Langham Live May 2026 with Johannes W H van der Bijl, Langham Author
Event Transcript
Great to have you with us. My name’s John Libby. It’s my privilege to be National Director here at Langham UKI, and my enormous pleasure and privilege to welcome Johannes van der Bijl to be with us. Johannes, it’s really good to have you here. I can assure you the natives are friendly and are looking forward to learning a little bit more about you, and about what inspired you to write Breakfast on the Beach and many other things. But we’ll get to those in our conversation, I’m sure. So welcome.
Johannes:
Well, right now we’re in Heiloo in North Holland, in the Netherlands. I’m a chaplain here of an Anglican church in the little town of Heiloo.
John:
You don’t need to apologise for that in this group. Anglican is fine.
Johannes:
Well, you know, I say I’m a chaplain of an Anglican church — I think we have about four Anglicans in the church. The rest are Baptist, Pentecostals, Presbyterians, whatever.
John:
That sounds like most Church of England churches as well.
Johannes:
So it’s wonderful. It’s an international church. We have people from all over the world, all with different accents. The only thing that really, besides Jesus, unites us is that we’re looking for an English-speaking church. But it really is great.
John:
I cut you off trying to introduce us to Louise, your wife, and family. Tell us a bit more on that side.
Johannes:
Louise has been my wife for 42 years. We have two sons. Our oldest is married and has three special needs children. He lives in Boston in the U.S. The youngest is also married with two children, and they live in Stockholm, Sweden.
And we also have a baby — a little furry baby — and his name is Mr. Pips.
John:
And he’s with you at the moment?
Johannes:
He is. Our best evangelist I’ve ever had. Every morning and every afternoon, he stops everyone, and of course, we have to speak. So it’s good for us to exercise our Dutch, but it’s also a good introduction because people usually ask, “What are you doing here?”
John:
What route brought you to North Netherlands?
Johannes:
We’ve been missionaries with the Society of Anglican Missionaries and Senders since 2013. We initially went to Gambela in Ethiopia — I don’t know if you know where that is. It’s the little bump that connects Ethiopia with South Sudan.
There, we started a theological training college. In Gambela, the majority of the population are what we would call oral learners. So it was really interesting trying to set up a theological training college not from the Western perspective, which would be book-oriented, but story-oriented. It was quite a challenge. It took me about a year to figure out how the curriculum could work.
Then we started teaching. It was very rewarding. I really miss the people there. But health-wise, we just couldn’t maintain it. The average temperature there was between 45 and 55 degrees Celsius. The hottest we ever measured was 63.8. We just couldn’t do it.
So from there we went to South Africa and worked with a discipleship training group, JLife Africa. We basically worked ourselves out of a job. We worked in seven southern African countries, travelling from place to place and training people to do what we were doing. I guess we did it so well that everybody else started doing it, and there was no reason for me to continue because they were carrying on with what I’d started.
We were looking for a place in the northern hemisphere because of our children and grandchildren. We still felt called to the mission field, so we looked at Northern Africa, Jerusalem, several places in Europe and South America. Then, while speaking to the director of the Intercontinental Church Society, he mentioned Heiloo. The moment he said it, Louise’s face lit up.
Her mother was Dutch. She was born in Apeldoorn and moved to South Africa just before the Second World War. So Louise had always wanted to come to the Netherlands. That was the clincher.
John:
I tried to tempt you to Carlisle at some point as well, and you rejected me.
Johannes:
You didn’t have to tempt me. I really wanted to come. That was actually my personal first choice. I mean, come on — Beatrix Potter! How can you beat that?
So at some point in that journey, you came across Langham. How did that happen?
Johannes:
The first seminary I went to was George Whitefield College in South Africa, and they were connected with John Stott and that part of Anglicanism. So I must have had some connection at that point, but it never really penetrated.
But when I was in Gambela, we went to a meeting in Antalya of the International Council for Evangelical Theological Education. Langham was there, and I got chatting with some of the people. That’s really where the journey began.
John:
Quite a few people on the call will know that our international director, Riad Kassis, used to run ICETE before coming to Langham Scholars.
So what was the continuing association there? Because I understand from the back of this book that Langham Preaching resources helped shape your oral approach to learning and teaching.
Johannes:
When we were in South Africa teaching discipleship training, part of the course was to go through the life of Peter as an example of discipleship-making. Every time I taught it, I added more and more until that became my primary focus — looking at how Jesus made Peter into a disciple-maker.
That became the basis of Breakfast on the Beach, and the book that followed was about how Peter then reproduced what Jesus had taught him.
People kept saying to me, “You need to write this down.” But I kept thinking, where am I going to get the time?
Then COVID happened.
Right at the beginning of 2020, I had emergency heart surgery. Soon after that, we started hearing about the virus spreading. Friends visiting from the U.S. had to leave because visas were revoked. Louise thought she should get herself checked out, and she was diagnosed with second-stage breast cancer one day before lockdown.
The hospital was in “war mode,” so everything happened quickly. Surgery happened the following Monday.
Because of where we were living and where the hospital was, we had to travel back and forth, and someone kindly offered us their beach house. So there we were, watching the beach from the veranda while Louise underwent treatment, and I had little to do except look after my wife and write.
John:
And you were on the beach?
Johannes:
Well, yes. We weren’t allowed to have breakfast on it, but yes.
John:
I’m curious. When would you say Peter became a Christian?
Johannes:
Very definitely a work in progress.
I’ll use myself as an example. I did not grow up a believer. During the South African Border War, my life was miserable, and I was searching in all the wrong places. Then I was confronted by a chap from Youth for Christ who sang a song:
“Go ahead and mock my name, my love for you is still the same.”
I couldn’t get beyond that. I thought: what kind of God loves me even though I mock him?
So I said, “If your God can fix my life, I’ll give him everything.”
God stepped in. I cannot explain what happened, but when I woke up the next morning, I was not the same person. A week later, I realised I hadn’t touched drugs all week and didn’t even feel the need.
Did I understand the Gospel? No. I didn’t know anything about Adam and Eve or the cross. I think it was about three years later, after reading the Bible through several times, that the penny dropped and I understood why Jesus had to die on the cross.
I see something very similar to Simon Peter. I think the process began around the miraculous catch of fish. But I think the penny really dropped at that breakfast on the beach where Peter says, “Lord, you know everything.”
John:
And that’s after desertion and reinstatement. Extraordinary.
Johannes:
Exactly. If you read the Gospels, Peter argues with Jesus quite a few times. He even rebukes Jesus at one point. But I think the breakthrough came three years later on that beach.
John:
Somewhere in examining that life, and looking at oral learners around you, you put pen to paper. How easy was that?
Johannes:
Because the story was already in my head, it flowed rather smoothly. My whole aim was to give people who could never visit Israel an immersive experience — almost cinematic — where they could smell and touch and experience the world of the Gospels.
In seminary, I came across a harmonised Gospel, but it still wasn’t what I wanted. The accounts were parallel, but I wanted them to flow naturally as one story.
Since I already had years of notes from teaching, the actual writing only took about six months.
John:
People often say the land is the “fifth Gospel.”
Johannes:
Absolutely. There are things in Scripture that we just don’t understand unless we know the setting. For example, you don’t see lions roaming around Israel now, but Samson encountered one.
It fleshes out the world of the Bible. Going to Capernaum and realising the houses were made of black stone, not light brown stone — details like that make it feel real.
John:
Have you had feedback from people who don’t normally read Scripture?
Johannes:
Yes. Here in the Netherlands, if I walked up to one of my neighbours and handed him a Bible, he might politely take it, but he probably wouldn’t read it.
But they have read Breakfast on the Beach because it reads like a novel.
The book is not meant to replace Scripture. You’re supposed to read Scripture alongside it. But for many people, it becomes their first introduction to Christianity.
We’ve also seen lapsed Christians come back to church after reading it. Some even became actively involved again.
And another major use is discipleship. The fourfold method outlined in the book is really useful in training disciple-makers.
John:
You’ve also spoken about the hardness of secularism in North Holland. How is the church making an impact there?
Johannes:
Friendship evangelism is the only thing that really works here, and it takes forever. It took me three years before my neighbour invited me into his house. Before that, we only talked outside — about the weather, the roads, our dogs.
People here are wealthy. Life is easy. They don’t think they need God.
But with the wars raging now, younger people are beginning to ask questions about meaning and purpose. Those are the people we’re trying to reach.
Recently, we’ve also had seekers coming directly to church, saying things like:
“I bought myself a Bible and started reading it, but I don’t understand it.”
Then they come to Bible studies and grow rapidly.
I’d love to see more of that — people coming from the world into the fellowship, not just transferring from one denomination to another.
John:
Well, hallelujah. There’s so much there to reflect on and pray for. Thanks very much for speaking so candidly.
Prayer points from Johannes
- Pray for more seekers to come through the church doors — not only those moving between denominations, but people coming from the world into faith.
- Pray for patience and wisdom in friendship evangelism: that long relational investment would bear spiritual fruit.
- Pray for continued healing and strength for Louise and the whole family, and for sustainable health for missionaries working in difficult climates.
- Pray that the book would continue to reach people who are curious about the Christian faith and lead them to Scripture and local fellowship.
Get involved — read, pray, and join the conversation
If you’d like to follow this conversation further, join our Langham Book Club, where Breakfast on the Beach will be discussed and may be purchased at a discounted price. You can also sign up for prayer updates and events. Visit uk.langham.org to find out more about Langham Partnership UK & Ireland, events and resources.
We thank Johannes for sharing his story — a reminder that discipleship is often formed in ordinary places (even on a beach) and through patient, relational ministry.