We Are the Church (Part 1)

Earlier this month, we had the privilege and blessing to spend two weeks in London. And on one day, we took the train to Canterbury.

In my ignorance or perhaps arrogance, I thought I would prepare for our Canterbury visit by reading Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales (modern-day prose version; I’m not into Old English).

It’s one of the seminal works of the English language, and Chaucer, Shakespeare, and the King James Version of the Bible largely accomplished what we know today as English. And I had a new purchase on my Kindle – Peter Ackroyd’s translation of Chuacer’s great stories.

I started reading on the plane to London, and continued reading once we arrived. But it took actually going to Canterbury to realize I had read the wrong thing. Chaucer might be a preparation for taking the trip to Canterbury,a nd our train from London stopped at so many places that I might have read the entire work in the time it took to get there. (I exaggerate.) (Slightly.)

The temptation is to think, especially in a place like England, that Canterbury would be “just another cathedral.” And cathedral it is, and a beautiful one that managed to survive Henry the VIII, Oliver Cromwell, and Hitler’s Luftwaffe. It might be argued which one was the more destructive; the cathderal’s audio tour made it clear that Cromwell will never be forgiven.)

But Canterbury turned out to be more than the cathedral it is, much more.

At 3 p.m., as I stood in the choir of this great cathedral, a voice came over the loudspeaker, asking everyone to remain in place for a short prayer. Hundreds of people stopped whatever they were doing or looking at, and we listened.

It was a short prayer, followed by a request to join in the saying of the Lord’s Prayer. And in that moment, hundreds of voices began to recite the well known words.

We were British, American, French, German, Japanese, Chinese, various African nationalities, Russian, Eastern European, Spanish, Italian – and we all recited the Lord’s Prayer together. In English. I was standing next to a sizeable group of Japanese tourists, and they all recited the prayer in English.

We were all in the middle of this beautiful edifice called Canterbury Cathedral, hundreds and thousands of miles away from our homes.

And in the moment, we were the church.

Photograph: The choir of Canterbury Cathedral, where I stood during the prayer time.

Saturday Good Reads: The Church

Last Sunday I posted about the church, and a conversation started by Marcus Goodyear over at Good Word Editing, The Uncertain Future of Traditional Faith Communities.

The church, and the future of the church, has been much on my mind. It’s not that I have the answers to the problems plaguing the church, and especially the American church. But I’m seeing more and more people beginning to raise the questions, and raise them seriously.

These are four blogs I read on a regular basis that raise and discuss questions about the church. I follow more; these are only four examples.

Slow Church. Chris Smith is the editor of The Englewood Review of Books. He writes this blog for Patheos with John Pattison, deputy editor of the Burnside Writers Collective. I don’t agree with everything they write, but that’s not the point. The point is to gain an understanding of the whole conversation that’s beginning to happen, and Slow Church is a vital part of that.

Internet Monk. Internet Monk was started by Michael Spencer, and he wrote for it for years until his death from cancer. Now it’s led by Chaplain Mike and Jeff Dunn, with occasional other writers (Like Martha of Ireland). The posts are consistently good and always provocative.

Informing the Reformed. This blog by Canadian pastor Tim Challies is widely read. Tim in unapologetically reformed (well, so am I, for that matter). He shares books, opinions, thoughts, theology, and always well-written posts.

Canterbury Tales: Dr. Taylor Marshall is Roman Catholic. His blog is about questions and issues of concern for Roman Catholics. But much of what he says applies to the larger church (I’m referring to the “church universal” here).

This Monday, The High Calling is beginning a new weekly discussion on David Platt’s Follow Me. Two years ago, I reviewed Platt’s Radical for PRISM Magazine; unfortunately, the review is not available (for free) online. But it was good.  I’ve read the first three chapters of Follow Me (and the introduction by Francis Chan) and I think it is exactly the kind of book I need to be reading to understand these questions about the church. And myself.

So please visit The High Calling on Monday and see what the discussion is about, and perhaps read the book and join in.

Photograph by Petr Kratochvil via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.