London is a collision between the old and the new, the grand and the gritty.  It doesn’t get any older, or grander than St. Paul’s Cathedral and Westminster Abbey.  You can’t take photographs in these churches so I can only say that the beauty is more than I can describe.  To walk through these places is to run across the burial sites of names we read about in text books – Issac Newton, Charles Darwin, William Wilberforce – and a host of kings and queens. One of the highlights for me was getting beyond the history and staying for “Evensong” at St. Pauls.  The reading of scripture, chanting of Psalms, and singing of Latin Anthems (done by a men’s choir) in a cathedral is an awesome experience.

It’s also humbling to realize that most Londoner’s never attend these cathedrals or any church.  This city, which has some of the grandest churches ever built, has some of the lowest church attendance in the world.  I’ll resist the urge to preach, but it was a reminder to me in stone that the missionary task is never done, and is hardest of all in places where faith once made sense for the many, but is now compelling only for the few.

I’ll post more from London next time.