Why would a group of Baptists from North Carolina travel to Scotland to stay in the abbey on the island of Iona? That was a question we faced during our stay at a very un-Baptistic location in the Hebrides.
I was one of thirteen people who made the journey to spend a week at the abbey. With me were nine other pastors, as well as Scott Hudgins and his wife, Mary Foskett and David and Joanie Hughes. The pilgrimage was sponsored by the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of North Carolina with support from the Lilly Endowment.
Christianity reached Iona in the 6th century. Columba, a missionary from Ireland, came to the island and established an abbey there.
In 1203, a Benedictine abbey was built to replace the one Columba established. In 1937, George MacLeod began the restoration of the abbey and founded what is now the Iona Community.
When we arrived at Iona on Saturday evening, we found that most of the folks there were from parts of Great Britain. Those who were already there gave us the side-eye, not knowing what to make of us.
It would seem our reputation had preceded us. Our press has not been good. Much of what is reported about us Baptists does not paint a rosy picture.
Those who don’t know Baptists lump them into what they see in the media. Because we are so diverse—and because many tend to put people into the “one size fits all” category—you can understand the suspicion we met upon our arrival.
Undaunted, we set out to be what Iona is: an ecumenical community of faith. It took time, but we won over the people there.
I had a conversation with a man from England. He looked at me and said that if you had told him he would spend a week with a bunch of Baptists from the south of America—and enjoy it—he would have said you were crazy.
“You have changed my mind about Americans,” he said. It was good that we got to do a little missionary work at Iona.
Iona was described by George MacLeod as being a “thin place”—where this world and the world of the divine are separated by a very thin veil. In her book on the history of Iona, Rosemary Power says Iona is “a place where the spiritual is constantly renewed by what people bring as well as what they are open to receive.”
Power’s description echoed my personal experience of Iona. I have been to many retreat centers, but I never felt what I felt on Iona. It was a profoundly moving experience that renewed me.
There is a story of a man who wanted to go on safari in Africa. Upon his arrival, he hired men to be bearers for the trip and an interpreter. They began the journey.
At the beginning of their third day traveling into the jungle, the man could not get the bearers to get up and go on. In anger, he went to the interpreter and told him to order the bearers to get up and move forward. The interpreter told the man that the bearers were sitting, waiting for their souls to catch up with them.
While at Iona, I felt my soul catch up to me. It was a week I will never forget. There were moments of divine encounter that transformed me.
I will be returning to Iona one day. It will not necessarily be from a desire to repeat what happened on my first trip. That cannot happen.
But I can return and remember. And remembering is powerful.
That is what we do in communion. We do it in remembrance of Christ. That remembering is life-changing.
Going to Iona changed me.
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Pastor of Temple Baptist Church in Raleigh, North Carolina. He is married and has two boys. His love is for movies, and he can be found in a theater most Fridays.
