Being Church in a Post-Christian World

In this first episode, Kendra Buckwalter Smith and Edwin Chr. van Driel introduce the concept of this podcast: stories from the Dutch church for the sake of the missional conversation in North America.

They discuss the nature of secularization in the Netherlands, the ways in which the Dutch church is a generation or two ahead of the North American church in terms of learning to live in a post-Christian world, and what we might lear...

David Boogerd is a journalist working for Dutch public television and radio. Since 2019 he presents a weekly podcast about religion that has become highly popular. In this podcast, together with missiologist Stefan Paas, Boogerd interviews religious leaders, philosophers, psychologists, journalists, and politicians about secularization and its effect on Dutch society. With Boogerd we talk about the search for meaning and the lack o...

Rosaliene Israel is an ordained minister and was until January 1, 2025 the secretary-general of the Protestant Church in Amsterdam, overseeing twenty-five faith communities in the city. For a number of years she lived in and led a new monastic community located right at the center of the Red Light District in Amsterdam. She also is a PhD candidate preparing a dissertation on new monastic communities. With Rev. Israel we speak about...

In this episode we remain in Amsterdam, but this time focus on the work of church planting in such a highly secular context. David van der Meulen, also known as “dominee David’ (pastor David) or “the millennium pastor” (dubbed as such by a secular newspaper in Amsterdam) focuses his ministry on post-Christian successful millennials, who have no interest whatsoever in anything like religious faith. He tells about the “Master Classes...

Hinne Wagenaar studied theology in the Netherlands and at Union Seminary in New York, taught theology in Cameroon, but then returned to his roots in the Frisian countryside where he started a new worshipping community rooted in the old, Medieval church building in this farmer town with 350 inhabitants. This church plant grew into a monastic community that rebuilt the monastery that once had stood outside of town. With Rev. Wagenaar...

Pieter Versloot was a missionary in central-Asia, worked at the national offices of the Protestant Church in the Netherlands, and now is pastor of the Martini Church in Groningen, a church at the center of a small, Medieval city in the north of the Netherlands. In this traditionally-minded Protestant community he re-introduced the confessional as a means for missional outreach to a largely secular city. His church also makes its pr...

While society might be secularizing, many are still drawn to the beauty of religious art. Over the last couple of decades, traditional Anglican Choral Evensong became very popular in the Netherlands. This is highly surprising, since the Netherlands is neither Anglican nor religious anymore. In this episode we talk to Hanna Rijken, who in cooperation with Oxford University studied the ways in which Choral Evensong reaches a secular ...

What is the unique thing we find in Christianity but nowhere else? Recent research among Dutch pastors and church planters revealed that while most of them would answer this question with “Jesus” – but that they find it difficult to express what difference he makes. Older soteriological models no longer seem to resonate; past language no longer feels life-giving or even feels somewhat embarrassing. Anecdotal evidence suggests this ...

How do you preach about God, eschatology, or salvation to people who have no sense of the transcendent at all? How do you introduce them to what the Christian faith is all about? This is not just a question relevant to those reaching out to the unchurched; the same challenge holds within the church. In this episode we speak with Kees van Ekris. He is a pastor, podcast maker, was elected “national theologian” in 2023, and wrote seve...

When contexts change, ministry changes; and when ministry changes, theological education will also need to change. In this conversation we talk about the ways in which the Protestant Church in the Netherlands approaches the education of its (future) pastors, and how the praxis of ordained ministry itself changed over the last decades. Our conversation partner is Klaas Bom, associate professor of theology and intercultural theology,...

As a broad, national church the Protestant Church in the Netherlands holds together different wings with very different theological perspectives. Different from the USA, where many experience unity and purity of the church as opposites, the PCN believes the church’s unity expresses its purity. In this episode we host Marco Batenburg, who for five years was the moderator of the national synod of the Protestant Church of the Netherla...