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, Amen. 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 amen or anything.

It's essentially impossible to tell the difference between a person who is 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 Amen 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 Amen or Amen 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

Amen at strategic intervals. It's a shame

more British congregations don't do it, to be honest. Later that same year, I preached the same

sermon at a Cantonese church in Vancouver via a translator, and though I understood hardly anything

else the people were saying, I did recognise that single word,

Amen. The word is a direct transliteration from the Hebrew Old Testament, and it meant back then

what it means today. It's a way for an individual or congregation to say, I strongly agree with

what you've said, or let it be so.

The word is rooted in a Semitic word that means truth. When it was used among the people of God

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