Week 2 in London--Still going strong?

Surreal moment of the week:  I found myself last Thursday, May 13, standing under the William Shakespeare memorial statue in Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey, rocking Brianna in my arms, listening to the Men and Boys Choir during an Ascension Day service where Desmund Tutu was preaching.  We had toured Westminster Abbey the day before and saw a flyer advertising the service.  We weren't sure if we could get in, or if the children would be welcome, but when we arrived about fifteen minutes before the service, we were warmly greeted and ushered in to a seat not far from the front.  It was an incredibly beautiful service--certainly the most remarkable Ascension Day service I've ever been a part of (it's hard to match the setting).  The main challenge was simply that a third of the people were there to worship, a third to see the Abbey for free, and a third just to hear the choir or Desmund Tutu.  Still, there were plenty of empty seats, and this suprised us since both Elizabeth and I remember having to wait for quite some time to hear Desmund Tutu when he came to the Van Andel Arena in Grand Rapids.

Another highlight of the week was worshiping on Sunday morning at Southwark Cathedral (pictured above).  Of the churches we hope to visit, we knew the least about this one, and we were truly blessed by our visit.  There was a clear sense of the Spirit at work.  The children were warmly embraced and the service was alive and uplifting.  There were many more younger families than we had seen at the other churches, and many more children as well.

We've somehow managed to do quite the tour of London's city parks so far.  The girls are enjoying the variety of play equipment, and it gives us a good opportunity to interact a bit with regular Londoners. 

The rain has held off for the most part, it's finally starting to warm up a bit, and the ash clouds are affecting everybody else's travels but ours so far.  The only hiccup is that Emma came down sick last night, so we're trying to wait that out.

I just finished a book called Introducing the Missional Church: What It Is, Why It Matters, How to Become One by Alan Roxburgh and Scott Boren.  One of the central ideas of the book is that the church in general has lost sight of it's true mission of transforming this world and instead has embraced a mission of attracting people to church.  This has resulted in impressive programs and slick marketing campaigns, but has mainly succeeded in simply shuffling believers from one church to another while ignoring the changing realities in the world around us.  Mission, instead, is not so much getting people into the church but transforming the world for good.  We now have some catching up to do to in order to be able to engage culture where it is truly at today and then to be a force of good in God's world. 

A helpful lesson was the reminder that the Spirit of God is indeed at work in the people of the church if we have the patience to see it.  Another was the need to be willing to take risks and even be willing to fail--the church, after all, as God created it, is made up of ordinary people and everything doesn't need to be perfect all the time.

Blessings,
Pastor Jay