World Cup Churches: 4. Netherlands

 It's World Cup year - taking place in November/December in Qatar instead of the Northern Hemisphere summer as it has always previously done.  Heading round the 32 qualifying countries I will pick out one church in each one.  I am not going to choose only churches that are to my liking.  This is a exploration not a recommendation! To see all in the series select the label World Cup Churches.

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We've arrived in the Netherlands and here I come to a country in which I have visited several churches.  The one I've chosen is already perhaps the most famous in the country but I have chosen it because of the amazing setting in which it finds itself.

Amsterdam's 'Old Church' (Oudekerk) is predictably its oldest and in the old city centre surrounded by the canals for which Amsterdam is famous.  Inside it has the characteristics of a Protestant Church, with an austere simplicity (though it was not always like this as it predates the Reformation.

As a port city Amsterdam has rarely been a shining example of humanity at its very best.  That's what I like about the Oude Kerk.  Its whole history is a struggle to bear testimony in the sea of sorrows and sins in which it is located.  The Reformation brought it into cleaner times indoors - previously it had been like a rowdy town square.  Yet today it is situated in the bizarre surrounds of the famed Red Light District where windows are displaying gyrating topless dancers.

I doubt there is any other street on earth where if you look one way you see an old church and turn 180 degrees and see a topless dancer on any and every night.

I have thought, on visiting this church, that it is on the one hand as badly placed as a church can be and yet, in reflecting on the way our Lord mixed in society, possibly located exactly where a church should be.