{"id":210,"date":"2005-01-11T10:33:00","date_gmt":"2005-01-11T08:33:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.boerenroem.nl\/wordpress\/?p=210"},"modified":"2005-01-11T10:33:00","modified_gmt":"2005-01-11T08:33:00","slug":"downtown-church","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/boerenroem.nl\/wordpress\/2005\/01\/11\/downtown-church\/","title":{"rendered":"Downtown church"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sundaynight I visited the ‘Stadshartkerk<\/a>‘ (‘Downtown church’) in Amstelveen. I was there to promote<\/a> the Agap\u00e8 prayer training that started last night, but it was also a great opportunity to see what is happening over there. The congregation is part of a traditional church denomination, and last year it seemed they had to stop because of steady decrease of members. In November 2004 (6 weeks ago) they re-started with a completely new concept. They called themselves ‘Stadshartkerk’ (litterally City-heart church), moved the services to Sundaynight 7 pm in the city conference hall (big seats, very good ambiance), focusing on ‘seekers’ rather than church members and preaching the relevance of Jesus for here and now, they exchanged the organ for a band… while at the same still a member of their denomination. Sunday night there were about 140 people, most of whom were outside visitors.
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I got rather excited about the vision and the execution of it. Interestingly, Saturday night a friend of ours said he believed that God’s Spirit will be moving more through the traditional churches than through the evangelical or charismatic ones. I don’t know whether he is right, but I was surprised by the tranformation taking place in this church. The pastor Tim Vreugdenhil said: we have a vision, we go for it, but we leave it to God to produce the results.
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Sundaynight I visited the ‘Stadshartkerk‘ (‘Downtown church’) in Amstelveen. I was there to promote the Agap\u00e8 prayer training that started last night, but it was …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","advgb_blocks_editor_width":"","advgb_blocks_columns_visual_guide":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-algemeen"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t