A day’s reflection from a Christian minister serving in the city of Milton Keynes
A City That Still Speaks
Ephesus is not merely a collection of ruins. It is a city whose stones still speak, of faith and commerce, empire and resistance, beauty and decay, and of the disruptive power of the gospel in public life.
Our day began at the remains of the Temple of Artemis. Very little survives of the vast sanctuary that once drew pilgrims from across the Mediterranean: scattered foundations, fragments of marble and a single reconstructed column rising from the marshy ground. Yet absence can preach. The emptiness forced me to imagine the scale of the devotion, trade and civic pride that once gathered here. Artemis was more than a private religious preference; she belonged to the city’s identity and economy. To challenge her cult was therefore to touch the nerves of Ephesus itself.
The older foundation stories of Ephesus also lingered in the landscape. Tradition speaks of a fish and a wild boar directing the city’s founders to their appointed place. However we judge such mythology, it shows a people interpreting geography through sacred narrative. Every city tells stories about why it exists and who belongs. Milton Keynes does the same through its grid roads, public art, shopping centre and language of planned modernity. Ministry in a city means learning to hear these civic stories, then asking where the gospel affirms them, where it unsettles them, and where it offers a larger hope.
Entering the Upper City
After a break, we entered ancient Ephesus through the upper entrance near the Magnesian Gate. The city is held between two hills, a position that gave it shelter, definition and drama. From the heights the streets descend toward what was once a thriving harbour. Walking down through the city is to move through layers of political power: Greek, Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine and Christian.
Ephesus knew both conflict and order. In 88 BC, during the upheaval associated with Mithridates VI, Romans and Italians across Asia Minor were massacred; Ephesus participated before later changing sides. Language and culture were never neutral. Greek remained the great language of the eastern Mediterranean even while Rome ruled. The tension between Greek identity and Roman authority resembles many modern “culture wars”: arguments about language, loyalty and belonging are often arguments about who gets to define the city. We see echoes of this today in the rise of populist and far-right movements across Britain and Europe, where anxieties about immigration, national identity and belonging are again reshaping political loyalties and public debate.
Then came the long Roman peace, the Pax Romana; usually dated from Augustus in 27 BC. It was not peace in the biblical sense of shalom, and it rested on military dominance. Yet its roads, security and administrative order enabled travel, trade and communication across enormous distances. The same imperial network that served Rome also became the road along which the gospel travelled. By the third century, however, the empire was no longer serenely expanding; it was strained by invasion, civil conflict, disease and economic instability. No human order, however impressive, is permanent.
Curetes Street: Water, Marble and Public Life
We followed Curetes Street, once a ceremonial route alive with civic and religious processions. Underfoot, marble caught the fierce sunlight. Ephesus prospered through the extraction, working and movement of marble; the city made power visible in stone. Even the pavements communicated wealth and permanence. Yet the broken columns and reused blocks now expose the illusion: what empire declares eternal eventually becomes archaeology.
The Fountain of Trajan reminded us that such grandeur depended on remarkable infrastructure. Water came to the city through aqueducts and was distributed through pipes, channels, fountains, baths and latrines. Public fountains were practical, social and political. They gave water, but they also displayed the generosity, and advertised the authority, of wealthy patrons and emperors. In Christian ministry, living water cannot become a monument to the giver. Christ’s gift is grace: offered without price, status or imperial self-advertisement.
Hadrian, Celsus and the Theatre of Public Power
The Temple of Hadrian, with its elegant façade and densely layered symbolism, shows how architecture joined devotion to imperial loyalty. The reliefs associated with the monument retell the city’s foundation and place Ephesus within a world watched over by gods and emperors. Civic religion was not confined to a sanctuary; it was embedded in streets, festivals, statues and shared memory.
Further down stood the façade of the Library of Celsus, one of the most arresting sights of the day. Built in honour of Tiberius Julius Celsus Polemaeanus, it served both as library and memorial tomb. Its reconstructed frontage still creates an impression of intellectual confidence. Knowledge, memory and status were displayed together. For a minister, it prompts an uncomfortable but necessary question: do our buildings preserve wisdom and invite people in, or do they simply memorialise ourselves?
The Great Theatre brought the Acts of the Apostles vividly to life. Acts 19 describes the uproar provoked by Paul’s ministry. Demetrius the silversmith feared that the preaching of a God not made by human hands would discredit both the trade in silver shrines and the magnificence of Artemis. The crowd surged into the theatre and for about two hours shouted, “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!” This was not simply a theological disagreement. The gospel had begun to disturb an economy, a civic identity and a network of vested interests.
Paul, John and Mary
Paul spent a substantial period in Ephesus. Acts speaks of more than two years of teaching, and the wider tradition associates him with about three years in the region. His ministry was patient, public and deeply contextual. He reasoned in the synagogue and then in the lecture hall of Tyrannus; he formed disciples; he confronted spiritual powers; and his message affected ordinary habits and economic interests. Ephesus shows that authentic urban mission is never only about attracting people to worship. The gospel enters the marketplace, interrogates idols and reshapes loyalties.
The later Christian memory of the city is also bound to St John. The Basilica of St John at nearby Selçuk was built over the place traditionally believed to be his tomb. Christian tradition holds that John lived and ministered in Ephesus during his later years, although the precise details cannot all be established historically.
The Day Ends at the House of Mary
Our day ended at the House of the Virgin Mary. The tradition linking Mary with Ephesus grows from Jesus’ words from the cross, when he entrusted his mother to the beloved disciple. Yet the present site belongs to a much later tradition, and its historical claims remain matters of faith and debate. The small house now functions as a chapel, presented as the place where Mary supposedly lived and worshipped.
I was struck by the tension between pilgrimage and commerce. The site has become a busy commercial enterprise as well as a place of prayer. Beneath it is an underground water source or well. Believers collect the water, drink it and wash with it, convinced that it is holy. Christians from many nations and traditions assemble there, some quietly praying, others waiting for water or moving through the chapel in a constant stream. Christine and I even had a wee drink ourselves; after all, who knows? Miracles can still happen!
As a minister, I left with mixed feelings. The commerce surrounding sacred memory can easily trouble the spirit; yet the hunger expressed by so many pilgrims should not be dismissed. People still come seeking healing, blessing, nearness to Mary and, through her story, nearness to Christ. The pastoral question is not simply whether the place can prove its tradition, but what this human longing reveals: a desire to touch grace, to carry something of holiness home, and to believe that God still meets us in the ordinary elements of earth, stone and water.
What Ephesus Says to Milton Keynes
I returned from the ruins thinking about the city in which I minister. Milton Keynes has no marble Curetes Street and no temple of Artemis, but it has its own processional routes, commercial temples, civic myths and promises of progress. Our idols are rarely carved as goddesses. They appear as endless consumption, status, speed, self-sufficiency and the assumption that economic growth can save us.
Paul’s witness in Ephesus warns the Church against reducing the gospel to a harmless private spirituality. When Christ is proclaimed faithfully, cherished arrangements may be questioned. Yet Paul did not begin with contempt for the city. He lived within it, taught patiently and formed a community capable of another way of life. That is the calling of urban ministry today: to love the city enough to listen to it, and to love Christ enough to challenge whatever diminishes human dignity or claims the worship that belongs to God.
The strongest sermon in Ephesus may finally be the city itself. Artemis’s temple is reduced to a column. Rome’s monuments are broken. The harbour has silted up. Empires pass; economies change; marble fractures. Yet the gospel proclaimed by a vulnerable apostle continues to be read across the world. The Church’s confidence therefore cannot rest in size, prestige or institutional permanence. It rests in the crucified and risen Christ, whose kingdom does not depend on marble, money or imperial applause.