Why I Crossed the English Channel to Find a Church - Matthijs Blom

I believe, again, if you want to get a blessing, you need to make a leap of faith. And for different people, those are different steps, different leaps. Don't be discouraged, I would say. Don't be discouraged because you feel lonely, because there are a number of people who feel lonely, but if they would know about each other, they would be less lonely.

Well, Mathias, it's an honor to have you on the podcast today. So we're here in Ireland, but you're originally not from here. Could you tell me where you were born and if you were raised in a Christian home, and just a little bit about your background as we get started? Sure.

I originally come from the Netherlands, moved to Ireland two years ago, and born and raised in a Dutch Reformed Church. A Dutch Reformed Church that, to see what it resembles, what it is, kind of what you compare it with in the States, would be—well, back in 1819, I've read the Dutch established the Reformed Protestant Dutch Church in New Amsterdam, nowadays in New York. And back then, no, after that, they renamed it, rebranded it to the RCA, the Reformed Church of America. And out of that, many branches came, but that's the way you kind of can compare it with. That's the Dutch Reformed Church I grew up in. So born and raised in that church, in that setting, really appreciated that.

And also my parents, they made sure I knew the word and went to Christian schools. And yeah, always have been active within the church. And after, when growing up, I always have had a passion as you for evangelizing, reaching out.

So I've done that also in different ways. Later on, when I grew up in that and started living on my own, and when I met my wife and she went to a Baptist church.

Well, that's kind of a trouble, of course, because in my Dutch Reformed Church, you have, for example, the infant baptism. And the Baptist churches do the believers' baptism. So that's an issue. And that was also an issue between my wife and myself at the beginning because I was very fond of or convinced about the infant baptism. And yeah, so there was an issue.

But later on, I came to realize the believers' baptism actually was the biblical one. So yeah, and while we were going out, my wife and I, we visited that Baptist church, but we also went to a Reformed church that I went to. So it was back and forth, back and forth. But after marriage, we decided, after six months, I believe, or something, we decided to go to the Baptist church.

When at the Baptist church, it was a small church, but it was good and nice to be there. However, I always sensed there was something doctrinally, especially with the dispensation and those kinds of things. I never understood it. Okay, so I want to grab on to that one. So the dispensationalism and so forth. I always thought that was just more of a thing in American churches, but you're saying you definitely had that where you were at. Well, American churches are all over the place. So was that with this what? Like the church there was. This was a Canadian missionary.

Okay, okay. Yeah. But there are plenty, plenty, plenty Dutch churches who would believe in that. Okay. That's helpful context. Yeah, that would be initially, that was a little confusing when hearing that part. Yeah. Okay. No, it's interesting. It's a big thing. And of course, you have differences within dispensationalism, I've learned.

But back then, I've never really understood it, and I didn't really want to explore that topic because I didn't really see the benefit to anything.

But yeah, at some point, there were some other things in that church, and we left that church in 2017. But at the end, there was, I'm not sure how, but we came across there was a question about 1 Corinthians 11 and what that would mean.

So I found that interesting. So I went into that for myself. I came to the conclusion there is so much to it, to 1 Corinthians 11, to the head covering.

So it took me a few months. I made a report of 55 pages out of it because there is so much to it because I want to understand the meaning of the words that Paul is using. For example, what means praying? What means prophesying? What means shame, nakedness? What is covering? What is gathering? What is glory? Etc., etc. So there are many things, angels. There are so many things attached to it.

And I believe personally, it took the devil centuries to take away that from the Christian churches because Protestant and Catholic churches, they all use it, especially the Protestants have rejected it more and more. And also within the Baptist churches, it's becoming less and less or smaller and smaller, however you want to define it.

But there's so much to it. So yeah, I came to the conclusion that we should use it and that we should practice it. And now that's in the sense of the headship order, although there is a sense to it, but I think the main point is glory, as in I believe God is way more focused on receiving his glory than in maintaining his headship. Because if his position is really, truly his main interest, then he would not come in his son to die for a sin for people like us. So in the sense, he wants to be glorified by something, someone, right? And that is with the glory. And I found that so fascinating.

And I came to that conclusion. And I looked around in the Netherlands, and where is that practiced? Were you able to find anywhere that it was practiced? Well, no. So I had to go online. And I came across the Anabaptist groups.

So I thought, well, that's nice, but they are pretty far away. Wait, so you had not heard of the Anabaptist or encountered that teaching until this point? Yes and no. Yes, in the sense of when I went to high school, I still remember there was in religious class, we had every week, we had one or two hours of religious class. And there was half a page or one page about Anabaptists.

Now, this is in the Dutch school system, correct? Christian. Christian Reformed school system. And I'm not sure if they are still using that book, but anyhow, in the book that I was using. Interesting, though. And that was connected to Münster.

So it was negative. Yeah. And that's a whole story. And I actually want to do an episode on Münster or something. But anyway, that's one of the unfortunate examples of the Anabaptist story, right, where it went horribly wrong and a lot of heresy and things got mixed in with it. That's interesting. That's the example that they used. So if you would ask a regular Dutch person, but also a regular Christian in the Netherlands and say Anabaptist, they say, "What?

Baptist? No, no, no. Anabaptist." And they wouldn't have a clue. They wouldn't have a clue. So there is some kind of Mennonite church, a very liberal one, in the Netherlands as a, how would you call that, a remnant of the previous times.

But it is, well, again, that's liberal. I wouldn't find the head covering there. I'll just put it that way. So yeah, I came to that conclusion. And I saw, well, the Anabaptist, and I said, well, that's good to know that at least some people do it, however they are not nearby.

But if you start with that, you also come to, you encounter other topics as the non-resistance, as jewelry, and as later on also the kingdom to kingdom concept. You encounter that, and then, especially with the two other topics after the head covering topic, was I came to a conclusion, and again, it was the Anabaptists.

They practiced it and/or believed it. And so yeah, that's a bit 2017, '18, '19, kind of that period. So a lot of these, you mentioned others too. So non-resistance or enemy love, I guess you could say, two kingdoms, modesty, some of the teachings on jewelry, things like that. Were you finding this teaching just online as you searched, or where were you encountering these things? Well, I would, because I would encounter Anabaptist websites and thus learning more about what they believed.

And we also, me and my wife, we have one child, a boy, nine years at the moment. We want to do homeschooling, or we are homeschooling. But back then, we wanted to homeschool. And you don't really have Dutch curriculum for homeschooling in the Netherlands because it's a very small group of people to do homeschooling in the Netherlands. People can, though. People can, though. Yes, at the moment. But my personal opinion is that it is going the wrong direction politically at that point.

But that's a whole other topic. But that is one of the main reasons, one of the two reasons why me and my wife also moved to Ireland, just because we know certain things, we expect certain things to change.

And in Ireland, it's more ingrained in the constitution, the freedom of education by the parents. And in the Netherlands, it's more an article within the law. So they won't really change it, I suspect, but they will go around it without changing. That is what I think I'm seeing.

But anyhow, we were thinking of going to do homeschooling, and we needed to have an English curriculum. And we've learned through French about an address in Wales. And there you have the nationwide church, and they have a mission there. And they send out books, I believe, and also the curriculum. So we ordered curriculums there. And at one point, they also added to the package, they added an invitation to the conference that they have at the end of November, early December. They always have a conference then. So we thought, well, we should go there. So we went there. And at that point, we didn't know any Dutch Anabaptists. But when we went to that, when we went to that conference in Wales, we got to know two other Dutch Anabaptist families.

That was an eye-opening. It was happy to know that there are some other people going into that direction. And well, from there on, especially with one other couple, we maintained contact. Although they live two, two and a half hours away from us.

So it's not something that you do every week. But anyhow, it was good. Oh, and at that conference, we also met a couple from Wisconsin. And they invited us to come over to visit them. And I believe we went there for two weeks, I think. I'm not sure. I think so.

And so we said to that invitation, we said yes. So we went there. And the brother asked before we came, "What do you want to do?" So we want to meet the people because we want to see what is life like for an Anabaptist. Thinking it is totally different from what I normally do. So yeah, so he said, "Well, sure." So we went there and we visited almost every day, at least two families.

And it was really, really nice. I myself, I could just throw in with every visit a different topic and discuss that. So really, really funny. But yeah, that was good. So really, really appreciate that from them. Three years ago, we kind of, as a family, we saw things changing. Well, we think we see things changing politically. And that always takes time in politics. So concerning homeschooling. And at that point, we were not part of the church. We were, well, sitting at home, doing some on a Sunday, we would listen to church services. And from Anabaptist in the States.

But we missed the fellowship with people. And some gray-haired men have told me that they told me, "Matthys, if there is a big thing in your life that you need to do, do it before your child or your children attend."

And I think there's some truth in that. If it is 10, 11, or 12, it doesn't really matter, I think. But the meaning, there's truth in that. And well, we thought, at least. And compared to that, with that, and homeschooling changes and not having fellowship. So there are multiple reasons why we came to that thought and later on the decision to move.

And well, we ourselves, we started thinking, "Well, if we go, where will we go to?" Yeah, because if there's no other groups in your own country, I mean, you're talking about you're going to have to leave your home country and go somewhere else. That's significant to move like that, is it not? Yes, yes, because it's in the mind of a Dutch person, and also for me myself, of course, but also for family and friends who are not in that process. You go to a different country.

It's kind of you go in the States, you go from one state to another. But it's not the same thing, I think, because it's culture-wise, language-wise, and perhaps rules. There are some differences in rules and regulations in the States. But I think it's less, less changes. But yeah, but one benefit is here with Ireland, it's part of the EU. So we've been thinking of, well, we didn't want to leave Europe. We want to stay in Europe. There were three options that we were thinking of.

And well, Wales, the nationwide of Wales, nationwide also has another mission in Denmark. We visited them as well. And here in Ireland, we knew about Wales later on, but that's later on. They only started that just before we moved to Ireland. Denmark, we didn't know kind of, but it was startup.

Here in Ireland, at first, we didn't know about Ireland. But one of the Anabaptist friends, they bought a house in the Netherlands. That house needed some remodeling. And he asked some brothers here in Ireland because he knew Ireland. And some brothers went there for a week or so. And when they drove back after that week, at the end of the week, to the airport, they passed our house and they visited us for about 15 minutes. And that is how we got to know, and also personally know, here people from Ireland.

That 15-minute visit ended up being very significant in your life then. Yes. That's kind of incredible. And maybe that's a bit of a lesson. The small moments of time that we interact with other people may have a much bigger effect than we realize, especially in your case. So this is where you first meet people from here. You're hearing about the church. What then is the decision process that says, "Okay, you're actually going to pack your family up and move to another country completely?" Yeah, I mean, that's a big step.

First of all, I want to know, "God, do you want me to go?" And I do think God is blessing the ones who take action. The blessing only comes after the action. I don't think the blessing comes before the action. So if we do a good thing, a pure thing, or whatever, I think God will bless that anyhow.

And I think this step is a good step. I don't have to read it in the Bible, "Matthys, you have to move." But there are principles in the Bible to stay pure, to stay whatever. Still asking him, "God, if you want me to go, then my main issue was the house. I bought a house, and I needed money to buy a house here."

But the first thing was when we bought that house, it was on the market for more than over a year. So yeah, we were afraid, "Well, that's going to take a while." Back then, our son was seven years. So we thought, "Well, we still have some time left until 10." So let's put it on the market, and then we'll see what happens.

But my second concern was concerning the house was, well, price-wise, I needed money. So I needed to have a good amount, right? So I asked God, "God, if you want me to go, then it has to be sold. The house needs to be sold quickly.

And it has to be sold for a very good price." So what we normally do when we have someone over to do some work for us, so we asked the real estate, we asked three real estate agents to come on Monday. The first one came, and that is the one I really liked. As a person, I had a click with him.

There was the second guy on Tuesday. The third I had on a Wednesday. And I really didn't like that guy. Because from the first minute, I really didn't have that click. But do you know Otto Koenig, the missionary there in faraway lands?

It's slipping me where it was. Yes, I know. Southeast Asia somewhere. Papua New Guinea. Yeah.

I remember him saying that he believed God had assigned him as a protection there in the jungle, the most ugliest guy of the jungle, to protect him. And he was afraid of that guy at the start. So that is how God sometimes works. But anyhow, I had to think about that just a while ago. But I really didn't have a click with this guy. But during our conversation halfway, he said, "Well, Matthys, I think I know someone for your house."

But I didn't want to give him the permission to sell the house. So I told him, "Well, you can show him the house, but it doesn't mean that you can do the whole process of selling the house and put it on the internet or whatever, that kind of process." So he said, "Oh, that's fine. That's fine. That's fine." So that was on Wednesday. And then on Friday, the guy came. He said he was interested. And that was an investment guy. He did an investment in properties.

He walked around our property, and we had a cup of coffee. During the cup of coffee, the price went up. And we sold the house. And we were allowed to stay in the house for six more months. So we— You sold it in like four days or five days. If you had the first realtor on Monday and the buyer came on Friday, that's amazing.

God still does wonders, and he still answers prayers. Oh, wow. And we were allowed to stay there for six more months. We just rented our own house from him. He was an investor. He wasn't going to live in it himself. So yeah, during that time, we bought the house here in Ireland. We did some remodeling in the house while we started the remodeling.

And then we moved about two years ago now. We moved here to Ireland. Yeah. Again, that's a big step. And one of the questions that I have with that, there's probably people listening to this that are searching for a church, for a community, somewhere to join and be a part of. You've clearly went through a process of this in the Netherlands, pretty isolated, and then finding a place to come to.

What encouragement would you give to those people who are maybe going through the similar process that you went through? It's quite a question because every person is different. And there are differences even between men and women. But the main thing is, in the Netherlands, there are not really that many Anabaptists. And if there are, no one knows about each other, most probably.

So that would perhaps be a good thing to start something for that. But as an encouragement, to start having the contacts with those Dutch Anabaptist people, it's easy, and especially in our day, popular to have the contacts through the internet from the States most often.

And there is value in that. But one of the main things of Anabaptists is their community and their sense of people being together. So to start that, one of the challenging things is finding other seekers, so to say.

I'm not really sure if seekers is the right word. But it's just that you will encounter other people who are not thinking the same thing about, for example, a divorce or remarriage or the covering or the two kingdom concept. They've never probably haven't considered that, although I think that is the glue of the whole puzzle.

And that is challenging. And I think that is a good thing because if you're going to, as an outsider, come and join later on in Anabaptist church, perhaps here in Ireland, perhaps somewhere else, there will be some challenges, especially from a European or even a Protestant mindset. There will be challenges, and you would need to cope with that. But I believe if you have the desire to do so, you should make the step and the effort to actually engage with the people you want to engage with. Most people are looking for a church. We did as well, to just establish church where is some kind of stability.

People will need to make a leap of faith. And again, I believe if the step is right, not selfish, but for others, I think God will bless that. Our main point, one of the main points for us, was not really ourselves, but more for the son.

So in that sense, because I think we would have, as us too, we would have coped within that environment. But for him in the future, etc., I think that would be a good thing. And I think God blesses that.

And where to live is one of the main points, where main questions. And I believe God provides. I cannot work for the amount that the house went up. I cannot work for that. And when I came here, I didn't have a job. I just did remodeling for six months. I sent out two resumes, and I found the job that I prayed for.

I believe God answers prayers. But I believe, again, if you want to get a blessing, you need to make a leap of faith. And for different people, those are different steps, different leaps. Yeah, don't be discouraged, I would say. Don't be discouraged because you feel lonely, because there are a number of people who feel lonely. But if they would know about each other, they will be less lonely.

And if God wants a church there, then he can start a church there. But you will need to have humble people. And if people stick with their own doctrines and beliefs at certain points, it's difficult to get a church established.

I think many things are possible. Many things are possible. But again, for every person, that might see or look different. And if someone really is searching for something, then there are conferences. You can go to Wales for conferences. You can come to Ireland for conferences. You can come for a visit and then experience.

You don't really have to go to the States for that anymore, right? So we're happy that the Anabaptists came back again after those that many centuries, right? So we're happy about that. Well, it's so interesting because Netherlands, probably not far from where you lived, is where Menno Simons would have lived, right?

So it's kind of ironic in a way. You come from where a lot of this started for many of our people right there in the Netherlands. Yes. I think, yeah, that was really helpful what you just shared. I think the piece I'm taking away from this is the isolation is a real thing to remember. And for you and your family saying, "We need to have a real community around us." I guess you can listen to sermons on Zoom, and you can talk to people on the phone, but it's not the same as living in a community with others.

And I think that's powerful. So, well, as we bring this story to a close, is there anything else you would like to leave with our listeners or anything else that maybe there's something I missed in the story as we went along?

Well, I just shared a few thoughts also for the ones who are searching for things and looking for answers. But I would like to address Anabaptists who grew up in the Netherlands most often than in the States or Canada or whatever. But there are who are in those groups for multiple years that it is important to do that outreach, to go to those places. Because yesterday, we sang a song at the school, the Christian school. And there was a sentence of that people are crying out to be loosened from the bond.

And people are bound by Satan. And we know Christ took away the bondage of Satan, but we still have to resist. People need to believe in Jesus and resist the devil. And if we don't go there as a group of people, if the Anabaptists, if they are reactive and not really proactive, then people will stay there in that crying. Just like Romans 10:14 and 15 says, if they cry, how can they cry to him who they don't know? And how will they know if they are not preached?

And who will preach if they are not sent? And that is, I think it's a proactive attitude.

And we should go with that mindset because, as Jesus says, the harvest is white. And he's looking for harvesters for workers. So who is willing? Because I believe if you go somewhere, even if you are with, if no one is asking you to come, because that is one of the things that Anabaptists do, if someone asks, they will come and start a church. But if they would go somewhere without asking and they just go there, they will find those who are crying out because Christ said so.

And I think also here in Europe, in Netherlands, Ireland, I think that would be there will be a great harvest for that. And people will be released from that bondage of darkness way sooner if we have a more proactive approach to that.

And we don't have to fear because the harvest is white. We don't have to fear. It's not dark. We don't have to fear anything because the promise already has been given. We just have to do. But I'm really grateful that there are already some Anabaptist groups coming here, establishing something, reaching out to people, and that the kingdom of God is expanding.

That's a powerful note to end on. Go and bring Christ's light around the world to these places. Thank you so much for sharing. I hope this was an encouragement to many people who listen to this. Then maybe they will take those steps that you described, whether they're seeking for a community or whether some of these other groups could go to some of these places and share Christ's light. That's a powerful message. Thank you for sharing today, Matthias. Thank you so much for having me.

Thanks for listening to this episode with Matthias. If you enjoyed this conversation, you might want to check out this episode we did with Sister Judy, where she shares her story of her journey through the Christian spectrum. You can find all our content on our website at anabaptistperspectives.org. Thanks again for listening, and we'll see you in the next episode.