Judith van Til
In 2003, as a young inexperienced 17 year old, I moved from the Netherlands, Down Under to attend C3 College, majoring in Dance. After completing the Advanced Diploma, I followed on to Pastoral Care, and concluded my stay in Sydney by completing a Bachelor of Theology with the first group ever to do this through C3 College. Six years in Sydney had transformed me completely, thus advocating C3 College to anyone, with the result that my family became the family with the most members attending college. After one of my brothers graduated and married an Aussie, my father, other brother and sister also left the Netherlands and are current students, leaving me now in the Netherlands on my lonesome. I guess that’s what you get for promoting College too much!
In 2008, after completing the Bachelor, I returned to the Netherlands, pastoring a church plant in Enschede for six years, during which time I also married Philip, completed my Masters in Theology and Education, and gave birth to our very first daughter, Manuela Zoë. In 2016, we moved to Almere and I am currently working on staff at C3 Amsterdam as the Creative Arts Manager. The latest addition to our family arrived on the 25th September 2019, Chloë Joanne Joy.
I'm back into diapers, sleepless nights, milk, spit ups, sit ups, snuggles and lots of rusks with "muisjes"; a true dutch tradition for every guest. It's a whole new season, challenging but at the same time, so beautiful and we are enjoying this miracle and new life God has blessed us with!
Scripture is Up for Grabs
We live in a culture where time flows on, so we continuously change our wardrobe, our furnishings, our looks – in short, ourselves. We can buy, choose and entertain ourselves as we like. Every day we attend the market of 'life' and chose different views and lifestyles to mix these together to create a life we deem to be ours.
So also in religion. God seems to be free for the taking. In fact, not just God himself, but defining who this God is, seems to be construed by the search of finding many different truths and bringing them together to join one’s own biography. One can choose what they believe from the disparate streams of Christianity to generally something that keeps one within their comfort zone. Lifestyle determines theology, instead of theology determining actions.
Church can be done online. 24/7 quality preaching and worship provide a completely new arena. We tune into Elevation for some of the best preaching. If we don’t agree with them, we’ll switch the channel to C3 or Hillsong.
Statistics say, three Bibles are sold or given away every second. There are Bibles in any font, with maps, comments, any cover, online and even as a magazine, yet it seems more people are connected to the afterlives of the Bible than the Bible itself.
Archimedes and Abraham are now Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Has the Bible now merely become a category in the great library of texts?
Blindly accepting interpretations from (online) mediums enforce Scriptural illiteracy. We do not have the ability to discern well by ourselves and individual reading of the Bible often results in reading the Bible in a way it supports rather than challenges our lifestyle.
In order to read Scripture faithfully, reading it within a community is a prerequisite. We cannot extract principles out of Scripture or attempt to embody it by ourselves. Periscope will never replace the house of God. So what role can we play in this as a church? You can read my thesis on the subject here.