Back in Good Old England, if a few of you are praying in a group, and people are taking

turns to pray, the way you know that one person has finished praying, and it's someone

else's turn to start, is when the previous person says,

R-Men.

That's your cue to jump in.

But for some reason, this unwritten rule has not yet made it across the Atlantic.

In my experience, most Americans just get to the end of what they want to say, and

then stop.

No R-Men or anything.

It's essentially impossible to tell the difference between a person who has actually finished

praying and a person who is still praying, but just likes to leave really very long uncomfortable

pauses in between sentences.

So now I'm the rude British Christian talking over all the American Christians who are just

trying to leave pauses between their sentences while praying.

I can see some of them thinking, see, this is why we fought for independence.

But I don't want to leave you with the impression that R-Men is simply the equivalent of saying

over on a walkie talkie.

It does have a much richer meaning than that.

Christians all over the world use the word R-Men or A-Men regardless of their language.

I was feeling pretty nervous when I preached my first ever sermon back in 2003 in a church

in Georgia, so it was very encouraging, if a little startling, to hear someone in the

choir behind me, bellowing A-Men at strategic intervals.

...