Leadership Journal

I was weary of the typical staff retreat. It was frustrating to go away for two days and come back to a full week's work. It was irritating to have staff members' cell phones constantly ringing with news of emergencies, real and imagined. It was boring to simply expand the normal business of a weekly staff meeting into a two- or three-day marathon. It was time for a change.

So, I took our team to England for a week. As a Brit myself, I wanted our team to encounter some of the giants of church history as I had met them, to meet with Christians of another culture, and to spend seven days in uninterrupted team building.

This retreat exceeded my wildest expectations.

We visited John Wesley's house in London and noted the indentations in the floorboards of his closet, worn away by his knees from getting up at four each morning to pray. Charles Wesley's great hymn "And Can It Be?" took on new meaning as we sang it together in the Foundry Chapel. At John's grave we gave thanks for the lives of these brothers and how they were used by God to bring about the Great Awakening in England and America. Church history came alive for us.

Standing in Wesley's church, we imagined his expositions. Karen, our high school pastor, confessed the most meaningful moment for her was kneeling at the rail where John Wesley had so often served communion. Later we visited the Wesley Room in Lincoln College, Oxford. I was deeply moved to realize that here John and Charles Wesley and George Whitfield had founded the Holy Club.

Opposite Wesley's Chapel is Bunhill Cemetery where Isaac Watts, John Bunyan, John Owen, Susannah Wesley, and other Christian heroes are buried. Reading their gravestones we all felt challenged to make our own mark for God. We often heard this call during the trip. Admiring the statue of Eros in Picadilly Circus, we learned it was erected in memory of Lord Shaftesbury, a great social reformer of the nineteenth century whose social conscience sprung from his evangelical faith.

Our children's pastor, Cheri, found our visit to Robert Raikes's house in Gloucester particularly meaningful. Raikes started the first Sunday school in 1780, paying his teachers to instruct the local urchins to read using the catechism. He was vilified by the established church, but by 1786 some 200,000 children were enrolled in Sunday schools throughout England. We noted with amusement that criticism of children's ministry is nothing new.

In Gloucester we visited George Whitfield's house and church. He walked 60 miles to Oxford to study for the ministry, yet we complain if the church parking lot is full.

We were constantly faced with the suffering that Christians of previous generations had endured. We paused at the memorial to John Hooper, the bishop of Gloucester, who was burned at the stake by bloody Queen Mary in 1555 because he had embraced the Reformed faith. In Oxford we visited the Martyrs' Memorial where Latimer, Ridley, and ...