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 Netherlands. He currently directs the largest independent organization that supports missional work within the PCN. With him we talk about what it looks like to hold together a church as broad as the PCN, and how secularization impacts the national structures of a church, as well as old and tired oppositions between the left and the right.

About the church’s vision of the unity of the church, see also:

https://www.academia.edu/7080996/Church_and_Covenant_Theological_Resources_for_Divided_Denominations

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, who oversees the educational program of the Protestant Theological University.

https://www.pthu.nl/en/about-us/people/k.l.bom

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 several books about preaching in a post-Christian world.

https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kees_van_Ekris