Two weeks ago Laura and I returned from a 10-day
survey trip to London. We went as learners ready to soak in all that God is
doing in London, and as dreamers discerning what the Lord is calling us to do
in this great city. We left London with a more focused understanding of the
work being carried out and the work that needs to be done.
For those of you who have traveled, you’ll
understand when I say it would take several lengthy posts to share our whole
trip with you. For your sake, I’ll be brief and limit myself to only two posts.
In this post I will touch on the highlights of our trip, and in part two I will
go more in depth into what we learned from our time there.
The journey over to London was uneventful, and it's
a good thing because we hit the ground running with our first meeting 3 hours
after our arrival. After a fun tour of Pepperdine’s London campus, we fought
our jet lag by praying while walking around London in the crisp air. Six miles
later, not including our wanderings in the British Museum, we returned to
Laura’s uncle’s house to use a new tactic to fight jet-lag: the wii.
We spent eight out of our ten days in London,
during which we met with local church and university leaders to continue
deepening our relationships and broadening our network. Our most beneficial
meetings were with two church plants out of the Anglican Church: Christ Church
Mayfair and St. John's Chelsea. Although these meetings revealed the deep
seeded unbelief of the culture they also made known the undeniable power and
movement of God's people in the UK. Christ Church Mayfair in particular blew
our minds with what they are doing in such a secular culture. Located in the
center and most transient area of London, Christ Church Mayfair has learned
their role as a sending church. People are only in that area for an average of
two years, so the church takes advantage of the opportunity to disciple their
members for two years before sending them out to witness in their new location.
Despite having such a high turnover rate, they maintain numbers in the 200s,
which is incredible! Much of their strategy reminded us of Ethos where we are
working in Nashville, and we felt right at home worshipping with our brothers
and sisters at Christ Church Mayfair.
We spent two full days away from London, one in
Leicester (about an hour north of London) and one in Sweden with Laura’s
brother. We were in Leicester for Laura’s graduation with her MA in Ancient
History and Archaeology. We had a great time meeting her teachers and fellow
students, and shared some great conversations with them about the culture and
their ideas of church. If you ever have to sit through a
boring graduation (are there any that aren’t boring?), make it a British one. Their
ceremonies are much more grand than we are used to in America, complete
with golden scepters, fancy robes, and a hand shake with your chancellor, the
Baron Grocott of Telford.
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| The golden scepter |
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| Auditorium |
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| Fancy robes |
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| Laura shaking the Chancellor's hand |
Sweden was cold and dark, but it was so enjoyable
to visit with Laura’s brother, Josh, who is attending the Florence Academy of
Art. Josh has learned a lot about the European culture, and we have shared many
fascinating conversations with him about the spiritual darkness of the area.
Instead of making this post longer, creating the certainty that none of you
will actually continue reading to the end, we hope to have a guest post by Josh
about the Swedish and European culture depicted through art. For now, we’ll
leave you hanging in excited anticipation of the next post…
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| Why, yes, our first stop was to Ikea for meatballs (which, by the way, they do not call Swedish meatballs) |
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| All of the houses look like the model houses in Ikea (no joke) |
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| Josh's bedroom is this little shed out back |
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