I recently spent several days with these skuzzy characters in Germany to get acquainted with a missional community south of Heidelberg.

What we saw and experienced is a fascinating case study of an emerging church uniquely crafted for Europe. It is led and populated by young, urban, cultural creatives.

Every generation has had men and women like this, but as Western culture staggers into the 21st century, the magnitude of this demographic is significant and growing. The future of the Christian movement in a setting such as Europe depends largely on how historic faith leans into, and is absorbed, by this cultural milieu.

• It is all about the creative arts …music, design, graphics, film, art, dance …


• Music particularly is the lingua franca. It is the poetry and vehicle of emotional expression that crosses culture and speaks to the heart. Luther may have changed the world because of the printing press. In our day, it’s the iPod.


• Media reigns. Film and video are no longer elitist but accessible to all in a flat, virtual democracy which provides unbounded outlets to creativity


• It’s a profoundly urban phenomena influenced by all the swirling complexities of “the city” in which the majority of the population in the West now live.

No generation in human history has had the leisure time or the affluence that allows for young, urban, cultural creatives to become such a sociologically dominating class. Even when such individuals were elitist and in the past lived on the margins of Western society, the effect on the culture was powerful. How much more so today when the margin is now the center and by sheer numbers dictates the direction of popular culture?

For serious followers of Jesus, the real issue has become how expressions of the imago Dei are fully integrated into the missio Dei. The future of the West hangs in the balance.

Soshanguve is a massive township north of Pretoria, South Africa. It’s hard to get an accurate count of how many people live there. Some say a million. Some say more. The name itself speaks volumes ..it’s a combination of the Sotho, Shangaan, Nguni and Venda peoples who were forcibly resettled in this area of Gauteng.

The group of men I’m with above come from all these different tribes, but they represent the hope and future of what God is doing in this place. They’re in their second year of meeting together and have been coached and mentored by CRM NieuCommunities staff.

I was impressed with the maturity and the depth that I saw when I was with these younger leaders. Most of all, they have the potential for being catalysts around which fresh movements of new churches could emerge in this township and beyond. Men like this are the hope of Africa.

“If you really want to keep your kids safe, middle-class, responsible people, keep them away from the gospels which will radicalize them. Don’t expose them to Jesus unless you want them to be martyrs.” —Alan Hirsch to CRM staff, August, 2007

I see all too often: parents who want their children to have enough Christianity to be respectable but don’t want their offspring to go overboard and become too committed.

Where this “enough but not too much” attitude may show up blatantly is when the son or daughter makes the jump into vocational ministry, particularly a missionary calling, and they have to raise financial support. Then the fat can hit the proverbial fan!

“I don’t want you begging for money!”
“Don’t ask our friends to support you”
“What are you going to do about retirement?”
“Can you really live off of that?”
“Do you really think this is a good way to use all that education we paid for?”
“You mean you may move overseas? When will we ever see the grandkids?”

Somehow the real Jesus who makes statements like Luke 9:23 gets lost in the well-meaning but mis-directed scramble to protect and preserve those whom we love from a God we do not really trust:

“If any person would come after me, they must deny themselves, take up their cross daily, and follow me.”

As much as we may want to sanitize it, the cross is still a cross.

The demonic is real.

Some people have gifts in discerning such spiritual realities. I’m not one of them. Nevertheless, I have no doubt as to the existence, the influence, or the power of such beings and have had numerous experiences over the years where the demonic has manifested itself.

One such manifestation that we see in scripture and in reality is that demons can be attached to people, objects and places. Recently, I have been in situations where we took seriously the issue of “place.”

John and Deanna Hayes who lead InnerCHANGE, the order among the poor within CRM, have moved with their two girls to Tower Hamlets, a borough in the east end of London. The flat they are renting is part of “estate housing”—the British term for tenements—that house an amazing and wonderful cultural menagerie. Their immediate neighborhood is predominantly Bengali Muslim.

Along with John, Deanna, and the girls, Patty and I spent time praying through, and cleansing, their new digs. We went room by room, anointing each doorway with oil, commanding, in the name of Jesus, any residual spirits to be gone, and then asking the Spirit of God to fill each room with his presence, making it holy ground. We also prayed for the function of each room to be sanctified and empowered by the Spirit in every respect.

I would do this as a matter of course for any new home or lodging. I frequently do the same thing when I enter a hotel room for a night. Who knows what’s gone on in such a public place!? At least while I’m there, I would like it to be filled with the presence of God and be a safe island of rest.

While I may not necessarily see the overt results of such prayer, others may. A few years back, we were traveling and another couple stayed in our home. The wife has definite gifts of spiritual discernment but the husband doesn’t—he’s kind of thick like me. Nevertheless, both of them, apart from one another, had visions in the middle of the night of demons trying to scale the walls and parameters of the property but with no success. It was “protected” and holy ground.

I’ve also seen what happens when these realities are not taken seriously. For example, when CRM first sent people to serve and minister in Russia after the fall of communism in the early 90s, they stepped unprepared into a spiritually dark and profoundly oppressive setting. When demonic appertains began appearing overtly in their apartment, they thought they were loosing their minds.

While our rationalistic western world-view makes it hard to buy into such supernatural goings on, it’s very real. It’s unfortunate that sometimes this whole thing gets sensationalized and consequently dismissed. But we do so to our peril.

This was the scene today in Vancouver, B.C. where 20 CRM staff from around the world gathered for a four day Theological Conversation on Biblical Holism and the Recovery of the Gospel.

That’s a mouthful. But what we are focusing on is simply the totality of the good news in the bible and how our own cultures can act as unintended filters to keep us from seeing what these implications are both personally and corporately. We are also considering how this applies to CRM as a whole around the world regarding the types of leaders we mentor, coach and train and the types of churches that we want to see evolve and emerge from our work.

In the photo, we’re wrapping up an afternoon of labor in a community garden that our NieuCommunities staff are cultivating in an urban neighborhood which is having multiple layers of impact on those who live around them.

One of the best parts of this conversation was the variety of perspectives in the dialogue from folks living and ministering is places as diverse as South Africa, Cambodia, Australia, Hungary, and various locales throughout North America

I just spent an intense week in Spain surveying it out as a potential site for a future CRM team.

Along with Alex Galloway (who leads CRM’s Staff Development and Care Team) and Danny Aanderud (Spanish prof at BIOLA who is checking out potential CRM ministry opportunities in Europe among other things), we spent time in Madrid and then on the southern coast near Malaga.

We had a steady stream of appointments with church and mission leaders across a broad spectrum. While our learning curve is steep and we’re just scratching the surface in getting our arms around what God is doing in the Spanish context, there were a variety of commonalities expressed throughout the conversations. Some of our initial observations include:

• Spain is a nation rushing headlong into post-modernity and secularization.
• This rush toward the future is a reaction, in part, to the social, political and cultural stranglehold of the Franco years and the tragedies of the 20th century such as the Spanish civil war.
• The aversion to Catholicism is extraordinary to the extent that the Catholic Church has become irrelevant for the overwhelming majority of Spaniards.
• Most evangelical church expressions are small, anemic, and culturally marginalized. Few would have any appeal to Spaniards under 30 years old nor do they know what to do with the emerging generation.
• There is spiritual receptivity and vitality among the immigrant segments of the population.
• Latin Americans are at the forefront of the most vibrant ministry initiatives in the country but are neither well-received or respected by most Spaniards.
• Spain, but almost any criteria, could be characterized as “resistant” ground to historic, biblical Christianity. Most mission efforts either take a long time to bear any fruit or are ineffective on their face.

It’s called the Beqaa. The massive rift valley in the center of Lebanon separated from the coast by the Mount Lebanon range to the west and from Syria on the East by the Anti-Lebanon mountains. In this picture, Syria is straight ahead over the mountains in the background. The Beqaa forms the northeastern-most extension of the Great Rift Valley, which extends down the spine of East Africa.

While historically the bread-basket of the region, today it is a harbor and a crossroads for the drug trade, money laundering, and terrorists of many stripes …Hezbollah, Iranian jihadists, and Syrian infiltrators into Lebanon to name the more well-known. It figured prominently in one of the first Tom Clancy novels I ever read years ago as a hotbed of intrigue and espionage.

As I was driving through it with one of the Lebanese who serves and ministers with us in Beirut, he mentioned that he used to be in the Beqaa several times a week and he pointed out the places where groups of believers in Jesus met.

I continued to be amazed at how God establishes his presence and signs of his Kingdom’s reality even in the most inhospitable places on the planet.

Lebanon continues to teeter on the verge of war and chaos. One of the major destabilizing factors contributing to the present situation was the assassination of former prime minister Rafik Hariri in February of 2005. His death further catalyzed the “cedar revolution” which resulted in the end of Syria’s overt influence in Lebanon.

We passed over the place where a bomb blew up Hariri’s car on a Beirut thoroughfare. The blast, equivalent to 1000 kgs of TNT, gouged a 30 foot hole in the pavement and the evidence of the magnitude can still be seen from the destruction of the surrounding buildings in the photos above.

While the UN investigates and the labyrinth that is Lebanese politics continues to swirl with intrigue, life in Beirut is characterized by fear and uncertainty. Such instability can make life hard, but it also means people grapple with the significant and the deeply personal much more readily than those whose lives are immune to such trauma.

Beirut is a contemporary example of what historians and missiologists have always known; that spiritual receptivity can be the silver lining of social/political upheaval. The search for God and ultimate meaning takes on a new urgency when all hell is breaking loose around us. What I have seen firsthand in places like this is that the good news of Jesus is profoundly transforming when communicated humbly and lived out authentically. Such sovereign intervention by God, mediated by those on the ground determined to follow Jesus, is the only hope for Lebanon.

This is one of the few remaining groves of the famous cedars of Lebanon. I had a unique chance to wander in this remote grove up in the mountains recently during time in the Middle East. These trees are remarkable …huge umbrellas with massive trunks, some which were alive during the time of Jesus.

Wood from these trees were used in ancient times by the Phoenicians to build their trade and military ships, as well as their houses and temples. The Egyptians used its resin for mummification, and its sawdust was found in the pharaoh’s tombs. Jewish priests were ordered by Moses to use the bark of the Lebanon Cedar in circumcision and treatment of leprosy. Kings of neighboring and distant countries asked for this wood to build their religious and civil constructs, the most famous of which are King Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem and David’s and Solomon’s Palaces. In addition it was used by the Romans, Greeks, Persians, Assyrians and Babylonians.

One gets a very different picture of the realities of life and ministry in the Middle East when on the ground in the region. Particularly stunning is the perspective on the state of Israel shared by many of those who are followers of Jesus and who live in the region. What I found is dismay at the uncritical, and what they perceive as naive, posture held by many North American Christians in their unequivocal support of the secular Jewish state.

The facts are that that almost all of those who name the name of Christ in the Middle East are also Arabs. The cannot understand the theological and/or geo-political justifications that American Christians—particularly some evangelicals—give to political Israel and Zionism. It makes no sense to them biblically, historically, or politically.

What is happening in this region is incredibly complex. And the only long-term solution is the present and future rule of the Prince of Peace and his Kingdom, which has no bias regarding family of birth, ethnic group, or possession of land.

(The pic above is of a major bridge destroyed by the Israelis in northern Lebanon during last summer’s war. I had the chance to see it up close and personal. Bombing it severed a major artery between Beirut and the western part of the country and inflicted great suffering on innocent segments of the population. Its destruction had little strategic or military value).

We have people serving and ministering in Beirut who, with their families, lived through the trauma of the war last year.

When visiting with them, all things trite and insignificant pale in light of their circumstances and gravity of the Middle East context. They minister in a crucible where there is indescribable pressure from every side: radical Sunni Muslims, militant Palestinians, Hezbollah and radical Shiites, Syria, “Christian” militias, pressure from the majority Marionite Catholics, and the ever present threat of Israeli incursions, bombings and retaliations in which innocent people are invariably hurt.

In this unbelievable cauldron of political, religious and social turmoil, they are following Jesus with perseverance and integrity. Their quiet, steady ministry in Lebanon and throughout the region is making a profound contribution to the Christian movement on the soil of the lands where it first originated. The honor is all mine to serve alongside them.

This is my view this evening of the Nile in the heart of Cairo.

It’s been a day packed meeting with folks here who are doing some thrilling things when it comes to representing Jesus both far and near. I’ve learned much. The diversity and magnitude of what God does to see His name renowned among the nations and the worship of his Son extended is astounding.

During my day, I’ve seen again that the missionary purpose of a gracious and ever-redeeming God can never be put into boxes or relegated to a limited number of human structures. His persistent pursuit of a wayward humanity is staggering to the imagination, not just that he would do it but that he would do it with such infinite creativity and accommodation to our limitations.

Deo Gloria!

It is so refreshing to see a ministry environment where the talking and philosophizing have stopped and the action is simply happening. That’s what I saw this past week with re:HOPE, a vibrant, healthy church plant in Glasgow.

Brian Ingraham (CRM staff in Glasgow) leads the team (above left) which gives leadership to this new expression of the body of Christ. Some in that group became followers of Jesus at re:Hope. It’s attracting students from the nearby university, many of whom have had little exposure to authentic, historic Christianity, only the caricatures of institutionalized religion that most of their peers have rejected out of hand.

re:HOPE is nothing fancy. In fact, I think its simplicity has contributed to its effectiveness in reaching people and changing lives: a bold commitment to study, proclaim, and live the Bible, loving relationships that create a safe place, prevailing prayer where the hand of God is moved, representing Jesus in the things of everyday life, sensitivity to hearing from God and responding to the Sprit’s leading, and a passionate love for God that is producing a holy boldness in some of these young Scots that would make their Reformer ancestors proud!

The building (upper right) re:HOPE leases is a defunct Church of Scotland facility that hasn’t had a church use it since the 50s. It’s kind of cool (it’s actually physically that way too) to see life return and this musty old limestone structure become a gathering place for all sorts of ministry possibilities. And it is particularly thrilling to see the sense of apostolic vision being imparted: new spin-offs being planned for Ireland, other parts of Scotland, and Scots being encouraged to follow Jesus in a variety of other Kingdom ventures.

Being an observer of what God is doing there was like watching a video of Ezekiel 37:

“This is what the Lord say, ‘O my people, I am going to open your graves and bring you up from them, I will bring you back to the land of Israel …I will put my Spirit in you and you will live, and I will settle you in your own land. Then you will know that I the Lord have spoken, and I have done it says the Lord.”

Despite a host of logistical and financial challenges, we believe God has clearly been leading CRM to establish more of a presence in Great Britain. We believe it is a strategic crossroads for much of the world.

We’ve moved to base four teams of CRM missionaries there: NieuCommunities is in Glasgow; a CRM-International team is also in Scotland and focused on planting new churches; CRM-UK in London is growing and making a good contribution to the health and vibrancy of the British church; and InnerCHANGE (CRM’s order among the poor) is getting established in poor areas of London’s East End. I personally hope to hub a variety of CRM-CoNext functions out of London as well in the years to come.

Those of us in London—Brits, Americans and Aussies—all got together recently for an evening dinner which included those who serve on the CRM-UK Board. I’m grateful for this exceptionally gifted, capable cadre of leaders who are quietly and humbly working to be a blessing not only to the UK, but through it to the world.

This is Cottiers. It’s a bar/pub that has taken over a defunct Church of Scotland in Glasgow’s west end.

It is probably more of a happening place now then it was during its last days housing the remnants of a dying church. At least the drinks are good.

It is maddening!

Patty and I enjoyed dinner this evening with a couple who, since 2001, have pioneered an incredible church planting minsitry in the midlands of England. They started by using a cafe and as relationships were built, graduated those interested into their “church in the pub” down the street. Their work has attracted a menagerie of wounded, broken souls who would never darken the door of a typical church.

But now, their denomination has had enough of such unorthodox ministry. In a very political move, the traditionalists who oversee them have declared them “redundant” and said “Thanks, but your services are no longer needed.”

While such leadership abuse is tragic, it may be a blessing in disguise and finally help this wonderful couple eject from a broken system and allow them to transition into a ministry posture where they will be blessed and appreciated for their apostolic giftedness and passion.

I wish this was an isolated anomoly. But it’s not. The more I scratch the surface of British institutional religion, I keep coming across church leadership that is exquisitely educated, brilliantly intellectual, amazingly articulate, vision-less and bureaucratic.

So it is not surprising that when such people control the power, the money and the positions, the institutions they lead are dying, even if they don’t recognize it. It is also not surprising that God is not stymied by such leadership ineptitude and will accomplish his purposes in new, fresh kingdom expressions and structures that out of necessity must circumvent the establishment. It has always been that way throughout the history of the Christian movement. And it always will be. But it is still maddening!

Tamas and Zsofia Heiser are with Barnabas Csoport, CRM’s ministry in Hungary, and are moving toward the role of leading that team.

This comes after a church planting experience over the past decade where God used them to birth and give leadership to a healthy group of believers in Zalaegerszeg in the southern part of the country.

While a highly respected pastor and leader in his community, denomination and throughout the country, Tamas is making the move to Barnabas Csoport because he sees the acute need for leadership in the church that is and the church that needs to be in Hungary and beyond. His situation is also another vivid example of an apostolic leader that needs an apostolic structure to accomplish all that God intends for his life. Tamas’ sense of vision and calling has moved beyond the boundaries of one local context. A gifted musician, teacher and great mom, Zsofia plays an integral role in all that has transpired and how God will use them in the future. She fully shares this step into the turbulent world of the missionary.

While Tamas may not be as “frustrated” in the same sense as Eric (February 7, 2006 post in Apostolic Ecclesiology), he’s cut out of the same cloth. He, Zsofia, and their three children are in the process of selling their home and moving to Budapest. They are taking some bold, sacrificial steps to follow God’s leading in their lives, steps that God will bless and through which the Church and God’s kingdom purposes will be enriched throughout this region of the world.

I am in Serbia. My first time in the country. I’m here with several CRM staff who live and minister just northward in Hungary.

Stepping across the boarder into this ancient land I had flashbacks of living in Ukraine and time spent in Russia, Romania and other portions of the former Soviet bloc. The scars from the war after the breakup of Yugoslavia and the NATO bombing campaign are mostly erased in the physical landscape but not quite so in the social psyche.

Nominally Serbian Orthodox, the vast bulk of the population is oblivious to religion and secularized. The Protestant presence is a tiny minority. One Serbian leader commented that there were more believers in Timisoara, Romania than in the whole nation of Serbia. The large city in which we were had only five churches (across a broad theological spectrum) of an evangelical nature.

In light of these realities, the gathering pictured above was quite remarkable. It was a day-long celebration at the end of a nationwide 78 days of prayer and fasting that took place throughout the Protestant churches …equivalent to the same duration of the NATO bombing. Seven different worship teams and believers from throughout the country gathered for the day and we had the privilege of being guests at the gathering. What Serbian believers may lack in numbers, they make up for in passion.

The contribution of the CRM staff here, as in many places around the world, is to graciously encourage, coach, and mentor leadership for the church that is and for the church that needs to emerge. This effort in Serbia has been initiated by the CRM team in Hungary and they are doing are a good job of building relationships of trust upon which such ministry can be built.

Let me be clear.

In some of my observations of the spiritual landscape in urban London that have been posted the past several weeks …

1. I am lamenting the waste of real estate and resources. No one should interpret that as advocating that these be converted into church models like one would see in the U.S. or elsewhere. Nor am I suggesting that they return to the days of yesteryear and a Christendom hegemony that has long since passed. I’m lamenting the waste, the money and physical resources tied up by ecclesiastical bureaucracies that could be put to alternative missional use, creative and appropriate to the needs of this setting.

2. I fully realize that God is doing much in this context “under the radar.” He’s not limited and is patiently accomplishing his purposes in new and fresh expressions that are bypassing all the visible and institutional.

3. Simultaneously, I am impressed by some of what I see in some of the existing, historic structures such as I alluded to in the post regarding St. Mary’s. I am, by no means, writing off all that exists.

3. I am not ripping the church. I am critiquing forms that institutionalized Christianity has taken that are ineffective, irrelevant and counter-productive to people living out in their culture what the genuine “ecclesia”—the called out ones of Jesus—could be.

4. I heard one Anglican bishop state last year that approximately 40% of the British population could be reached effectively by existing churches and parishes of the Church of England if they were spiritually alive, healthy and vibrant. Even if that did happen (which is certainly an admirable focus of those so called but simultaneously a stretch considering that less that 1% of the British population attends the Church of England on any given Sunday), what happens to the other 60%?

5. The “blessing in disguise” of such institutional marginalization is that those serious about God’s missional call are figuring out how to get out there where the people and where the culture really are. Desperation is marvelous mid-wife for creativity and invention. The lack of such is one of the dilemmas of the American scene where few in the Christian sub-culture are really desperate. Complacency, comfort, personal peace and prosperity have carried the day.

6. Would that God would graciously allow Britain to experience a spiritual renaissance. With the incredible legacy this nation has and the remarkable contribution it has made to the worldwide Christian movement over the past 1,000 years, could it be that some of its greatest days could in fact lie ahead? God make it so.

Situated around one intersection in the heart of London lies the Royal Stock Exchange and Bank of England, historically and even today two of the most strategically and influential financial institutions in the world.

The inscription above the Royal Exchange is a direct quote from Psalm 24:1 – “The earth is the Lord’s and the fulness thereof.”

Nice sentiment. But to believe such biblical reality has ever substantially influenced those who labor in such institutions historically or has any sway for those who enter under its gaze today is revisionism and wishful thinking. And because this bastion of capitalism has not been influenced in such a way, it has fostered such reactions as communism which in its truest sense was an attempt to correct the unbiblical injustices inherent in rampant capitalism.

I can’t help but imagine what it would have been like for a Karl Marx to have walked under this facade during the years he lived in London (1849 til his death in 1883). Could the overt hypocrisy of what he saw contributed in any way to his sweeping indictment of religion in his social and economic theory? One can only wonder.

Surrounded by a sea of “estate housing”—the British term for public housing that in most cases is shabby tenaments—is this island of a bygone era of establishment Christianity.

This Anglican church building and parish house sits squarely in the middle of London high rise flats teaming with immigrants from South Asia, Africa, Latin America and Eastern Europe. It is a population desperate for the presence of Jesus to be effectively conveyed in word and deed. Instead, what the poor see is a building that looks more like an impenetrable fortress. It appears to be a parish that muddles on with good intentions, barely ale to maintain its liturgically irrelevant rites that are a total disconnect with the neighborhood that engulfs it. The waste of this physical resource is heartbreaking.

Late at night, John Hayes, Tom Middleton and I sat on the wall that surrounds this building and asked God to give it to us or to someone who would take such a strategically place piece of real estate and seek to use it effectively for significant kingdom purposes. It would make a incredible ministry center with housing for missionaries and teams that could serve this area and others. The potential is enormous. Make it so Lord Jesus.

One of the shocking juxtapositions in Shoreditch is to see clubs teeming with people and overflowing with a pulsating search for significance all under the shadow of an institutional Christianity that has become a total disconnect. So much so, that the area is full of church buildings that have been converted to other uses.

Such irrelevance is not surprising considering the magnitude of the cultural difference between these archaic symbols of the Christianity of a bygone era and the realities of contemporary urban life under their very eaves. Here are three such examples within several blocks of each other. Two are restaurants. One apartment flats.

To see such resources go to waste when they could be bases for incredible ministry in this context is enough to make one scream if not cry. If our reaction is so visceral to such waste, I cannot imagine how God must weep at such a myopic lack of vision.

Shoreditch is one of the happening areas of London.

Adjacent to “the City” which is the financial heart of England, Shoreditch has been historically a gritty, semi-industrial area until the last decade when it has been transformed into a district teaming with clubs. Along with John Hayes (InnerCHANGE) and Tom Middleton (CRM-UK), I spent a muggy Saturday evening cruising this area. I was stunned by the crowds streaming into the clubs.

There were many nuances to what we experienced. Some streets and spots catered to the trendy, some to the artistic, some to affluent up-and-comers, some to the overtly nihilistic. But there were commonalities throughout: hoards of people in their 20s and 30s looking for action; the free flow of alcohol and other substances; and virtually everyone casting about in search of some form of meaningful relationships often sought in the illusion of a sexual encounter.

It was a living, moving human scene crying out for meaning. Beneath the superficiality of the clubbing culture lies a deep reservoir of social and psychological pain, an environment begging for people who can be sensitive, authentic and incarnational conduits of the transforming love of Jesus. Any takers?

Speaker’s Corner occupies the northeast corner of Hyde Park in the heart of London. It’s famous turf.

I’ve been there numerous times, but never on a humid Sunday summer afternoon with such a crushing crowd. As always there were knots of vigorous conversation and heated debate going on throughout the area. But what was so riveting and jaw dropping for me were the soap-box orators, some bellowing at the top of their voices messages of apocalyptic fire and brimstone.

I can’t begin to understand how anyone who claims to be a follower of Jesus would not cringe at the vitriol that was being spewed out on that crowd by fiery preachers who I’m sure felt they were God’s agents in the mold of the Old Testament prophets. It was embarrassing. What I saw and heard was far from the Petrine admonition to “be ready to give an answer …with gentleness and respect.” (I Peter 3:15). Far from it.

I suspect in God’s providence, some of the truth that was spoken may have fallen on receptive ears. But I’m not sure it was worth the many more who were repulsed and disgusted by the ugly caricature of Christianity that was on such unfortunate display.

In a stunning Edwardian structure that has been meticulously restored, the Anglican congregation of St. Mary’s meets in central London.

It appears to be a vibrant, growing expression of the body of Christ. I am impressed by the diversity and the appeal of this church among younger urban professionals. There seems to be a healthy appreciation of the arts and a keen understanding of what life and ministry entails in such a secularized European setting.

St. Mary’s is an fascinating combination of the spiritual vibrancy akin to what we experience in California at New Song Church combined with an emphasis on ministry and giftedness that one would find in a healthy Vineyard, all wrapped up in an Anglican context with a sprinkling of English understatedness.

We look forward to hanging out here in the weeks ahead when we’re in the city.