This Little Light of Mine was a Sunday School favorite when I was a boy. It has continued to be as an adult because we sing it frequently at Isaiah 40 Foundation conferences. Everybody knows it and seems to love it. The verses end with this: You in your small corner and I in mine. The excellent point made is that we should be salt and light wherever we are.
But this morning it has made me think of something else - the ubiquity of small-corner ecclesiology. In the US and Canada, congregations, even if they are a part of a larger denomination, think in terms of my church, my congregation - my small corner. There tends to be very little sense of the wider church.
Yesterday we had the opening worship for the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) in Nairobi, Kenya. I have never attended a gathering of the Church which has been more than national. This conference has gathered Anglicans from 41 nations around the globe. It is not a small corner.
I was moved to tears, one of several times last evening, when the gathered host sang the hymn, Revive Us Again. It was heartfelt and vibrant in expression and the prayer of the assembled. To think, the Anglican Church globally was praying in song:
Alleluia, thine the glory, alleluia, amen!
Alleluia, thine the glory
Revive us again.
The other remarkable bit is that the prayer is revive us again. The powerful preaching of our African Anglican hosts reminded us that revival is not for the Church or for nations but for individuals. In impacting individuals, it transforms the church and whole communities and nations. And most critically it begins with us, with me.
Alleluia, thine the glory
Revive us again.
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