Life in Scotland with Pastor Matt Canlis

“Everyone was rooted to the community and the church. There was transparency, accountability, fellowship, and joy. And you actually had to work out your problems with your neighbor instead of running away.”

This is an interview with Pastor Matt Canlis where he tells his incredible story of his journey as a Presbyterian priest through parishes he served in throughout Scotland. 

“Matt, tell us why you and your wife both moved to Scotland.”

“I grew up in a household where several Bible studies happened, and this is what made me interested in God and God's word. Then, a mentor said, “Matt, you and your wife should go study a bit.” So we took off to Vancouver, Canada, and we ended up studying there for longer than we thought. It was suppose to be a one year adventure, but we loved studying. 

Then a mentor said, “If you're thinking about church planting, don't. Right now is an unhealthy time to get caught up in that. Go be a part of an old school church plant in Scotland, or somewhere in Europe.” Then my wife, Julie, won a scholarship to go study at St. Andrews. I followed her out there and got a job as a parish assistant in Scotland. That's where I began to learn a new way to be a pastor, which was actually a very old way of being a pastor.”

“Being a pastor in Scotland was very different than anything you'd seen modeled for you in the US, correct?”

“It was different. I remember my first day as a parishioner. The pastor knocked on my door and I didn't know what he was doing there. It happened to be 9/11, and he was visiting all the Americans he knew to see if there was anyone who had been affected. I didn't even invite Him in until I figured out that he wanted to come inside. This face-to-face piece of pastoring was new for me. Even though I had good pastors growing up, none of my pastors had ever come to my house.”

“And as you began to serve in the local parish, you became a crazy door knocker, right? Except this way of pastoring wasn’t crazy there. Instead, it was expected.”

“They appreciate you as a pastor on Sunday, but you weren’t really pastoring if you weren’t there during the week going to the school, going to the pub for a pint, and playing soccer. These are the places where they wanted to engage with their minister. That was the transparency they expected. And whatever you said on Sunday had to match with who you were the rest of the week.”

“This wasn't a short stint. You were over there for 13 years, and you loved it. Something about this really resonated with you.”

“We did love it. We came from Seattle, which was pretty busy. So this was a different way of life for us. We didn't own a car for the first 2 years, so we had to walk everywhere in town. I never realized how bad the weather could be when you didn’t have a car, or where the hills were because you had to walk up the hill, instead of pressing on a pedal to get up the hill in a car. There are no garages in that town because the town was built “pre-car”. There are just doors, and people walking.

This took us back to the pre-industrial era, or, at least the pre-car era, and a way of living that most people today still know in many parts of the world.”

“I love your perspective. You lived in the midst of something you knew was broken, especially as someone coming from the US. You knew the way we did community wasn’t working. You also didn’t like the pace that we were living. What connection did you see between our pace and our ability to live in community with one another?”

“One misnomer about God’s speed is that people think it’s only about slowing down. People think that if you just slow down, things will be okay. But this is not the case. God speed is about the pace of being known.

As we see in Isaiah 40, sometimes you fly on wings like eagles, sometimes you run, and sometimes you walk. There are different speeds at which we can live, move, and have our being in Christ. It’s not like I’m just walking slow everywhere. Instead, I'm running and not growing weary. I'm walking, but not fainting, and sometimes I fly. It's not just about slowing down, but it's about being in the place that you are. The gift of Scotland was that it returned me to God's first question in the Bible, “where are you?”

I know there are spiritual connotations to that question and deeper levels of meaning, but it is first a geographical question. Where are you? In Scotland, I began to answer that question. When I was in the church, I was like, “When I’m at church, I’m a pastor. When I'm at home, I’m a dad and husband. When I'm in the parish, I am a neighbor or evangelist.”

Back in the day, ministers didn't get salaries, but they received glebes, which was the garden they had to work. You weren't just a man of God and Heaven, you're a man of the earth, and therefore, of God. So in the glebe, you were a gardener or a person who was working in some way. 

The geographical allies I discovered in a parish taught me what Psalm 16:6 teaches, “the boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places…” and if I respect those boundary lines instead of ignoring them, or having my phone dictate who I am and what I’m doing, then I see that geography helps personhood. The where helps the who. Then I can be who I am, where I am.

There’s a way the Scotts did this. In the middle of the parish is the church, and in the church, there's a clock tower. The clock rings out every hour on the hour. And we lived close to the church. After awhile, we got used to it. And we would say, “the clock tower isn't keeping time.” Before it was a clock tower, it was a bell tower. And the bell tower would call people to worship. It’s God saying, “where are you?” So that people could respond by saying, “here I am.”

“Here I am, I can’t sleep.” Or, “here I am, changing a diaper.” Or even, “here I am plowing the field.” You asked about pace, and pace matters, but the pace should put us in a geographical place to help us be who we are in Christ in the places he's given us, with the pleasant boundaries he’s given us, that we usually ignore.”

“Talk about the boundary lines of a parish. What defines a parish?”

“All of Scotland is broken up into parishes. There's almost always a village in the middle, depending on the size of the parish. Back in the day, you could only go to your parish church. There was no such thing as church hopping. Even 10 years ago there, if somebody showed up at church from a different parish, you would ask, “what are you doing here?” 

Everyone was rooted to the community and the church. There was transparency, accountability, fellowship, and joy. And you actually had to work out your problems with your neighbor instead of running away.”

“You're saying that you can't run away, and the community is somewhat stuck together. This is powerful. Was that hard?”

“Oh yes. For example, let’s say I was speeding in my car and I had the only blue Volkswagen in town. And if I was speeding past homes with kids, people might say, “Matt doesn’t care for children. He’ll endanger their lives just to gain a few minutes.”

There's nothing anonymous. Nothing you do is in your private life. Everything is public. At first, you feel like you're in a fishbowl and it's a bit scary. But with time, you see the grace of your neighbors and you start to obey because you should. This is a good thing. I think that's how Jesus lived his whole life, and it's why he changed the world. Because he earned people's trust the hard way.”

“Now you and your wife are back in the United States, in Washington, at a small Anglican Church. You’re pastoring about 200 people.

Can you talk about why you were hesitant to come on this podcast? I'd love for you to share why.”

“I was hesitant because if I'm not living at God's speed at home, or in my church, or in my neighborhood, then I might have a bunch of nice things to say, but it's not being practiced where I live. I'm always cautious to preach something that I don't live up to. The Godspeed film was a confession about the ways I, and we, failed to live. So if I’m going do something, I’ve got to start as the one confessing.

Secondly, my mentor said, “avoid anything that can build fame or reputation, because it'll tempt you to live in that world rather than in the fellowship of the unimpressed.” That was Eugene's phrase for the people in your life who know you.”

“Eugene Peterson was personally a friend and a mentor to you. Can you share more about that?”

“Yes, Eugene told me he wanted to make sure that what he practiced at home sang louder than anything he ever said publicly. That was true of them. Those who knew Eugene, Jan, and their kids can bear witness to that truth.

Therefore, I committed to not doing many things outside the parish. I do a few a year, but it's a constant tension.”

“The reason this is so big for people is that this is a choice for you. You are choosing to live small in the United States right now. You’ve written books and poured your heart into certain projects, but you're not looking for every opportunity to promote.

You're essentially saying, “I've done something that matters, and God will have to get it out there.” You have a sense of, “I'm going to do life right here in my place because this is what matters most.”

“Yes. I can't take credit for that choice, like it’s about some countercultural thing. I'm choosing this because it's better. I'm choosing this because it's life in Christ. It's not a cool strategy that I have. This is what I think should be the norm. I want to do things and make choices that make this more normative.”

“I know this is normal to you, but I'm crying at what you're saying. There's something about this that feels small to people. We live in a culture that has elevated the feeling of being known, doing something big, and doing it in front of everyone.

You say this has brought you joy even though it's messy and hard. It's harder, right?”

“Yes, it is harder, but it's also easier. I was across the street recently with Christie talking about how to do some things. I mean, it is harder if we get in a fight, but it's easier because we're face to face. It’s easier because you can see the person. I only got a cell phone when I turned 40, and I got it when we moved to America. I asked my congregation, “do you want me to get one of these things? Or do you want me to be present to you?” They were torn because they like that I’m always present where I am, but they said, “please buy one because you've got to learn to live with it like we are, and redeem this thing to make it a tool again, not a master.”

I don't want to diss technology or anything that people are doing to reach people, especially with the gospel, but I want to keep asking, what are the most organic ways to be in Christ with those we love and our neighbors? Because that’s how Jesus did it. Not just because he was in the first century, but because Jesus is revealing who God is. This is who God is and the speed at which God moves.”

“My desire for Find Your People was that people would come back to friends within 5 miles. That they would build a little village where they are, Americans don’t live like this. Why do you think that is? What happened to us?”

“Well, it’s our strength and our weakness. Those who immigrated from Europe landed on the East Coast. They were pioneers, and they were often running from something, such as a bad family system, poverty, or even persecution. I think Americans have always been on the run ever since. Our reaction against what we once knew has made us trample over others and lose ourselves. That's just a part of our story. When I say it's a strength, I mean that it makes us pioneers, it makes us creative, but sometimes it also makes us bullies, or pushy. And that's something we need to reckon with as a nation.”

“I'm still reeling from the fact that Eugene Peterson was your friend and mentor. I'd like to hear how you saw him struggle with this, because I know his struggle shaped you.”

“When I first met Eugene, I was embarrassed to meet him. I was sitting in class, trying to think of a good question to ask that would impress him and the class for that matter. It took about 3 classes before I finally came up with something brilliant. I raised my hand as casually as I could to look like I didn't care. And he didn’t just point at me, but he said, “yes, Matt?”

How did Eugene know my name? We had never met. Turns out he bumped into my wife Julie about a week earlier. He learned Julie's name and her husband's name. I was holding Julie's hand in class because we were newly married, so he put two and two together. Every day before class Eugene would leave 20 minutes early so that if he bumped into somebody, he would learn their name, hear their story, and even remember their spouse's name just in case they ever met. That’s the world Eugene grew up in and cultivated everywhere he went. 

Once Eugene got to the place where it was too hard to know everybody's name and their stories, he said, he was starting to enjoy the fame more than he thought. He had to return to his roots and be small again. This was a constant tension in his and Jan’s life.”

“The way you live here gives me hope that this is possible. Yet, it’s a discipline. I know you keep saying this is normal, but how did you create it? You still had to choose it, right?”

“Well, you don't have to create it. There's only one Creator and He has made all things well. The earth is the Lord's and everything in it. You just have to be found by the Creator where you are. And to get back to the, “where are you?” question, God made the world good, but we have messed it up. 

But his question still rings out. Anybody can say, “here I am” or as a community they can say, “here we are”. We will discover the pleasant boundaries in the parishes we have, pleasant and challenging, so I don't want to create something. I want to live in God's good creation in Christ with my neighbors. Some of them I like, some of them I don't. It's already right here. Eugene once said, “the antidote is near the poison in nature.” You don't have to go to greener grass. You've found it where you already are.”

“You came back to your roots in America and left what was an idyllic way to live. What did that transition look like?”

“It's different here. Back in Scotland, people wanted me to knock on their doors. I was their minister. There were 50 churches and I was a stranger, but there was no trespassing signs. Now, I try to shop at the local supermarket down the street, I play ball at the YMCA, and Chelsea always cuts my hair. I go to her faithfully. She's both a good haircutter and somebody I want to build a relationship with. 

I try to live as locally as possible. Yes, sometimes I go to the big store to buy some stuff even though I try to resist. I've never purchased anything from Amazon and I won’t buy anything online. I'm not the only one trying to live this way, as the Minister knocking on doors. We as the body of Christ are getting to know our neighbors well, and maybe one grocery store clerk. And more importantly, if you're married, make sure you know your spouse and your kids. Know the people that are close to you. That's where God speed begins. Don’t make this the new mission, this is an internal transformation first.”

“There are people God has placed in front of us that we’re missing because we're too busy scrolling. Because we're not dependent on each other. For some reason we resist this. Why do you think it's so countercultural here to live this way?”

“Because we’ve become part of the culture, and we forget about Jesus. Jesus, for 30 years, lived in an ordinary life, had an ordinary job, and leaned over the fence to talk to his neighbors. He lived 30 years to leverage 3 years of powerful impact. However, we often do that backward. I want to recover the way Jesus lived now, and it's possible. 

Once Jesus began to have a bigger impact after his baptism, he still walked everywhere. He still kept Sabbath. He still sat around the fire, sang songs, and told stories. His relational life was so alive. This drove the world to discover who this was, and it happened to be God. That's who we are meant to be in Christ. That’s who the Holy Spirit's inviting us to meet. And I just want to be apart of that. That’s what I think the trinity is up to, right now.”

“Living this way doesn’t seem hard for you. Would you say it’s a gift?”

“It has been a gift, but I learned it. Remember, I showed up as injured as anybody in going too fast. And I still struggle constantly with this. I have not arrived. God speed is a confession. But if you find people in your life who are good at ordinary things, those are the people who can save us from ourselves. And that's where we've got to focus on being local, and not be projecting one thing in public that isn't true at home.”

“I’m discipling several young girls right now who are wrestling with this. And they have influence to a lot of people. And I’m tell them things like, “you need to be a member of a local church, you need to have a small group.” And they’re all up for it, but they’re also asking, “why? why does that change everything?”

Because influence is the commodity in our culture. It’s the thing that people value, and it’s the thing that people think makes a difference in the world. Why would you argue against that?”

“For a number of reasons. One, I’ve had a lot of friends have the influence they were tempted to make, and it destroy them. This type of influence has destroyed a lot of people. Two, I don’t think the word influence appears in the Bible. Nor impact. I’m not saying I don’t want the kingdom advancing, but those are commercialized words that are now used as commodities to try to make things happen. I think it’s the devil’s coinage.”

“This is so needed in the world. Everything you’re saying is resonating with me.

I don’t want to quit what I do on a large scale because I still feel called to it, but I love what you’re saying about the value of where my time goes, where my thoughts go, and where my energy goes.

I’m trusting the Lord that by doing the big things, it’s encouraging and helping people live in their small. So I'm not going to write it off yet, but I have been tempted to, because I agree with you.”

“Don't write it off. I'm not calling people to live the same way I'm living. I'm asking everybody, “how's the balance? How's the ratio? What do our spouses think? What do our children think? What does the local community think?” It’s the fellowship of the unimpressed that keeps us healthy. I need those people. Otherwise, I don't trust myself, because I'm tempted to have an impact. There's a longer story there. I don't trust myself with those things, but I trust myself with these people. They ground me.”

“For many people reading, they live in a metroplex or a big city. What would you say to them about wanting this slower way of life? They might want to live at God speed, but it feels so different from the way they live right now?”

“Start with God's first question, “where are you?” Find your church, find your parish, you know your home, and be who God's calling you to be in those places. Again, don't look elsewhere. The antidote is near the poison. 

Secondly, don't do this alone. During COVID, our church was closed for a while. But our Sunday school teachers volunteered to turn our Sunday school into public school education for kids online who came in and filled the church. We moved all of our small groups into backyards. So, there were 16 backyard churches that started something called, “cinema Divina”, which was making God's Word into a film. 

They had tons of fun dramatizing John's gospel, so the neighbors started asking, “what are you guys doing, and why is it so much fun? How can that be Bible study?” Those people are now coming back to church to discover what church is like. So, there's always something creative the Creator is doing in the midst of chaos. That’s how Genesis begins, it’s where Christ shows us his death, and his revelation actually anticipates things already happening, so look for the creative thing already happening in your backyard and do that with a few people well. It’s small, and it’s not easy, but it’s simple.”

You probably want more, don’t you?

You can watch the film and grab your copy of the book, Backyard Pilgrim, today!

And for everything else, visit livegodspeed.org.