“Easy like Sunday Morning” was sung by the Commodores if I remember right - or maybe it was Lionel Ritchie on his own. Either way it was the background music to a TV ad when I was a kid that I remember often. In the ad a single good looking guy wanders from his cool apartment to the coffee shop, buys a paper, and leisurely reads it taking all the time in the world. Man, what a life. Here’s the tune on You Tube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8ZeBog2yFM it sounds great.
Of course, I met Karen when I was sixteen, was never single, became a Christian, and thus never had a Sunday since that involved just reading the paper and letting the world go by. In London I go to church at All Souls Church, Langham Place www.allsouls.org . The church is at Oxford Circus (3 tube stops away or a 30 minute walk from where I live) and dramatically placed at the end of Regent Street. It is also designed by John Nash who is responsible for several of the beautiful neo-classical churches around London. Beautiful as they are, they are testament to his faith worked in stones and spires.
All Souls came to preeminence with the arrival around 40 years ago of John Stott. Stott became the learned voice of British evangelicals for a generation and nurtured the faith of many of today’s evangelical church leaders with his many books and lifetime of preaching. You can still pick up many of his books (and there are many of them) - check him out at http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_b/002-6299350-6832005?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=john+stott&x=13&y=17
When I visited the church 20 years ago Stott was considered the father of (at least) Anglican evangelicalism. It is interesting to return and see a ministry in many ways exactly the same as it was 20 years ago and still very impressive.
I arrived 2 minutes late - at 9.32 - and as a new visitor I waited with everyone else outside the main sanctuary until readings and prayers were finished being read. As the congregation sang we late people shuffled to our seats. And I sat next to an African woman and her two children. The church struck me 20 years ago as the most eclectic and diverse place. It is still the same. A homeless guy sat in front of me and placed his clear plastic bags of belongings under his seat. I noticed he had two toilet rolls in his possessions. I wondered if that made him rich in his world. He also shook the hand of a person close to him that seemed to know who he was. His right hand was a strage red color and he had fingernails polished and shaped with rings on each finger. It was a sight out of place amongst the washed for church.
As we turned to the preaching Rico Tice preached well. But good preacher that he was I was impressed by the people he led as much by his preaching. As the pastor pointed to scriptures there came a rustling of paper that settled quietly when the congregation reached the text. And the pastor stopped his talking as they found their place. Just little things like this tell me here is a community with the bible at the centre of its life.
I remembered again all the different races praying with me as we prayed for Kenya, the American election, for the UK parliament and “Elizabeth our Queen”. It was good to know with so much of me left in America that a community of believers far away was praying for wisdom in the American people to choose a leader with a vision for peace and justice. This is their habit, for several weeks I have been going and consistently the United States is held up and prayed for.
Walking home I savored the sermon and the Daffodils that have begun to open out in Green Park. It was a pretty morning, the morning before “the largest storm of the winter” arrives in London. Who knows what that will look like but they are battening down the hatches in London. More on the storm from your eye witness reporter tomorrow.