A few years back my husband Andrew and I noticed the upcoming 500th anniversary of Luther’s 1510 pilgrimage to Rome. We thought it would be really cool to retrace his steps. But the questions of “how?” and even more “why?” (besides the coolness factor) remained unanswered. Now, however, we have answers, and we’re gonna do it… in just a few days. We leave August 22 from Erfurt.

The trek will take us 70 days to cross 1000+ miles—we’re not going as fast as Luther, who booked along at about 26 miles a day, not to mention in sandals, in winter, and during a fast—and we’ll arrive in Rome during the last days of October. Along the way we’ll be blogging at www.hereiwalk.org about our progress as well as offering select bites of Luther’s theology, Catholic theology, ecumenical documents, mini-lessons in Reformation history, as well as Facebook and Twitter updates: all with the hopes of generating some fresh interest in the midst of this “ecumenical winter” on the century-old effort to reconcile the broken pieces of Christ’s church.

It’s a well-known fact that the communication revolution of the late 15th and 16th centuries—namely, the printing press—had a great deal to do with the Reformation’s success. Pamphlets, tracts, and printed Bibles all did much to spread fresh insights into the gospel across Europe. But the same printing press also did much to feed polemics and harden the resolve of divided and dividing churches. Our hope is that again today, in the midst of an enormous communication revolution, we can take the media that often contribute to further division and use them to foster unity in a new and untested way.

We’d be thrilled, of course, if you’d spread the word in your church and community! You can download from here various flyers to print, web graphics to put on your own site linking to ours, etc. You can sign up for 70 days of prayer with us, receiving a Scripture verse in your inbox to meditate on each day with reference to the unity and disunity of the church. Above all, please pray for the unity of the church. This is Christ’s prayer; may all of us who are Christ’s disciples make it our own.