This is my last blog for the Compass (and our website) on this Christmas Day 2024. I am resigning as a pastor of Crossroads at the end of December. My wife needs surgery and subsequent medical treatments in the Netherlands, and I need to be with her. For the next season of my life, my sweet, courageous, energetic and loving wife is my congregation.
It has been a shocking, emotional, roller-coaster ride for the two of us, for our family and also for some of you. A thing I don’t wish on anybody, but I know happens to many people at the most unexpected times. I don’t think you’re ever really prepared for it.
In the summertime of 2024, we did a preaching series on ‘Keep The Change’. One of the topics was ‘Change that happens to us’. It was a sermon series that really echoed in people’s minds. It now sure echoes in my mind.
I am a planning freak. I used to be an auditor, and I like to have my ducks in a row. My friend, Brian Newman – who preached in Crossroads last November – would come to my auditor’s office when he was senior pastor in Amsterdam and the first thing he would do is mess up the pens on my desk in my corner office. Just to make fun of me.
My pens are all over the table now. I don’t have my ducks in a row. My planning has gone haywire. Still, I hear the Lord whispering in my heart: “I’m the bottom in your existence; you can’t fall deeper than me.” I can’t imagine what it would be without a gracious Lord to walk us through all of this.
This is what Habakkuk wrote a long time ago: I heard, and my heart pounded, my lips quivered at the sound; decay crept into my bones, and my legs trembled. Yet I will wait patiently for the day of calamity to come on the nation invading us. Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails, and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior. Habakkuk 3:16-18
On this Christmas Day, we look up to Jesus, Emmanuel; God with us. God with you on your Christmas Day. God with us on our Christmas Day. Either in good times or in bad times. God doesn’t limit his presence and his goodness to good days. Yet, I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God, my Saviour.
It was a great privilege serving in Crossroads for almost 6 years. Leila and I loved every minute of our time in Basel. We have come to love the country, the Crossroads community, the interaction, the great movement of the Spirit. You are a great bunch, and it was surely not difficult to be your pastor!
We hope that the good Lord will grant us to come back to Basel to say proper goodbyes to you in the springtime. We can’t tell yet when. We’ll carry you in our hearts. And we desire and pray that God’s work in and through Crossroads Basel will continue with the same energy and intensity that we were able to be part of.
When you say ‘bye’ in Basel, people often say ‘Addee’. That is a simple Swiss form of the French ‘Adieu’. I give you to God. I recommend you to God. I leave you in the hands of God. With my last blog, I say ‘Adieu’, I give you to God, who is able to keep you and sustain you in the next chapter.