As I write, we’re returning at last from a two-week tour of England and Scotland. Just getting home has been an ordeal! Somehow United Airlines bumped us from our original return flight from Edinburgh on May 23, changing it without asking to May 24. After much hassle we finally got it changed back, a good thing as it turned out since an ash cloud from the erupting volcano in Iceland closed down all Scottish airports the following day. Then our flight back to Denver through Chicago got canceled due to maintenance issues and we were routed instead through Dulles airport in Washington, D.C., albeit too late to catch a flight to Denver.
We spent the night at Dulles, and our scheduled flight to Denver the next day also got canceled due to maintenance issues. Sheesh! We spent most of the day dashing from gate to gate registering for standby seats and finally our persistence paid off. In the end we landed in Denver some 35 hours after leaving Great Britain, sufficient time to have circled the globe. Those who think international travel is glamorous, listen up.
In contrast, the tour of the U.K. went off without a hitch, well, almost. En route to the very first event we found ourselves waiting in a very long line of cars on a motorway. A truck, or lorry, had crossed the median and crashed into a car a mile or so ahead of us, and authorities closed all six lanes of the highway–for six hours! After sitting without moving for three-and-a-half hours while emergency personnel dealt with the tragedy, we were allowed to make a U-turn and go back up the entrance ramp to find an alternate route. We barely made it to the venue in time. Later we learned the sobering news that two women had died in the accident, and that if we had left the hotel on time that morning instead of a few minutes late we may well have been involved.
I was speaking on the book What Good Is God? accompanied by a Christian theatre company called SaltMine. The first half of the program, I sat onstage with an interviewer, and in between our chats three actors did a series of five- to seven-minute sketches, some of which they wrote themselves and some adapted from such works as The Hiding Place, The Screwtape Letters, and Shadowlands. After a tea break (this is Britain, after all) the actors did one more sketch and I spoke for about 40 minutes.
We’ve done three similar tours in the U.K., as well as a tour in South Africa and Australia and a scaled-down presentation in the Middle East, and we plan to return to Australia (and New Zealand too this time) in September of this year. It feels far less lonely to stand on a platform supported by such consummate professionals. With moments of hilarity and poignancy in their dramas, they grab an audience and deliver them into the palm of my hand. Could a speaker ask for more? Dave Pope, a singer of note in the U.K., organized each of the programs, and the logistics were quite complicated. Several stagehands and technicians drove a couple of vans full of props, electronic equipment, and books for sale, and a caravan of five vehicles traveled between cities each day to stage the productions. In all we covered 2000 miles to put on ten performances.
As you may know, the church in Britain is a sad shell of its former days. The most impressive building in every town is the stone church with its pointed steeple, but most of those churches are virtually empty on Sunday. Much like the church congregations, the audience attending our events tilted heavily toward the gray-haired. And yet I find in places like Australia and Britain, the church is far more likely to show unity, with little denominational competition at stake, and also to express faith creatively. Much of the best worship music comes from Britain, and the kind of theatre talent produced by SaltMine would be hard to match in the United States.
The highlight for me each evening was sitting at a table to sign books and in the process hearing stories of people I have somehow connected with through my books. A woman whose 23-year-old son committed suicide. A young girl who rolled up her sleeve to show her self-mutilation as a “cutter” before her conversion. An elderly man who said, “Pray for my daughter please—she’s a prostitute and drug addict.” An Iranian believer who had just received his residency permit in Scotland after an eight-year wait and who asked me to sign his Farsi-language version of What’s So Amazing About Grace? A chaplain who leads a study on that book in a Glasgow prison. A surgeon who trained with Dr. Paul Brand in India. I never tire of hearing that something I work on alone in my basement office reaches out, in this case across an ocean, and connects with another person in very different circumstances.
We had no time for tourist excursions on this trip. After getting to the hotel after midnight, we’d sleep, get up and exercise, then load the car for the next day’s drive, arriving in time to arrange the set, do sound checks, hold a reception, and face a new crowd. Yet simply 
driving through the British countryside in Spring is a feast for the eyes: lambs frolicking in the fields, bright yellow rapeseed blooming, English gardens fronting the road in towns and villages. And one night we traveled to Stratford-upon-Avon and saw a magnificent production of Merchant of Venice by the Royal Shakespeare Company. We return not exactly refreshed, but renewed and ready to tackle the next adventure.
Philip,
As always we were delighted to read your update and hear the details of your travels. Think of you so often, especially when gazing in wonder at Long’s Peak and thoughts of your amazing accomplishment with the 14teeners. 🙂 A joy-filled summer to you and Janet!…Thanking God for you, Bobbe and John
Dear Mr. Yancey,
Thank you for writing! I have been reading you for a few years in the RBC Ministries “Our Daily Bread.” The way you approach an issue really speaks to me. I just finished reading “Prayer Does It Make Any Difference?” I look forward to reading your other books.
Hi Phillip – I had no idea of the best way to get back in touch after our correspondence about my ‘What Is not Negotiable’ project a year ago or so, i do hope this reaches you sir! – Tony Campolo did contribute in the end which was great and i promised I’d send you the link as soon as it was up as you said you’d be interested, so have put it in the ‘my website’ field above. Also, i thought the piece below might interest you as i’ve mentioned you. God bless and so glad to hear you’re well.
John Richards
30/30/30
‘Confess your sins, one to another; that you may be healed.’
‘If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins he is faithful and just to forgive and cleanse us.’
‘Where two or three are gathered together…’
Several months ago, a close friend in his 30’s who i meet and pray with regularly invited me to Alcoholics Anonymous, an organisation that he has been involved in as a member and mentor over many years and in several countries. He invited me as a guest to a session that he was speaking at one evening, in a village a few miles outside our town. I have worked face to face with vulnerable young people with complex issues over the last ten years and have heard bits and pieces about AA and had also been struck by a compelling account i had read about an AA meeting in which Phillip Yancey was touched deeply by the spiritual pungency and mutual humility and dependence of the members.
As the group convened, the confidentiality rules and format were explained to me and my friend told his fascinating life story of childhood hurt and alienation, steady descent into drugs and dealing, prison, violence, alcoholism and then gradual revelation, repentance, the beginnings of recovery and a slow and purposed walk of deliverance and change via the 12 steps over many years. As he finished and the group thanked him, others began to chip in and contributed from their own lives and experiences, and as they spoke in the little church backroom i was struck by both the incredibly unified diversity of people and the presence of God in the room; folk of all ages, from all backgrounds, at all stages of life, from several countries and every possible walk of life talking nakedly, freely, beautifully, humbly, openly about their own struggles, daily need for change and complete hope in God for redemption. For 45 minutes I literally choked back tears as story after story after story from single mums, mechanics, doctors and lawyers, acknowledged the teller’s brokenness, inadequacy, humility and then desire for real change, healing and complete dependence on God and the community for daily progress and indeed survival. I have been involved in different churches in a great diversity of contexts and roles my whole life and that evening I felt such emotions i had never recognised; a deep sense of Gods purpose and significance on me being there coupled with the frustration and sadness that the profoundly spiritual principles i was seeing so freely and simply displayed by people utterly unchurched were so distinctly lacking in the cell groups, meetings and church experiences of so many christians and church communities that i had attended.
I felt that God had not only touched and challenged me deeply, but had birthed some purpose that was slowly germinating. Several weeks later, over the course of one week-end, I met completely by chance at a party someone else with whom the subject of AA popped up completely out of the blue, in the context of their frustration with their current church situation, and desire for a greater reality in their own relationships. The day after this, my AA friend told me of his consternation at once again sitting in his church that morning while the speaker described redemptive biblical concepts that could only be learnt or outworked in the context of complete mutual dependence, openness, acceptance and humility. As he looked around the church he described how he felt like standing up and asking how these things were to be fulfilled in what was a middle class, discreet and controlled environment of church conformity. He reminded me of my experience at AA and asked me to consider doing something and to lead in some way and left his thoughts with me.
Over the course of the next few days, i felt really stirred and decided clearly that i wanted to do something and that the way forward was to start a community in which we could look to replicate the conditions of AA together and even follow the 12 steps of recovery (that are not actually about alcohol) in a context of complete openness, honesty and mutual dependence. I hoped to experiment with a traditional AA format: 30 minutes of chatting, a 30 minute talk by one member and then 30 minutes of discussion from where we have got our name. As i began to tentatively contact friends and contacts who I thought might be interested and describe the vision i had, i found to my amazement a catalogue of affirmation as time and time again i was told that this was what they had been longing for, praying for, reading about at that very time or had been on their heart and they were desperate to be involved. I assembled a leadership team of 4 of us who met prayerfully and discussed the right venue and format and quickly we had 10 or so men interested. We met initially not really knowing what might happen and sat around drinking cups of tea with no-one really knowing what they were coming to. The group was made up of a real diversity of men both churched and unchurched; from a friend of a friend who has been in prison for the last 18 years to a local church pastoral leader to a newly married friend who had served around the world on the mission field to someone who had never been to church and is a recovering alcoholic. Ten or so men from a great range of backgrounds, all walks of life with differing church affiliations, family situations, experiences and yet the shared desire and hope and commitment for openness, community and a shared process of progress. I began to describe my thoughts and vision and suggested four principles that i felt should be central to what we were doing:
Confidentiality; all that was shared in the group would stay in the group and not be shared outside of it.
Acceptance; we were here to establish a context in which one another’s thoughts, struggles, dilemmas and personalities could and would be accepted and valued regardless of our understanding and agreement. We would seek to maintain unity and encourage and nurture one another at all costs.
Non-Disclosure; Though we wanted a context in which people felt they could pour out their hearts and share their deepest struggles, such disclosure was not a requirement for membership and it was fine just to be there and to listen; no-one would be pressured or expected to share unless they felt completely comfortable to do so.
Support; we aimed and hoped to be able to support one another and establish a shared interdependence of fellowship; if someone expressed a need, concern or hurt with which they were struggling, then the group and the other individuals would hope and desire to support and encourage and nurture that person in whatever way seemed appropriate and to pray for and support them without setting conditions or demands.
Above all i explained my own commitment to the pursuit of ongoing awareness and changethrough openness, brokenness, accountable and real relationships and that these two principles for me were utterly central to the daily outworking of my journey with God. I talked about wanting to be a picture of redemption in my own struggles and redemptive process and how i hoped to be somehowfruitful by living out and sharing these things in my life and in the relationships and people that God has given me despite my numerous ongoing failings and need. I hoped that somehow, the group might be able to incorporate and embody such a process for us all.
Without going into detail i can simply say that the floodgates were opened that first night – almost immediately and without any hint of requirement, intensely moving and personal stories of suffering, struggles, progress, hope and faith were shared and listened to, tears were shed between us and the beginnings of a community formed. We went far beyond the allotted time, closed in prayer (the prayer below that has become our community prayer), and finally a friend spoke up at the end of our time and said in a voice thick with emotion that he had waited 28 years involved in the church in several countries and numerous settings for a group such as this. We all hugged and left; full of excitement, thankfulness and hope.
The group develops and grows throwing up challenges, opportunities, shared tears and an immense amount of intimacy, accountability and laughter. God is gracious and kind to us. We continue to pursue a greater awareness of ourselves and our own need; and then seek to support and encourage one another to change and grow by Gods grace in a context of real-ness – as men humbly outworking our redemption in the incredibly diverse circumstances and challenges the 12 of us face. We are resolutely NOT a christian group nor an AA meeting simply because none of us feel any need or desire to label our 12 way relationship as such. We trust that the principles we try to live out to one another afford us our identity and will carry us forward. We are hopeful and expectant and want our lives, families, situations and futures to be impacted by our desire and commitment to the process and one another. We rely wholly on God to lead and protect and change us as we seek Him together. We feel we are putting ourselves in the palm of His hand. We trust that it is a good place to be.
Almighty and most merciful Father,
we have erred and strayed from Your ways like lost sheep.
We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts.
We have offended against Your holy laws.
We have left undone those things which we ought to have done;
and we have done those things which we ought not to have done;
and there is nothing good in us.
O Lord, have mercy upon us, miserable offenders.
Spare those, O God, who confess their faults.
Restore those who are penitent; according to Your promises declared unto men in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Grant that we may hereafter live a godly, righteous, and sober life;
to the glory of His name. Amen
“I never tire of hearing that something I work on alone in my basement office reaches out, in this case across an ocean, and connects with another person in very different circumstances.” – as a blogger, I can relate to that. And I just want to say that your books have connected with me again and again, very deeply. I find your writing really helpful because you speak from the heart, you don’t fudge over issues but wrestle with them, you talk about life as it really is, with all the pain and the complexity and the mess. Thank you so much.
I’m reading “O Jesus que eu nunca conheci” (in portuguese) and I wanted to ask you:
Have you ever read the book: Desire of Ages, by Ellen G. White?
By the way, thank you for this grate book that I’m reading.