Bishop Robert writes about his final pastoral visit of 2025:

The building in Willem van Mechelenstraat that is the new home of All Saints Church

My last pastoral visit of 2025 was to the Netherlands, where I joined All Saints Amersfoort in celebrating the tenth anniversary of their community. 

In 2015, Holy Trinity Church in neighbouring Utrecht was quite literally overflowing with people. A significant number of this congregation came from the Amersfoort area. So ‘Taskforce Anglican Church Amersfoort’ was established by Holy Trinity Utrecht, and on December 20th 2015 the new ‘All Saints’ congregation was born and held its first service at Heilige Geest Kirke, a disused Roman Catholic building in Amersfoort. In 2017, the congregation moved from a church building to a barn (Nieuwe Erven), then in March 2023 the congregation took on ownership of their current home (pictured above) from the Catholic Apostolic community. That makes three big moves in ten years.    

We celebrated the anniversary with a barbecue in the grounds outside the church building. As you can see from the picture, All Saints is a youthful church. It has over 100 people under the age of 17, and on the day I attended there were many babies, the youngest of whom was just three weeks old. The charismatic chief cook (centre) told me that at the age of nearly 50, he is the fifth from top in the church’s age distribution. 

I enjoyed meeting churchwardens Des (left) and Gijs (front right) over a cup of coffee and some Christmas treats. 

Here pictured with The Reverend Grant Crowe (Chaplain) and his wife Jolanda, and The Reverend Daniel Odhiambo, who is Mission to Seafarers Chaplain in Rotterdam, Europe’s largest port.

Amersfoort is one of the larger chaplaincies in the diocese with a worshipping community of over 250 adults and children. It has a programme of fellowship groups (‘Life Groups’), a camp for teenagers, and holds annual church away days or weekends. It has a particular focus on the persecuted church, with links to the international organisation ‘Open Doors’, which was founded in the Netherlands by Brother Andrew in 1955. 60% of its membership are reckoned to be ethnic Dutch, with the second largest group Australians. 

In my sermon, I spoke about the faithfulness of God and the faithful response of the people. All Saints is a remarkable story of growth. God has been faithful to this young community through three building moves and through Covid. At the same time, the community has many people who are passionate about their faith, and who have committed their time, talents and treasure to its flourishing. 

All Saints has already planted a daughter community of its own, in Hilversum. I look forward eagerly to seeing what God may achieve through this rather remarkable community in the next decade.