It's so funny how God surprises you sometimes. I had a whole set of ideas of what I thought Londoners were like and how things were going to be here, especially in relation to church. I had this idea in my head that all the churches here were going to be stagnant. For some reason I thought that passionate Christians didn't live in London. I've quickly learned that my stereotypes about London were wrong. On Sunday night I attended one of the most passionate church service I have ever been to, rivaling that of the Moshi Town Church of Tanzania that I attended for 6 weeks this summer. As a Church of Christers, I was a bit shell-shocked, I'll admit. There was dancing ... boy, was there dancing! People of all ages were worshipping freely with one another. The 75 year old man was raising his arms and jumping up and down in joy just as much as the 20 year old girl standing next to him. It was amazing! I can't express how encouraged I am by the church here. There's a college group that I'm going to start going to, and I went to a worship team meeting on Monday night. The worship leader at this chruch (Holy Trinity Brompton) is Tim Hughes, who is a huge name in contemporary worship music. He wrote the song "Here I am to Worship" and "Beautiful One," and I'm so blessed to have the opportunity to learn from him! In fact, the most exciting thing that I got out of worship team on Monday night was a booklet that they handed out. It was written by Tim Hughes and Al Gordon (another worship leader at HTB and an awesome guy!) and it was entitled: "Worship leaders remember the poor." It's about how God's heart aches for justice and for his people to work for justice, and it talks about the ways in which we as worship leaders can do that and enable people to do it too. As I was reading it I was so overwhelmed because they were combining the two things that I'm passionate about: music and injustice in the world. Those two things have always been mutually exclusive for me, and it's so cool to see people who are combining them in meaningful ways!

http://www.htb.org.uk/
www.tearfund.org
www.invisiblechildren.com