Anglicans in Amsterdam

We are staying in Amsterdam for the second week of our Dutch holiday, and this morning we walked to Christ Church Amsterdam (www.christchurch.nl) - dodging bikes and scooters on a beautiful route along canals and through side streets.

Christ Church is an Anglican Church welcoming both visitors to Amsterdam and residents, meeting in 3 centers across the city, and 'Making disciples of Christ in Amsterdam from all nations'.

The City Church congregation that we attended meets in a traditional church building and is, I suspect, the more traditional of the 3 services - a mixture of recognizably Anglican liturgy, silence, hymns (on guitar and bongos...) the Word and prayer. Romans 12, and a sermon on worship as a whole-life event was the theme:  Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God – this is your true and proper worship. The point was also made that we 'find ourselves' not by looking inwardly, but by finding our place in the Christian community, the body of Christ: so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. 

The service was led by the Chaplain of Amsterdam, Rev James Hill. The notice sheet asked for prayers for the Assistant Chaplain, who is suffering multiple fractures after falling off his motorbike...

As the service ended we were welcomed by a number of people around us and invited to coffee.

There were about 50 people in the congregation including, remarkably, a couple from HT Redhill! Sam and Theresa Appau-Kwateng are here visiting family and were attending Christ Church with their niece and her family - great to have more time to chat with them than we usually do on a Sunday morning. The Anglican world is a small world sometimes, and I left feeling blessed to be a part of it!