Dreaming of….

The more and more we spend time here, the more and more my eyes have been opened to the spiritual condition. Friday night, we went out late, to the City Centre (from about 11pm to 1:30am). I’ve spent a lot of time around night life…it seems as if there’s usually only one group of people who are drawn in – typically college-aged people (or those wishing to hook up with college-aged people) and maybe a niche or two of bikers, cowboys, whatever.

The City Centre in Edinburgh was so completely diverse. We saw poor people, rich people, young people, old people (literally, a group of pensioners (retirees) was walking down a pub-lined street at midnight.) There was a homeless girl who was totally cracked out on heroin I’m guessing just sitting on the sidewalk in front of a department store in convulsions. Nobody seemed to notice. Nobody seemed to care. Later on, we saw a guy probably in his early 20s on a bench near a bus stop. You could tell he had money, or, at least he dressed like it. But as I walked by, you couldn’t even see his pupils, they were so small. The way he turned his head to follow the motion of us walking led me to believe he had probably taken a little too much X, and probably drank on top of that.

In a city of less than 600,000, seeing literally thousands and thousands of people lining the streets, drunk and fumbling around, going from the pubs to the clubs was a little shocking. I guess I didn’t expect to see SO MANY.

Last night, we went over to Geoffrey & Christine Baine’s house for dinner…or tea…or whatever they call the evening meals here. They are here with the Methodists to start waking up the culture here to be more missional minded. After hearing their experiences with the churches in the UK, combined with James’ & Ann’s experiences, I felt my heart breaking just a little bit more as the night went on.

I can’t get over how surprised I am of how the church culture is here. What is here is old school, institutional and not healthy spiritually or numerically. It’s almost like the rest of the world moved on out of the pre-21st century with technology, communication, and community but the church is still stuck back…hundreds of years I’d imagine. Where our problems in the American church now lie with it being focused on acting like a corporation, the UK church is focused on institutional tradition.

Neither extremes are healthy. Neither can focus on reaching out to the world. Neither are places where our God given dreams are discovered, nurtured and unleashed to impact the world and grow the Kingdom.

I think it is a little overwhelming….how many people there are that have no idea how much they are loved, how much they are meant to dream…to achieve. And how few people in the UK – in Scotland – in Edinburgh – are passionately willing to take it one step at a time. One person at at time….and eventually….probably not even in our lifetimes will we see that life this city is so void of now…