neljapäev, jaanuar 20, 2005
from Urbana.org
The Streets of Amsterdam (Urbana 87)by Floyd McClung, Jr.
read more Urbana 87 talks.About Floyd McClung (as of 1987).
A testimony of ministry in the darkest corners of one of the hardest cities in the world
I have been living and working with my wife and our two children in the city of Amsterdam with Youth With A Mission for the last fourteen years. We live in the red-light district of Amsterdam, which is twelve blocks long and six blocks wide. There are sixteen thousand prostitutes who live and work in that neighborhood and twelve thousand drug addicts. There are also six thousand male prostitutes. In fact, Amsterdam is one of the gay capitals of Europe.
When we moved into the red-light district, two doors to the right of us was a Satanist church. Four doors to the right of us was a homosexual brothel. And two doors to the left of us was a twenty-four hour porno cinema. We didn't write home about our neighbors very often.
The original purpose my wife Sally and I had in coming to Amsterdam was to work with alienated young people. We started a halfway house, but not long after we arrived, we became concerned for the entire city. One of the first things I did was to walk the streets to try to get a feel for the city, to get to know it, to get God's heartbeat for the city. I once heard Billy Graham say that if he ever started a ministry anywhere in a city, he would spend six months walking its streets getting to know the people and the neighborhoods and praying. Il took that advice literally.
As I began to walk the streets and to pray for the people, I became acquainted with the various neighborhoods and people groups. It was an overwhelming and daunting experience. There was neighborhood after neighborhood of high-rise apartment buildings. The city of Amsterdam has about 2.5 million people in the metropolitan area and about eight hundred thousand in the city proper.
I tried to find all the evangelical churches I could in the city, but I only discovered seven or eight that preached the gospel. I went to the university campus. I went into the inner city. I went to places where young people hung out. I went to the ethnic neighborhoods. I saw building after building, and home after home, person after person who did not know the Lord Jesus Christ, and it all seemed to be too much for me. I felt that there was hardly any hope. Humanly speaking, it seemed impossible.
I remember one night in particular. I knelt and began to pray in desperation to the Lord. In fact, I gave the Lord an opportunity to admit that he had made a mistake in inviting me to come to the city. But he didn't change his mind. Instead he began to call me to work alongside other Christians who were in the city. Together he wanted to use us to make an impact on that city. As I prayed, faith began to grow in my heart that God could make a difference.
I had been reading the book of Jonah, and I was struck by how weak Jonah was. He went the opposite direction when God called him to Nineveh. He was a proud prophet, a man who hated the Assyrians, the archenemies of Israel. Yet that was the man God used in Nineveh. He went and simply proclaimed the gospel, and God used his obedience to make a profound impact on that city. The whole city turned toward God in fasting and prayer. And I began to believe that it could happen again. If God could touch the wicked city of Nineveh, the capital of Assyria, then he could touch the city of Amsterdam.
I took a little piece of paper out, as I knelt in prayer, and I began to list all of the peoples that I had seen as I walked the streets - the university students, the drug addicts, the homosexuals. I listed all of the minority and ethnic groups I could find. There are one hundred fifteen languages spoken in the city of Amsterdam and forty-four major ethnic neighborhoods. As I listed the people groups, I began to ask the Lord to somehow start a ministry among every one of those peoples. I prayed that they would experience God's grace and God's hope in a way that would be understandable and meaningful to them.
Not a Christian City-Yet
That was fourteen years ago, and today I am thankful to tell you that God has begun to answer those prayers. When we first went to Amsterdam, there was no association of Christian groups or ministers. In fact, I invited some of the Christian leaders to meet on the little houseboat where we lived. It was so unusual in the nation of Holland at that time for evangelical ministers and leaders to meet together that the national news media sent out a television crew to film it.
We began to meet monthly. That group has met every month since that time. We call it The Evangelical Contact. There are now more than fifty churches and parachurch organizations that meet every month and have a wonderful spirit of unity. God has begun to touch the city of Amsterdam.
We were thrilled when Billy Graham came with the International Congress for Itinerant Evangelists in 1983 and again in 1986. Can you imagine ten thousand evangelists sitting in a conference for two weeks without preaching? Impossible. Every street corner had a black or a brown or a yellow face proclaiming the gospel. Every tram and train and bus had moving street meetings.
During the conference my wife was walking down the street and heard a man mumbling to himself. As she walked beside him, he was shaking his head and mumbling the word Jesus. "Oh, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus," he said "Everywhere I go I can hear nothing but Jesus."
One young German tourist saw teams of young people with crosses. (Arthur Blessitt had been to town, so we had crosses everywhere.) Innocently she asked one of our workers, "I've gone to almost every major square in the city. I've been in bars and cafes and restaurants. Everywhere I've gone I've met Christians. Is this a Christian city?" It's not a Christian city-yet!
A Week of Ministry
In our organization, Youth With A Mission, there are over two hundred staff working full-time in the city. There are twenty-four fulltime evangelistic and caring ministries. We have church planting teams, halfway houses, neighborhood Bible studies and a church renewal team. There are children's Bible clubs, bands, drama groups, a ministry to prostitutes and urban training programs.
I'd like to take you through a week so you can see what God has done. On Tuesday night there is a Bible study that is led by my former secretary. Laura was a missionary in South America for about sixteen years. She's sixty-nine years old. Four years ago she said to me, "I would like to start a Bible study far Spanish-speaking prostitutes." Thousands of them in the city have been brought in from Latin America. So she started with two or three people four years ago, Today she has Bible studies for seventy converted Spanish-speaking prostitutes on three nights of the week in three different cities. The result? I've lost my secretary. A few weeks ago she told me, "I can't serve you and keep going with the Bible studies. They are multiplying too much. You'll have to find another secretary."
Also on Tuesday night we have a work in the red-light district that is centered in what we call The Cleft. The Cleft is a little residence, a retreat, a hiding place for people in need who come to us. We also run a restaurant, where we serve Dutch pancakes. One Christmas, a Muslim man joined us for some free meals during the holidays. He had experienced the fellowship and the warmth. He went back to Germany where he lived and didn't quite understand how to contact us, so he wrote a letter and addressed it to The Cleft Pancake House Church.
Every Tuesday night, workers from The Cleft go on the streets of the red-light.district and invite prostitutes, drug addicts and anybody who will come to a Bible study. They share the gospel, they give a free meal, and more than that they get involved in people's lives. For example, a few weeks ago there was a lady I'll call Paula who was standing out in front of The Cleft. She was invited in for a meal. After a lot of imploring she finally came. Paula had been a prostitute and a heroin addict for over twenty years. That night the grace of God finally broke into Paula's life. Weeping, she discovered that God loved her and forgave her.
Paula is now in a rehabilitation program. Every time I've seen her in the last few months, there has been a glow on her face. She can hardly enter into a Bible study or a Christian church service without weeping because of the joy that she has found in being forgiven by the Lord Jesus.
On Wednesday nights we have a Bible study that is for punks and other Amsterdam young people. About three years ago, a young man on our staff named David said he was concerned for the alienated youth of Amsterdam, especially the punkers. It is estimated that one out of every three seventeen-year-olds in Amsterdam is involved in homosexuality. Seventy per cent of the children born in the inner city are born to unwed mothers. Because of the surveys we have done, we estimate that in the nation of Holland eighty-five to ninety per cent of the young people are still interested in God, but they have turned their back on formal religion. It is a city with tremendous social problems and tremendous spiritual potential for the young.
For eighteen months David and his team of workers went out night after night into the nightclubs and the cafes of the city. They did not see one person respond to the gospel. Then about a year and a half ago, they started a Bible study. Young people began to come. David is very contemporary (and very appropriate to Amsterdam) in the way he communicates. He started a punk band called No Longer Music. Some would debate whether it's a band or not. They do make noise. Joyful noise. It's a very colorful Bible study they have now. It's been a breakthrough. About one hundred-fifty punks have come to know the Lord Jesus along with many other Amsterdam young people.
Eddie, one of the young people who became a Christian, was kicked out of his home when he was eight years old. His father told him he never wanted to see Eddie again. That was eleven years ago. A year ago, Eddie heard about what the press had begun to call the Chrunk movement - the Christian punks. (Leave it to the press to come up with a name like that.) As a result he came to David's Bible study. When Eddie saw young people like himself who were excited about God, who were dealing with the issues that he was facing, he considered Christianity.
Eddie found Jesus Christ a few weeks later, and then a national television team came and interviewed him. He gave his testimony. His father saw Eddie on television for the fast time in ten years. The next day Eddie got a telephone call. The day after that they had lunch together, and they were reconciled together as father and son after ten years of alienation.
Also on Wednesday nights, a Christian family in another part of the city leads a new congregation. They moved into a neighborhood of about twenty-five thousand people where there was no active church and began a Bible study. The husband began going door-to-door while still working in business full time. Later he brought in teams of people to help him. Now there is a new church in that neighborhood.
On Thursday nights we have a Bible study for Iranians. There are many refugees from Iran all over Europe. There's a young man, a German, who leads our work with Muslims. On Friday nights he leads a Bible study for Moroccans. I asked Harry why he didn't have the Bible study on the same night since the Iranians and Moroccans were both Muslims. He reminded me that there was a war going on in the Middle East. He said, "My goal is to get both groups converted and then we'll bring them together."
On Saturday, believe it or not, we have a Bible study for normal people. We have a young lady who coordinates our follow-up in Amsterdam, and she came to me very excited in the spring of this year. "Floyd, you won't believe this? We've had a great breakthrough. Yesterday in the outreach, two normal Dutch girls got saved."
One of the young men who became a Christian in our work when we first moved to Amsterdam fourteen years ago was John Goodfellow, a thief from the streets of Nottingham, England. After going back to Nottingham to make restitution for some of the crimes he committed, he rejoined us. He'd seen a street preacher in Nottingham, and he wanted to preach on the streets of Amsterdam.
At that time we emphasized friendship evangelism. I had experienced street meetings, but I didn't like them. I had seen people standing on street comers in America preaching about hell and yelling at people. I had a negative impression of what street meetings were like. So when John asked about this, I said, "No way!" And a few weeks later, he came and asked me again. And I said, "No, we're into friendship evangelism. We want to care for people. We love people. We don't want to yell at them."
Over a six-month period, he came back to me about every two or three weeks. He wouldn't give up. One night, I was walking down the hallway in the building where we were living, and I heard a voice. Listening more closely, I realized someone was praying. It was John, weeping and crying as he interceded with God. Then I heard him praying for me, "Oh, God, please change his mind. Lord, touch his heart. Please, Lord, let him give me permission to go on the streets and preach the gospel."
So the next day I said to John that he could go - on two conditions."John, please don't yell at people, and please don't talk about hell." He was so excited he would have done anything. John with some others went out on the streets of Amsterdam to the main square, and I stood in the back of the crowd and watched. They used some folk dancing to attract a crowd. Dutch people, especially the Amsterdamers as we call them, love something that has joy, that has humor in it.
John told the people about the joy the Lord had brought into his heart as somebody who had found ]esus on the streets of Amsterdam. He shared how he had become a thief, running from the law, running from problems. But he had found the joy of his salvation in Jesus. I was amazed as I stood watching at how open people were to a loving, joyful presentation of the good news of the gospel. We outjoyed the joy that they had known in the world. Many people came to those meetings that we began to conduct on the streets.
I began to read about the early days of the Salvation Army, and I read a book called The General Next to God. The Salvation Army was too stubborn to give up. When they went into a city, if they couldn't penetrate it, they tried something else. They would keep trying different approaches, with different people groups until finally they would break through.
I read about one young lady, an officer in the Salvation Army, who was having a hard time in one city. So she decided to have a funeral. She got a coffin, got a young officer to be the dead person and put him in the coffin. They walked down the street and finally stopped and leaned the coffin against the building. When the crowd they gathered was big enough, this young man jumped out and began to preach on "The Wages of Sin is Death." So I told John about this, and a few days later heard some hammering in our basement I went downstairs and discovered John building a seven-foot black coffin. Since that time we've had many funeral services in Amsterdam.
John now heads a ministry in Amsterdam we call the Go Teams. This last summer, between May and August, John had teams in nineteen different countries. A team in Bombay helped plant five churches in three months working with missionaries there. Another team was in North Africa worked with a small, struggling church of about sixty believers. It was doubled in two and a half weeks as seventy people found faith in Jesus Christ They're still preaching the gospel.
The Dark Continent
I love the city of Amsterdam. I celebrate the Lord Jesus in that city. I believe that God longs for and looks for those who will go to the cities of our world Amsterdam is a city that is surrounded within a [small] radius by one hundred-fifty million people. Europe is a continent of great need. It is a spiritual wasteland.
Though there is great revival in China, though the church is growing three times as fast as the population in Latin America, though there are some days in Africa that up to twenty thousand people a day become Christians, in Europe we have not experienced the touch yet of God's Spirit in great renewal. We have not seen the church turned around. There are five hundred-fifty million people living in Western Europe. About seventy percent of them live in cities, and of that seventy percent, it is estimated that less than two per cent go to church on Sundays.
I present to you Europe as a mission field. I remind you of cities like Amsterdam and Paris and London which desperately need the gospel of Jesus Christ. Amsterdam has more than four hundred financial institutions. It's one of the seven or eight most influential financial cities in the world. It is a city that waits to hear the good news of Jesus Christ.
I discovered in reading the book of Jonah that God uses ordinary people to do extraordinary things. If we will simply follow the example of our Lord Jesus, if we will give up our rights, if we will be willing to give up our reputation, if we will come as servants to stand beside people, not over them but beside them, to love them and share joyfully and lovingly and patiently the good news that we have discovered many people will respond.
Floyd McClung, Jr. is executive director of international operations and director of urban missions for Youth With A Mission a worldwide ministry training young adults in missions.
read more Urbana 87 talks.About Floyd McClung (as of 1987).
A testimony of ministry in the darkest corners of one of the hardest cities in the world
I have been living and working with my wife and our two children in the city of Amsterdam with Youth With A Mission for the last fourteen years. We live in the red-light district of Amsterdam, which is twelve blocks long and six blocks wide. There are sixteen thousand prostitutes who live and work in that neighborhood and twelve thousand drug addicts. There are also six thousand male prostitutes. In fact, Amsterdam is one of the gay capitals of Europe.
When we moved into the red-light district, two doors to the right of us was a Satanist church. Four doors to the right of us was a homosexual brothel. And two doors to the left of us was a twenty-four hour porno cinema. We didn't write home about our neighbors very often.
The original purpose my wife Sally and I had in coming to Amsterdam was to work with alienated young people. We started a halfway house, but not long after we arrived, we became concerned for the entire city. One of the first things I did was to walk the streets to try to get a feel for the city, to get to know it, to get God's heartbeat for the city. I once heard Billy Graham say that if he ever started a ministry anywhere in a city, he would spend six months walking its streets getting to know the people and the neighborhoods and praying. Il took that advice literally.
As I began to walk the streets and to pray for the people, I became acquainted with the various neighborhoods and people groups. It was an overwhelming and daunting experience. There was neighborhood after neighborhood of high-rise apartment buildings. The city of Amsterdam has about 2.5 million people in the metropolitan area and about eight hundred thousand in the city proper.
I tried to find all the evangelical churches I could in the city, but I only discovered seven or eight that preached the gospel. I went to the university campus. I went into the inner city. I went to places where young people hung out. I went to the ethnic neighborhoods. I saw building after building, and home after home, person after person who did not know the Lord Jesus Christ, and it all seemed to be too much for me. I felt that there was hardly any hope. Humanly speaking, it seemed impossible.
I remember one night in particular. I knelt and began to pray in desperation to the Lord. In fact, I gave the Lord an opportunity to admit that he had made a mistake in inviting me to come to the city. But he didn't change his mind. Instead he began to call me to work alongside other Christians who were in the city. Together he wanted to use us to make an impact on that city. As I prayed, faith began to grow in my heart that God could make a difference.
I had been reading the book of Jonah, and I was struck by how weak Jonah was. He went the opposite direction when God called him to Nineveh. He was a proud prophet, a man who hated the Assyrians, the archenemies of Israel. Yet that was the man God used in Nineveh. He went and simply proclaimed the gospel, and God used his obedience to make a profound impact on that city. The whole city turned toward God in fasting and prayer. And I began to believe that it could happen again. If God could touch the wicked city of Nineveh, the capital of Assyria, then he could touch the city of Amsterdam.
I took a little piece of paper out, as I knelt in prayer, and I began to list all of the peoples that I had seen as I walked the streets - the university students, the drug addicts, the homosexuals. I listed all of the minority and ethnic groups I could find. There are one hundred fifteen languages spoken in the city of Amsterdam and forty-four major ethnic neighborhoods. As I listed the people groups, I began to ask the Lord to somehow start a ministry among every one of those peoples. I prayed that they would experience God's grace and God's hope in a way that would be understandable and meaningful to them.
Not a Christian City-Yet
That was fourteen years ago, and today I am thankful to tell you that God has begun to answer those prayers. When we first went to Amsterdam, there was no association of Christian groups or ministers. In fact, I invited some of the Christian leaders to meet on the little houseboat where we lived. It was so unusual in the nation of Holland at that time for evangelical ministers and leaders to meet together that the national news media sent out a television crew to film it.
We began to meet monthly. That group has met every month since that time. We call it The Evangelical Contact. There are now more than fifty churches and parachurch organizations that meet every month and have a wonderful spirit of unity. God has begun to touch the city of Amsterdam.
We were thrilled when Billy Graham came with the International Congress for Itinerant Evangelists in 1983 and again in 1986. Can you imagine ten thousand evangelists sitting in a conference for two weeks without preaching? Impossible. Every street corner had a black or a brown or a yellow face proclaiming the gospel. Every tram and train and bus had moving street meetings.
During the conference my wife was walking down the street and heard a man mumbling to himself. As she walked beside him, he was shaking his head and mumbling the word Jesus. "Oh, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus," he said "Everywhere I go I can hear nothing but Jesus."
One young German tourist saw teams of young people with crosses. (Arthur Blessitt had been to town, so we had crosses everywhere.) Innocently she asked one of our workers, "I've gone to almost every major square in the city. I've been in bars and cafes and restaurants. Everywhere I've gone I've met Christians. Is this a Christian city?" It's not a Christian city-yet!
A Week of Ministry
In our organization, Youth With A Mission, there are over two hundred staff working full-time in the city. There are twenty-four fulltime evangelistic and caring ministries. We have church planting teams, halfway houses, neighborhood Bible studies and a church renewal team. There are children's Bible clubs, bands, drama groups, a ministry to prostitutes and urban training programs.
I'd like to take you through a week so you can see what God has done. On Tuesday night there is a Bible study that is led by my former secretary. Laura was a missionary in South America for about sixteen years. She's sixty-nine years old. Four years ago she said to me, "I would like to start a Bible study far Spanish-speaking prostitutes." Thousands of them in the city have been brought in from Latin America. So she started with two or three people four years ago, Today she has Bible studies for seventy converted Spanish-speaking prostitutes on three nights of the week in three different cities. The result? I've lost my secretary. A few weeks ago she told me, "I can't serve you and keep going with the Bible studies. They are multiplying too much. You'll have to find another secretary."
Also on Tuesday night we have a work in the red-light district that is centered in what we call The Cleft. The Cleft is a little residence, a retreat, a hiding place for people in need who come to us. We also run a restaurant, where we serve Dutch pancakes. One Christmas, a Muslim man joined us for some free meals during the holidays. He had experienced the fellowship and the warmth. He went back to Germany where he lived and didn't quite understand how to contact us, so he wrote a letter and addressed it to The Cleft Pancake House Church.
Every Tuesday night, workers from The Cleft go on the streets of the red-light.district and invite prostitutes, drug addicts and anybody who will come to a Bible study. They share the gospel, they give a free meal, and more than that they get involved in people's lives. For example, a few weeks ago there was a lady I'll call Paula who was standing out in front of The Cleft. She was invited in for a meal. After a lot of imploring she finally came. Paula had been a prostitute and a heroin addict for over twenty years. That night the grace of God finally broke into Paula's life. Weeping, she discovered that God loved her and forgave her.
Paula is now in a rehabilitation program. Every time I've seen her in the last few months, there has been a glow on her face. She can hardly enter into a Bible study or a Christian church service without weeping because of the joy that she has found in being forgiven by the Lord Jesus.
On Wednesday nights we have a Bible study that is for punks and other Amsterdam young people. About three years ago, a young man on our staff named David said he was concerned for the alienated youth of Amsterdam, especially the punkers. It is estimated that one out of every three seventeen-year-olds in Amsterdam is involved in homosexuality. Seventy per cent of the children born in the inner city are born to unwed mothers. Because of the surveys we have done, we estimate that in the nation of Holland eighty-five to ninety per cent of the young people are still interested in God, but they have turned their back on formal religion. It is a city with tremendous social problems and tremendous spiritual potential for the young.
For eighteen months David and his team of workers went out night after night into the nightclubs and the cafes of the city. They did not see one person respond to the gospel. Then about a year and a half ago, they started a Bible study. Young people began to come. David is very contemporary (and very appropriate to Amsterdam) in the way he communicates. He started a punk band called No Longer Music. Some would debate whether it's a band or not. They do make noise. Joyful noise. It's a very colorful Bible study they have now. It's been a breakthrough. About one hundred-fifty punks have come to know the Lord Jesus along with many other Amsterdam young people.
Eddie, one of the young people who became a Christian, was kicked out of his home when he was eight years old. His father told him he never wanted to see Eddie again. That was eleven years ago. A year ago, Eddie heard about what the press had begun to call the Chrunk movement - the Christian punks. (Leave it to the press to come up with a name like that.) As a result he came to David's Bible study. When Eddie saw young people like himself who were excited about God, who were dealing with the issues that he was facing, he considered Christianity.
Eddie found Jesus Christ a few weeks later, and then a national television team came and interviewed him. He gave his testimony. His father saw Eddie on television for the fast time in ten years. The next day Eddie got a telephone call. The day after that they had lunch together, and they were reconciled together as father and son after ten years of alienation.
Also on Wednesday nights, a Christian family in another part of the city leads a new congregation. They moved into a neighborhood of about twenty-five thousand people where there was no active church and began a Bible study. The husband began going door-to-door while still working in business full time. Later he brought in teams of people to help him. Now there is a new church in that neighborhood.
On Thursday nights we have a Bible study for Iranians. There are many refugees from Iran all over Europe. There's a young man, a German, who leads our work with Muslims. On Friday nights he leads a Bible study for Moroccans. I asked Harry why he didn't have the Bible study on the same night since the Iranians and Moroccans were both Muslims. He reminded me that there was a war going on in the Middle East. He said, "My goal is to get both groups converted and then we'll bring them together."
On Saturday, believe it or not, we have a Bible study for normal people. We have a young lady who coordinates our follow-up in Amsterdam, and she came to me very excited in the spring of this year. "Floyd, you won't believe this? We've had a great breakthrough. Yesterday in the outreach, two normal Dutch girls got saved."
One of the young men who became a Christian in our work when we first moved to Amsterdam fourteen years ago was John Goodfellow, a thief from the streets of Nottingham, England. After going back to Nottingham to make restitution for some of the crimes he committed, he rejoined us. He'd seen a street preacher in Nottingham, and he wanted to preach on the streets of Amsterdam.
At that time we emphasized friendship evangelism. I had experienced street meetings, but I didn't like them. I had seen people standing on street comers in America preaching about hell and yelling at people. I had a negative impression of what street meetings were like. So when John asked about this, I said, "No way!" And a few weeks later, he came and asked me again. And I said, "No, we're into friendship evangelism. We want to care for people. We love people. We don't want to yell at them."
Over a six-month period, he came back to me about every two or three weeks. He wouldn't give up. One night, I was walking down the hallway in the building where we were living, and I heard a voice. Listening more closely, I realized someone was praying. It was John, weeping and crying as he interceded with God. Then I heard him praying for me, "Oh, God, please change his mind. Lord, touch his heart. Please, Lord, let him give me permission to go on the streets and preach the gospel."
So the next day I said to John that he could go - on two conditions."John, please don't yell at people, and please don't talk about hell." He was so excited he would have done anything. John with some others went out on the streets of Amsterdam to the main square, and I stood in the back of the crowd and watched. They used some folk dancing to attract a crowd. Dutch people, especially the Amsterdamers as we call them, love something that has joy, that has humor in it.
John told the people about the joy the Lord had brought into his heart as somebody who had found ]esus on the streets of Amsterdam. He shared how he had become a thief, running from the law, running from problems. But he had found the joy of his salvation in Jesus. I was amazed as I stood watching at how open people were to a loving, joyful presentation of the good news of the gospel. We outjoyed the joy that they had known in the world. Many people came to those meetings that we began to conduct on the streets.
I began to read about the early days of the Salvation Army, and I read a book called The General Next to God. The Salvation Army was too stubborn to give up. When they went into a city, if they couldn't penetrate it, they tried something else. They would keep trying different approaches, with different people groups until finally they would break through.
I read about one young lady, an officer in the Salvation Army, who was having a hard time in one city. So she decided to have a funeral. She got a coffin, got a young officer to be the dead person and put him in the coffin. They walked down the street and finally stopped and leaned the coffin against the building. When the crowd they gathered was big enough, this young man jumped out and began to preach on "The Wages of Sin is Death." So I told John about this, and a few days later heard some hammering in our basement I went downstairs and discovered John building a seven-foot black coffin. Since that time we've had many funeral services in Amsterdam.
John now heads a ministry in Amsterdam we call the Go Teams. This last summer, between May and August, John had teams in nineteen different countries. A team in Bombay helped plant five churches in three months working with missionaries there. Another team was in North Africa worked with a small, struggling church of about sixty believers. It was doubled in two and a half weeks as seventy people found faith in Jesus Christ They're still preaching the gospel.
The Dark Continent
I love the city of Amsterdam. I celebrate the Lord Jesus in that city. I believe that God longs for and looks for those who will go to the cities of our world Amsterdam is a city that is surrounded within a [small] radius by one hundred-fifty million people. Europe is a continent of great need. It is a spiritual wasteland.
Though there is great revival in China, though the church is growing three times as fast as the population in Latin America, though there are some days in Africa that up to twenty thousand people a day become Christians, in Europe we have not experienced the touch yet of God's Spirit in great renewal. We have not seen the church turned around. There are five hundred-fifty million people living in Western Europe. About seventy percent of them live in cities, and of that seventy percent, it is estimated that less than two per cent go to church on Sundays.
I present to you Europe as a mission field. I remind you of cities like Amsterdam and Paris and London which desperately need the gospel of Jesus Christ. Amsterdam has more than four hundred financial institutions. It's one of the seven or eight most influential financial cities in the world. It is a city that waits to hear the good news of Jesus Christ.
I discovered in reading the book of Jonah that God uses ordinary people to do extraordinary things. If we will simply follow the example of our Lord Jesus, if we will give up our rights, if we will be willing to give up our reputation, if we will come as servants to stand beside people, not over them but beside them, to love them and share joyfully and lovingly and patiently the good news that we have discovered many people will respond.
Floyd McClung, Jr. is executive director of international operations and director of urban missions for Youth With A Mission a worldwide ministry training young adults in missions.
