‘In Practice’ in The Hague – In de Praktijk
Back in 2000, Matt and I and our two children, Katie and Daniel, moved into an old doctor’s surgery in the ‘outer-city’ estate of Spoorwijk, in The Hague.
In some ways it felt like the start of something; in other ways, it was just the next step of a process, a journey if you like, that had started many years before....

Both of us had trained and worked with the mission organisation Open Air Campaigners for many years, doing street evangelism, children’s programmes, and training, both in Holland and abroad. Following that, Matt spent two years as a relational youth worker in The Hague. In 1998 God called Matt to take a year out from all his activities and seek Him.  God used this year to shape our thinking about the church and also our role in it.

Our ministry with Open Air Campaigners had been almost a ‘hit and run’ work. We would be invited to visit a church to lead an evangelistic outreach, run a children’s programme, or give some training, and then we came home again. We never saw how things worked out afterwards, or what happened to the people. We felt increasingly challenged by the thought: what would/could happen if a group of Christians  moved into a community with the intention of ‘just being there’,  and serving? Nothing grand or exciting, but just being committed to a community and seeing what sort of church God wanted there.  

We were also frustrated with what we saw as the lack of accessibility of the church that we belonged to; we felt that church ought to be different, but how? We read increasingly widely on the subject of reformation in the church, and visited a number of projects in England, including Urban Expression in London.

Spoorwijk

Spoorwijk is the community that God called us to live in, get to know, and start a church in. It’s an estate of about 6,000 people, and is very multi-cultural, with a rich combination of Turkish, Moroccan, Surinamese, African, Chinese etc, as well as Dutch inhabitants. It has two mosques and a Hindu temple.  Seven years ago it had a very bad reputation and was known as one of the worst estates of The Hague, with high criminality and unemployment, low income and educational levels, and many one-parent families.

Since then there has been a lot of regeneration, and while Spoorwijk is no longer seen as one of the great ‘problem areas’ of The Hague, many of the old population still live there.

So where did we start?

Very simply, by deliberately getting to know the place where we lived. We put Katie, our daughter, into one of the local schools, found out where volunteers were needed in the community and got stuck in there. We also did quite a lot of children’s work.  Lindsey joined courses at the local women’s centre, and Matt became chairman of the playground committee.

As far as starting some sort of church was concerned, we really wanted anything that emerged to be relevant to the people of Spoorwijk, fitting with their lives. We started off with the cell church model of Ralph Neighbour in our minds, but soon realized that one of the pre-requisites of this sort of church planting is flexibility!  In the first year we came together as a team of six on Thursday evenings, and only one person from Spoorwijk ever came along.  

The brunch

Wanting to have some sort of Christian activity for our children, we started brunching together on a Sunday with the team and by accident (or probably guidance!) this turned out to be the right approach!  Our neighbours, non-practicing Catholics, liked the sound of our Sunday ‘brunch’ and came along with their children to have a look, while the lady who’d been visiting on Thursdays brought some friends along, single mothers with their children. The ‘brunch’ was born, and has continued to be the centre of our community church here in Spoorwijk.  

We eat together in the former waiting room (we still call it that!), then have a very informal sort of ‘service’; singing, Henkie the puppet, a Bible story, etc. The talks are never longer than 15 minutes and people feel free to interrupt at any minute if they don’t understand anything or (more frequently) don’t agree! Then we often split up, the children remain in the waiting room, the teenagers go to our kitchen, while the adults read the story in the Bible and discuss it in our living room. It usually takes a day or so before our house is back to normal afterwards!

All sorts of people come to the brunch. Many have very hard backgrounds, and all sorts of needs, which makes it a challenge for them to accept one another, as Jesus teaches. Some have become Christians, are baptized and growing in their faith. Others come because it meets a need, not necessarily a spiritual one. Everyone is welcome – we have no membership and everyone can belong, and ‘own’ a bit of the “Praktijk”, whether they believe or not.   Seven years down the line, we are facing the challenge of how to remain totally missional and accessible to everyone while discipling the Christians and helping them grow.  We hold Sunday evening Bible studies and enroll them on discipleship courses.

Parties and pastoring

We see our work here as a life-style, not a job. We have an open house, and people often stop by for a coffee or to talk, and children ring the doorbell to ask Matt to mend their bikes!  We are often confronted by needs we would love to be able to do something about, but can’t, dysfunctional families, poverty. A lady who lives opposite, who works as a prostitute, came round a few times to collect water, as her supply had been switched off because she hadn’t paid the bills. Her son had recently been taken into care. For years we were involved with a family from Sudan with four children, who were asylum seekers, only to see them move back to Sudan just a few months before the Dutch government granted a general pardon.

During our time here in Spoorwijk we have got to know many people, the majority of whom will never come to the brunch. However they know that we are Christians, and they come to us when they need us. We feel that we’re not only here to pastor the people who come on Sundays, but to be pastors to the community in general. We also like throwing parties for the neighbourhood; barbecues in summer and an English Christmas party. People love to come to these and will listen to the talks and absorb the message. This is another way in which we can meet the spiritual needs, felt and unfelt, of the community.

Pastures new

Something we’re also excited about is that, over the past few years, we’ve had an increasing number of Dutch Bible school students come to visit us for their placements. Some of them have returned when their study was completed, and have helped us start another church planting project elsewhere in The Hague. It’s great to be able to get other people enthusiastic about our great passion – being missional church in the local community!

(In 2009 Matt started Urban Expression Netherlands)