The Pace Of Being Known

What Happens When a City Boy, With a Pocket Full of Sermons, Lands in a Rural Scottish Parish?

- Emily Millard

Sixteen years ago, Number One Canyon resident Matt Canlis took off for a short-term adventure in Scotland.

He was headed for the University of St. Andrews with his wife for post-graduate work to become a pastor.

What they learned there — and what they have brought back with them — has been captured in a short documentary called Godspeed, coming out in February. Matt first coined this term after realizing most people move beyond the speed of God — meaning, they fail to be rooted in a place and with a community where they can be known face-to-face.

Matt arrived in Scotland with a pocket full of sermons, eager to help change the Scottish church. What he found instead is that he needed to be reeducated by the Scottish parish system with its aging congregations and old-world mentality.

No one was impressed by his education or perfectly crafted messages. Helped by his mentors, Eugene Peterson and N. T. Wright, Matt began to learn anew in a world that only valued things at a leisurely, personal pace.

Diving in deeper, Matt became ordained at one of the smallest parishes in all of Scotland — in North Aberdeen shire where it took him six months to understand the dialect.