So this guy walks into a bar. I mean, into a church. A megachurch. In the Sunday morning service, he announces, “My faith is gone.”
He’s the senior pastor. (Oops.) He’s also the founder. (Oops again.) The elders attack. He hustles out of town. All the way to Florence, Italy. Hunkers down with caring and fun-loving friars, including Uncle Kenny, who departed his conservative Baptist upbringing to become a Franciscan priest.
So embracing the Italian countryside and cappuccinos, this evangelical New England megachurch pastor, Chase Falson, embarks on a spiritual pilgrimage. He follows the footsteps of Francis. Chase sees his new hero, Francis of Assisi, as the first postmodern Christian.
This formerly black-and-white, got-all-my-theology-systemized-and-sanctified pastor then learns and experiences a ton of stuff by studying and walking this 13th century priest’s path. A radical path: “It is no use walking anywhere to preach unless our walking is our preaching,” preaches Francis.
This novel novel is a joy to read. It’s part turn-the-page-what’s-gonna-happen-next; part devotional, and part transformational. I tried really hard (I mean really hard) to just read it. No pen. No underlining. Just pray and drink it all in.
Impossible. I underlined. I read sections aloud to my wife—even though she had already read it. Joanne really appreciated it (except for the ending). Ditto.
Chase journals his thoughts throughout his pilgrimage. “Looking up from my journal, I stared out at a group of old men feeding pigeons and thought about the condition of God’s house in the twenty-first century. As far as I could tell, it was the only thing in the universe duct tape couldn’t fix.”
“Time in Italy has a different symmetry. Days came and went, drawing little attention to themselves; sometimes I couldn’t say if it was Tuesday or Friday. I took walks, ate, spent time with Kenny or one of the guys, and read and wrote in my journal. The deeper I plunged into the heart of Francis, the more courage I found to dive into my own. The more I saw his love for the church and the world, the more inspired I was to follow his lead. I was defrosting.”
Should you also plunge into Francis, you’ll experience wide-grin insights (the author could do stand-up comedy) and Holy Spirit nudges around every cobblestoned narrow street: differentiating between beauty and Beauty; peace-loving and peace-making (the story about Rwanda will break your heart); community, communion and the Eucharist; art, architecture and Architect.
Friar Peter: “Augustine said the human mind was particularly delighted when truth was presented to it indirectly, like in symbols and sacred space.
Unfortunately, most churches today are designed without any sense of the iconic because moderns like straightforward, unambiguous communication. We want ‘worship centers’ where hominess is more important than holiness.”
Chase: “I remember telling our architect that I wanted all the technological goodies you’d find in a world-class performing arts center. Looking back, I realize that what I had asked for was ‘lights, camera, action!’ rather than ‘Father, Son and Holy Ghost.’”
Warning! Reading this book brings on sudden and uncontrollable yearnings for Italian food and wine. “Gelato is what heaven would taste like if someone froze it and crammed it into a paper cup.”
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