July 05, 2005
07/03 England - Day 2
I think it's important to reestablish the original purpose for our trip for you, the reader. The proposal for the Clergy Renewal Grant was to study the movement of Christianity in the 1st, 5th and 21st Centuries. The reason we are in London is to explore the birthplace of one of the largest evangelism explosions in the last 50 years - the home of The Alpha Course. The Alpha Course is a 10-week study designed to help unbelievers, new believers, doubters and skeptics realize that there are logical explanations to some of life's most important questions. The good news of Jesus Christ is more than just a blind leap of faith. It is a reasonable faith as well. Since 1992, The Alpha Course has reached over 4 million people world-wide. "Ground zero" for The Course is the church, Holy Trinity, Brompton located just off Knightsbridge down the street from the world-famous Harrods department store. The author of Alpha is Rev. Nicky Gumbel, Oxford graduate, former lawyer, and now associate rector at Trinity.
We spent an unbelievable day on Saturday trying to locate the church so we could find out the time for worship on Sunday. Our hotel is located on Trafalgar Square exactly in the center of a 4-mile radius that encompasses most of the historic parts of London. On the city map, Holy Trinity looked like it was this far ¦.............¦ from our hotel. We thought we could easily walk to the church and walk back just as easily. We did it but not easily.
As I mentioned before, Saturday, July 2nd was a Gay Parade with not 10,000 in attendance, but 30,000. London's Hyde Park was one of the locations for a Live8 concert. There weren't 500,000 in attendance but just over 200,000. The point of clarification is to clear-up any confusion you might have from seeing the numbers in print in the US and what I reported live. But my point in telling you this is that we needed to walk past Trafalgar Square and Hyde Park in order to get to Holy Trinity. We rubbed elbows with all 230,000 between our hotel and the church. But we successfully located the church and got directions for the use of a bus the next day.
On Sunday we woke to a race with over 20,000 runners beginning at Trafalgar Square. The bus line to church was cancelled. We were told to walk to Oxford Circle and catch a #10 bus to Knightsbridge. We did, but unfortunately, the bus didn't go to Knightsbridge. To make a long story short, we got to a 9:30 worship service at 10:00 a.m. I was discouraged about getting to the church so late and said so. I said to Les, "Look, we're late. Why don't we stop and have coffee and go to the next service at 11:30?" Les pressed on! We heard the singing as we got into the narrow narthex, but the first person that greeted us was Nicky Gumbel!!
We had traveled from the US through Greece and Israel in order to get to London and Holy Trinity, Brompton. If we had been five minutes earlier, or 30 seconds later, Nicky would not have been there. In the brief conversation he told us that the 9:30 service was a family service but that we should come back for the 5:00 p.m. service. Anyone else greeting us might not have known that we would welcome the opportunity to worship again that afternoon. Nicky's invitation was just the impetus we needed.
God is in control. He brought us here for a reason, and Sunday was a wonderful confirmation. God is in control, but unfortunately I am not ... at least not in control of this computer. There are others who desire to use it, and I will continue Part 2 of Day 2 the next time I get computer time. God bless!
Posted by roger at July 5, 2005 04:22 AM