fbpx
  • INTERDENOMINATIONAL AND MULTINATIONAL

    We meet young people from many different countries and we are a team from many different countries

  • PARTNER CHURCHES IN HOLIDAY COUNTRIES AND IN HOME COUNTRIES

    For the best support in becoming a disciple of Jesus.

  • DISCIPLE MAKING MOVEMENT

    Jesus is not looking for converts or churchgoers, but for disciples who are making disciples.

  • HELP, MESSAGE AND GOD’S POWER

    Practical help, one on one conversations, prayer for illness, diseases and problems.

About us

Beach Mission is an interdenominational mission organization and offers mission trips to European coastal cities where many young people go for a beach holiday. In the night life areas participants speak to young people and tell them about the gospel of Jesus Christ. We pray for and with the young people and help them with faith questions. If necessary, we also help them with practical matters (e.g. to come home).

TARGET GROUP

Our target group consists mostly of young people in the party scene. Many young people are really separated from God partly due to alcohol, drugs, provocative music and suggestive clothes. We would really like to connect them with God by informing them how this broken relationship with God can be restored; we do this with love and care, commitment and passion, openness and honesty, and most of all, with God’s help.

Beach Mission

Contact

Visiting Address:
Tjalk 25
2411 NZ Bodegraven
The Netherlands

Postal adress:
Begoniaveld 18
2914PB Nieuwerkerk aan den IJssel

Contact information:
E-mail:        info@beachmission.org
Telephone: +31 85 30 129 38
WhatsApp: +31 85 30 129 38

Chamber of Commerce number: 63355078
Government registration number (RSIN): 855200856

Bank data:
IBAN      : NL71 BUNQ 2067 4644 50 (changed in 2022)
BIC         : BUNQNL2A
Name of account       : Stichting Beach Mission
Note: not for personal support for board members

Beach Mission Foundation has tax-deduction status for gifts in the EU (ANBI)
anbi

Mission, vision and aim

Beach Mission wants to have a positive impact on the lives of young people and in party scenes by providing assistance and by connecting young people with Jesus in a life-changing way.

WHY THE WORK OF BEACH MISSION?

We are doing this because we have experienced in our own lives that the relationship with God makes us happy. We have become convinced that our deepest meaning is in this relationship with God. God made us as humans, not to lead life on our own, but to live based on this connection with God, in this life, but also in life after this life, in eternity. We would like to share this with other young people in popular vacation areas.

Based on this same motivation, we like to do something beneficial for the city. By being present and offering a listening ear we want to bring peace in party scenes. Young people who are too drunk to get home, we accompany; for people who are frustrated, we are offering a listening ear; to women who cannot walk on their high heels anymore, we are giving flip-flops. We are praying for those in pain, sorrow and with illness. We are helping young people to grow and become disciples of Jesus.

  • Young people are the church of the future
  • God is coming to us wherever we are (Bible: Genesis 3 verse 9)
  • We are the church for those young people who are revelling in the “party scene”

In the Bible you also find many examples of people who bring other people to Jesus. Of Andreas, one of the disciples of Jesus, it is written that he did that three times; first his own brother Peter (the Bible book of John chapter 1 verse 42); then a Jewish boy (the Bible book of John chapter 6 verses 8 and 9) and a group of Greeks (the Bible book of John chapter 12 verses 20 through 22). A good example of how we want to bring young people to Jesus during their holiday!

What we believe

We as people were created in the image of God, as relational beings. We can make connections with one another, can reflect on our own behavior and for example can think about the meaning of life. Relationships give meaning to life. We are convinced that our deepest purpose lies in the relationship with God. God is Spirit, but also Person. He created us as human beings, not to lead life on our own, but to live based on this connection with God; in this life, but also in life after this life, in eternity. (Romans 1:20, Matthew 28:19, Deuteronomy 4:35, John 17:5).

We see the Bible as a love letter of God to us. By reading the Bible we discover who God is and what He wants to mean for us.

The world and nature on it (the creation), came into being because God spoke. When God had made the world, everything was good.

Man is the crown of creation. God made humans as man and wife. Sex between a husband and wife is the only form of sexual relationships that God approves of.

God made a visible, but also an invisible world. The invisible world is the domain of angels/spirits. Most angels are serving God and people and they reveal themselves to people sporadically. A part of the angels – led by satan – have become unfaithful to God. After a battle in heaven they were cast out of heaven and they now want to take over God’s authority on earth and establish their own spiritual kingdom; this is also referred to as the realm of darkness. These spirits from this realm also are called demons. These spirits are trying to influence and control people.

Most people realize that there is more between heaven and earth, but many people never had a personal experience with God. The reason for this is that there is a problem between us and God. That problem is in our thinking and acting. As humans we can do many good things, but if you look at the misery in the world, you also see that we as humans are not able to live in harmony with people around us. You see that on a large scale, but also in our own lives. Even while doing good things we often do these for our own wellbeing. This problem creates a distance between people, but also between humans and our Maker, God.

When God had created the world, everything was good. Mankind received responsibility for the world. As long as man was connected with God, there would be no death and man would live with God forever.

With the first people, satan succeeded in causing a break in the relationship between God and mankind. That is why there is a lot of misery in this world. God holds each one of us responsible for our own mistakes, but also collectively for the misery in this world, because we are no different than other people and evil seems to have gotten into our DNA. God calls this sin and deals with it as we do with a crime. This problem cannot be solved by having a good conversation. The punishment God is satisfied with, is that we die and that we are without Him in eternity. Result would be that there is no man left who eternally lives with God.

God came with an alternative solution! This solution is the sacrifice of an innocent man. Someone who does not deserve the punishment himself, but wants to take it upon himself for someone else. In Jesus God took the form of a man. He was truly God and truly man. He lived life as God intended it. He did not have evil in His DNA. He was innocent, but allowed Himself to be sentenced, executed to death and came in eternal darkness. In doing so, Jesus sacrificed Himself and ended the enmity of God towards us.

Even before we could ask God for this, God took this step. It was His own initiative. Yet God wants us to realize that this was necessary for us personally. In prayer we can come to God with our lives and confess that we are not a better person than others, we can ask forgiveness for our mistakes (sins), accept that the sacrifice of Jesus was necessary for us, and thank Him for His sacrifice. Through this, the realm of darkness loses the right to influence and control your life. When you decide to be baptized, you show the spiritual world around you that your old life is dead, that you resurrect into a new life and that the domain of darkness has no right anymore to have power over you.

As a victim or relative of a victim of a crime, it does not just happen that you become good friends years later. With God this is completely different. He wants Himself to be known through the Bible. He, the Maker and King of the universe, the highest spiritual authority, wants to adopt us as child. He wants to have a relationship with us, as close as in a marriage. When you allow that, He wants to guide your life by the Holy Spirit. In prayer we can open our hearts for Him, ask Him by the Holy Spirit to come dwell in our hearts and to renew us from the inside out, ask Him to help us to follow Him and to obey, ask to teach us to read from the Bible and to understand and to give our lives in His Hands. We can also thank God that we receive power to become a child of God.

Out of that relationship with God, He wants to change our thinking (desires) and our acting by the Holy Spirit. Because of this you see yourself less and less as important, and God and people around you become more and more important. The more you are connected with God, the more you become free from addictions and the more you want to commit to people around you. The rules of God that at first were confronting and limiting, you now appreciate and you want to follow them.

God accepted Jesus’ sacrifice. Through this we can now not only restore the relationship with God, but through this the sentence that was pronounced over us (that we have to die and that we will be without Him in eternity) is done away with. Jesus showed that He is more powerful than the realm of darkness and death. The relationship with God also continues as soon as we die. We are then immediately with Jesus. Jesus also gave His followers – and in that all believers – the command to act upon that power by healing the sick, by delivering people from demons and even by raising the dead. God provided spiritual gifts of the Holy Spirit to do so. When we work with these gifts it needs to be in balance with the fruit of the Spirit. Not everyone with a relationship with God (immediately) receives gifts of the Spirit.

All misery in this world one day will be ended. This will happen when Jesus returns and all things become new. No death, no sorrow, no pain or trouble anymore!

God did everything to prevent that we go to hell. However, when we make the choice to lead our own lives, it is our own choice. God respects that choice. The sun goes up for believers and non-believers. A relationship with God is a relationship of love, you cannot force that. But it is good to know that when we choose to live our lives without God, then we also choose so for eternity. We then choose to be without all those beautiful things that we now receive from God.

The reason why we want to bring young people in holiday areas in contact with Jesus is first of all because our own lives through the relationship with Jesus have changed in a positive very way. But it is also because we want to obey the last wish that Jesus expressed before He left the earth, which is our mission.

Doing evangelism means working at the spiritual front lines. Spiritual opposition happens then. The realm of darkness is trying to minimize the impact of the work by discouraging and by causing disunity among us.

Our values

  • As ambassadors of God we want to be inspired and guided by God.
  • The Bible is the absolutely authoritative for us.
  • We endorse the creed of Mission Beach.
  • We want to be really interested in the other persons and not consider them as targets or numbers.
  • We want a respectful and non- offensive way to open conversations.
  • We want the message of God, the gospel, to be conveyed in a understandable way.
  • We want to take care of people who have or want to have a relationship with God.
  • We do not want to cause problems and to operate within the laws of the civil government.
  • When we are going on a trip as a group, we are considerate towards each other and respect others.
  • We want to connect with each other, even if we have different opinions about some issues.
  • We do not operate on our own. The leadership of the trip lies with the tour leader. The leadership of the group lies with the group-leader
  • We solve problems as quickly as possible.

Winning souls

We cannot win souls or convert people. Always during these mission trips, miraculous things happen. You do not control those things. So it is useless to set targets for desired results. What we can do, is give people the choice to enter into the relationship with God, to ask forgiveness for their wrong deeds and thoughts, and to confess that we missed our goal by living without God. But that’s it. That is why we pray that God will work out the results. In dependency on God and led by Him we hope to do a work that will change lives. Knowing Jesus and life with Him, from Him and by Him is something we dearly wish these young people to have as well!

History

Founders of Beach Mission are Dirk-Jan Boerman and Arjan Kriger. Until 2014, Dirk-Jan worked for the ‘Naar House’ foundation. While working there, a question occupied his mind for years: how to help those young people whom they talked to during the music events grow in their relationship with God. Between 2008 and 2014 Dirk-Jan participated in and led similar evangelism campaigns in Renesse. In 2007 he got the vision to go to Lloret de Mar and look up young people during their vacation over there, to share the Gospel. Arjan Kriger and he founded Beach Mission to make this possible.

Why here and why during summer vacations?

“In the past few years I met a lot of people from the world of dance-events and the party scene. I am very impressed about how much openness for the Gospel there is among these young people. The stories form the Bible seem vaguely familiar to them, but most young people have no idea what the Gospel is and that God wants a personal relationship with them. More and more I realized that there are huge opportunities here to reach these young folks, who are separated from God, with the Gospel. During a vacation you can meet them more often, build a relationship with them and invite them over for a visit.”

Dirk-Jan Boerman