Bring your swimming gear, towels and your own picnic lunch/drinks. We'll go by train (a group will leave Central Station, spoor 1, at 10:48. We'll meet on the beach (in front of the Palace Hotel, look for the VA beach flag), enjoy a baptism and then lunch together. For directions how to get from the station to the beack, click here, or check the map below. 

If it rains bring your umbrella & rain jackets :)
 

Curious about what a baptism in the North Sea is like? Take a peek:

And yet, there is also an indescribable beauty that enters the world the moment someone gets baptized. What is it that makes baptism a powerful experience? Well, like a great tear-jerking movie, baptism is telling a story.  What is so great and mind-boggling about this story is that on one hand it is so personal, so intimate, and on the other, completely cosmic and universal. 

Through the entirety of Christian scriptures, water—whether symbolically or literally—plays a central role. On the very first page of the Bible, God hovers over the “waters”, preparing to create reality as we know it. “Creation”, in other words, is “baptized” as God separates out the water from the dry land. Later on, the people of Israel are “baptized” as they escape from Egypt through a separated Red Sea, and then again they cross through the Jordan River—both incredibly significant moments in Hebrew history which are told and retold to remember that God brings freedom, new life, and hope.

It is in this context that baptism began. As a Jewish rite of purification, it was used by some—like the famous John the Baptist—to act out a return to God, as if to say, “we used to be a part of your great story, God, but haven’t really been acting that way lately…so we’re re-committing ourselves.” Jesus himself even got baptized in this way. But then, as with almost everything else, Jesus added new meaning. Jesus referred to his impending crucifixion and death as a “baptism” (Lk. 12:50) Why? He is re-centering the whole story of the Bible through himself. He is saying that he will die, but on the other side of his death is freedom, new life, and hope.

Baptism is what we are given, as followers of Jesus, as a way of saying “YES!” to the life of Jesus.  It’s like the ring on the finger in marriage—the culmination (and yet, at same time, the beginning) of a love story. As the apostle Paul says, “We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.” (Romans 6:4)

So baptism isn’t merely a symbol of what has already taken place, it is also a very real entrance into a new community, a new life. As it turns out, baptism may still be weird but it isn’t arbitrary.  It is the act of stepping into and participating in God’s new life here and now through Jesus.

If you are interested in being baptized, or have more questions about what the new life of Jesus means, feel free to contact us at info@vineyardamsterdam.nl.
 

“I want you to imagine for a moment that you have just thrown open the window on a glorious spring morning. A fresh breeze is stirring around the garden. In the distance there is a crackle of bonfire as a farmer clears away some winter rubbish. Out in the field, a skylark is hovering over its nest. All around, there is a sense of creation throwing off its wintry coverings and getting ready for an outburst of new life.

There was something to explain, all right. Jesus' followers were clearly as puzzled by his resurrection as they had been by much of what he had been saying to them. They were unsure what they were supposed to do next. They were unclear what God was going to do next. Was this the time, they asked, when Israel would receive the kingdom, would be free at last in the sense they and their contemporaries had been hoping for? 'It isn't for you,' he says, 'to know the times and periods which the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judaea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.' (Acts 1.6-8)

First, beauty. God has promised that, through his Spirit, he will remake the creation so that it becomes what it is straining and yearning to be. All the beauty of the present world will be enhanced and set free from that which at present corrupts and defaces it. The task of being God's people therefor includes the task of celebrating and creating beauty. Led by the Spirit, we are to use our God-given creativity to find new ways forwards. Because the Spirit will one day flood the whole of creation, our task as Spirit-filled Christians in the present is to use our differing creativities to anticipate that eventual beauty, both as mission and as celebration. Here is a theologically grounded agenda for all Christian artists, musicians, writers and so on.

Finally, justice. God holds out before us, and wants to anticipate here and now by the Spirit, a world put to rights, a world in which the good and joyful gift of justice has flooded creation. The work of the Spirit in the lives of individuals in the present time is designed to be another advance sign, a down payment and guarantee, of that eventual putting-to-rights of all things. It is by the Spirit, and by the Spirit alone, that we will see forgiveness put into practice as a fact about our global economy, that we will see fair trade replace so-called free trade, and that we will indeed make poverty history. It is by the Spirit that we will honour and respect the good earth from which we were taken and will work for the day when the mountains and hills will break forth into singing and all the trees of the forest will clap their hands…”