Fall 2007
Group shot at BCM Netherlands’ De Herikon
A Look Back at BCM Netherlands “I
was part of the very first Bible Club.” Wil Buitenweg had just arrived for seniors camp at BCM Netherlands’ Bijbel Club Centrum ‘De Herikon’, but she paused in her unpacking for an interview. “There were only five of us. It was just after the War where everything was so destroyed and bleak, so the bright colors and figures of the flannelgraph were something new and attractive for us. And, of course, the houseboat.” The Netherlands was still reeling from World War II’s physical and spiritual devastation when an American BCM missionary Anne Punt arrived in November 1949 to team up with Dutch colleague Annie Verboom in bringing the healing Good News of Jesus Christ to Amsterdam’s war-scarred newest generation. A single third-floor room in a canal-front house served as both living quarters and club room. If the first Bible Club drew only five children, it quickly grew. The ‘Annies’, as three generations of Dutch children would come to call them, soon saw
they needed bigger quarters. A whole house, perhaps? But in post-war Netherlands, housing was in short supply. A government permit was necessary to change one’s place of residence, and these were in even shorter supply. The answer to their prayers only illustrates God’s boundless creativity. If there were no houses for rent, the ‘Annies’ learned of a houseboat for sale. At that time houseboats plied the Dutch countryside’s waterways; they weren’t fixtures of Amsterdam canals. But the city officials had seen Anne Punt and Annie Verboom’s work with Amsterdam’s traumatized post-war youth. A houseboat in the city was a novelty. But if it could keep young people off the streets, why not! Freshly painted, window boxes bright with flowers, the houseboat was docked on the Herengracht Canal right across from the house where the ‘Annies’ had been living. Along the side, lettering proclaimed ‘Bible Club Movement, Philadelphia, USA’. For
by Jeanette Windle
the next decades that boat and its even bigger successor served as BCM headquarters, club room and living space as well as a landmark for the sight-seeing boats motoring past it each day. Today houseboats line Amsterdam’s canals, and a trend that began with the ‘Annies’ creative housing solution is now a major tourist attraction. Meanwhile, that first group of five clubbers grew to hundreds of children in Bible Clubs and release time classes around Amsterdam. Wil Buitenweg’s fondest childhood memories include hurrying down the street to the houseboat for Bible Club activities, then as she reached her teens, youth meetings and camps. By then she was helping teach Bible Clubs herself. “I can’t remember a time in my growing up when I wasn’t involved in BCM Bible Clubs and camps,” Wil reminisces. Those Continued on page 3