Each
day I have a ritual, I get off the train at Liverpool Street station and grab a
latte from Prets before walking up Bishopsgate to my office in Shoreditch High
Street.
Coffee
can do strange things to you. For
instance, it can start a new world-class financial centre.
Back
in 1698 a little band of stockbrokers downed their coffee at Jonathan’s Coffee
House in Change Alley, EC3. The story of the successful Square Mile had begun.
However,
progress wasn’t always easy. The South Sea Bubble burst in 1720 and coffee
house exchanges burned down in 1748.
300
years later and The City of London has become more powerful than any 18th
century coffee drinker could imagine.
325,000
people now work in the financial centre. The City is set to become bigger than New York, Frankfurt and
Tokyo. It seems to go from strength to
strength. We might not make cars any more, but we do know how to make money.
Last
December, City institutions paid out £9billion in bonuses. The Square Mile has
now spread eastwards to Canary Wharf where my sister has the fascinating job of
being Bishop’s chaplain to the Docklands.
The
City has also gone west into Mayfair, where many private equity companies and
hedge fund managers hang out.
Yes,
London is certainly the place to be. The Russian oligarchs are further proof
of this.
So
as I sip my coffee at my desk and I think what a great place the City is to
work, surrounded by success. Something our country can be proud of.
Hm! I have an idea.
Maybe
I should start a church in a coffee house, call it café church, and see where
it takes me.
Maybe
I could start a global denomination and have offices in London, Amsterdam Tokyo
and New York.
Maybe
there could be new tall glass cathedrals in all the major financial cities of
the world, designed by Sir Norman Foster.
I
could easily see myself as the high tech, commodity pastor, thousands of
business workers flocking on Sunday to the most amazing services ever. And
those who couldn’t be there could have the services streamed live to their laptops.
Of
course, I would have to patent everything to protect intellectual rights. (You
know what Christians are like!) Ah, yes, I can see it now, I could be as big as
Jes….
Wait
a minute, wait a minute…I see what’s happening here.
No
wonder Jesus made the point that the poor would inherit the earth, not the
rich. He knew what he was saying when he said it would be easier for a camel to
go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.
Human nature being what it is and all that.
It
is pretty easy to worship success, isn’t it? We just copy its attitudes.
Maybe
there is something in Thomas á Kempis’ classic work, Imitation of Christ. For instance, how many times have we prayed to
be more like Jesus?
More
to the point, do we really truly mean it? To be really like Jesus would probably change
our lives beyond all current recognition?
As
I said, coffee can do strange things to you.
ASD
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