New book reveals new church growth trend in cities

ROTTERDAM - The port city’s municipal councilors, executives (wethouders) and mayor, all received a new book as a Christmas present recently from their Christian factions’ colleagues on council. The book God in the stad by author Gea Gort focuses on a little known phenomenon in the city, namely church growth. Gort gives this phenomenon a face by way of fifteen portraits, calling it “a new and surprising missionary movement in the city of Rotterdam.” While Dutch mainline churches have been on a well-known and serious statistical decline for decades, the new growth has gone largely undetected since numerous new church groups gather in (low-cost) rented facilities, using mostly languages other than Dutch. The Rotterdam development mirrors a similar trend in the other western Dutch cities, including Amsterdam, The Hague and Utrecht.