hoodies.

I go a few times, to attend worship and, in the summer, a church picnic in the park. People chat with me off and on and it’s a relief to be able to speak English, but I’m new and spend a lot of time feeling like a new kid at school, invited and included because it’s the right thing to do, not because I’m wanted.

Do you know what it’s like to stand alone at church with your cup of coffee? It’s amazing how fast it happens, the collapse of your confidence: you walk in thinking you might have a story to bring, and in seconds, you forget it all.

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Ten Thousand Coffees (Part 1)

10 01 2008

by Lisa Neef

A little over six months ago, I left my life in Toronto behind and moved to the Netherlands. I’ve been less than successful in my search for Christian community in my new home, but the journey’s been interesting and humbling – and in the process I’ve learned a few things about the nature of church and the difficulty of community.

July: I start by randomly picking a church from a Google search, a Dutch Reformed Church close to my house. I drop in on their Sunday afternoon service, and though I understand almost nothing of the sermon, the clean, simple sanctuary and service are a comforting respite from my first week in a strange country.

Maybe it is my nose ring that makes me stick out enough for the Pastor’s wife to approach me after the service, and she introduces me to the closest “young people” she can find, a group of high school-age boys (I’m 28). They are struggling to speak English for my sake, and it’s uncomfortable to sense that they want out of this conversation and back to their regular conversation, and it’s a relief when I put an end to it and excuse myself.

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