Jeff Fountain

Jeff Fountain

Jeff Fountain and his wife Romkje are the initiators of the Schuman Centre for European Studies. They moved to Amsterdam in December 2017 after living in the Dutch countryside for over 40 years engaged with the YWAM Heidebeek training centre. Romkje was founder of YWAM The Netherlands and chaired the national board until 2013. Jeff was YWAM Europe director for 20 years, until 2009. Jeff chaired the annual Hope for Europe Round Table until 2015, while Romkje chaired the Women in Leadership network until recently. Jeff is author of Living as People of HopeDeeply Rooted and other titles, and also writes weekly word, a weekly column on issues relating to Europe.


Articles by Jeff Fountain

  • Asia Europe

    The polycentric global church

    European delegates are right now arriving in Korea to join over 5000 Christian leaders from all over the world in the Fourth Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization, starting tomorrow (Sunday).

  • Europe

    Raising awareness of people living with disability

    Superhuman efforts by the some of the world’s fittest and ablest bodies riveted our attention on the Paris Olympic Games in recent weeks. These coming days, the Paralympic Games will bring us more athletic feats, this time performed by the heroic efforts of those living with disabilities. They are declaring to the world that social value and human dignity are not rooted in physical perfection. 

  • Europe

    More than gold

    The violence tolerated or even encouraged to please the crowds in Olympia followed naturally from worship of such a god. Deaths and injuries were extremely common. The pankration was a no-holds brawl mix of wrestling, boxing and street fighting in which kicks to the groin, deliberate dislocations of shoulders and ankles, chokeholds and breaking opponents’ fingers were all a part. 

  • Europe

    Freedom from fear

    We Westerners, who have only known the seventy years of peace sustained by the international order ushered in after World War Two, know little of the anxiety and fear Ukrainians and others in war zones experience daily.

  • Europe

    Hidden seed

    Russian propaganda that Vladimir Putin is ‘protecting Christianity’ against Satanism and neo-Nazism flies in the face of reliable reports from numerous sources of the brutal and ruthless persecution of Christians in the occupied Ukrainian territories. 

  • Europe

    Does Christian education matter anymore?

    In a secular society where ‘faith-based’ learning institutions are often viewed as fossils of a bygone age, education today is widely considered the rightful domain of secular governments. Should governments even allow ‘special’ religious-based education anymore? Hasn’t religion caused so many conflicts in the past? Shouldn’t education be based on scientific facts, not ‘superstitious’ beliefs? Even believers have to ask themselves, does Christian education matter anymore?

  • Europe

    Which worldview fits?

    Freedom to do what we want – rather than what we ought – is deceptive. Yet we live in a society where the right to be free to do what you like is widely accepted. It’s called liberalism. We are autonomous individuals, we are told, free to pursue self-interest, free to discover our ‘authentic selves’. At the same time, freedom is a concept championed by Christian thinkers throughout history. Freedom of conscience, closely linked with freedom of worship, is the keystone of all freedoms. Luther’s i

  • Europe

    Searching for truth

    The stubborn myth that science and faith are diametrically opposed gets knocked about in the current exhibition on ‘the creation of science’ in the Catherijne Convent Museum I visited in Utrecht this week.

  • Europe

    Zelensky’s prayerlist

    Easter, 2022, two months after the Russian invasion began, Volodymyr Zelensky led his nation in prayer for Ukraine from the St Sophia’s Cathedral in Kyiv in a pre-recorded video.

  • Europe

    How Long, O Lord?

    Few of us imagined that the Ukrainian resistance would last long against the feared might of the Russian army. Memories were stirred of the German invasion of the Netherlands in 1940 when the vastly outnumbered Dutch army resisted for four days before surrendering on May 14, immediately after Hitler’s ruthless blitzkrieg destroyed the historic heart of Rotterdam.

  • Europe

    The sledgehammer of truth

    While praying for Ukraine this week in a zoom connection with YWAM colleagues, I remembered a story once told by the late Argentinian-born evangelist Luis Palau.