Will the Church have the will and courage to face this challenge? If the Church is going to survive, it must respond to its call to Christian discipleship. Brian McLaren’s recent book, The Great Spiritual Migration, is a summons for the church to move away from a status-quo, dogmatic, rigidly established system of belief, and narrow religion to one that is an open and daring spiritual journey that focuses not so much on one’s own personal religion but one’s neighbor and the world itself.3 McLaren has presented, in my opinion, a summons that beckons to all Christians who take seriously, or should take seriously, the call to be a disciple of Christ. I affirm his challenge.
In most of the chapters in this book, I have been open and upfront in my challenge for the Church to respond to the summons from Christ to discipleship. I reach back to the foundation of the Church Christ established, and seek to guide us forward from our initial commitment to Christ into our present walk with him in service and love. I do not believe that one can be an authentic believer in Christ and not worship, share the Good News with others, support persons in need, and strive to grow in our faith. In several of the chapters, like “Is God Over Thirty?” “An Open Letter to Bill as He Leaves for College,” and “Going Home Again,” I invite the reader to “overhear” the message, to use Fred Craddock’s phrase. Sometimes the indirect approach may be more effective than a direct one. But I have not hesitated to be very direct in my summons for the Church to rise and respond to Christ’s call to a servant and pilgrim discipleship. I have not given up on the Church. I believe Christ is still working in the hearts and minds of persons to follow him into the unknown, challenging future with the message of Christ’s love and redemption. I hope to see the Church enlivened and rekindled to proclaim the Good News and live out the servant ministry Christ has call us to undertake. I commit my life to that end. I extend again my words of appreciation to my fellow minister and friend, Rand Forder, for reading this manuscript in its early stages.
1 “Number of nones equals evangelicals, Catholic,” Christian Century (April 24, 2019), 17.
2 J. Barrie Shepherd, Between Mirage and Miracle (Eugene, Oregon: WIPF & Stock, 2012), 37.
3 Brian D. McLaren, The Great Spiritual Migration (New York: Convergent Books, 2016).
1
Let God Kindle
a Fire Within
One of the haunting memories from my childhood, and one which has been reinforced repeatedly by my parents retelling the episode, was an experience I had as a small child. One day I walked into the woods near where we lived. I had taken a box of matches with me which I had seen lying on the stove. I had decided to build a fire like the ones I had seen other people start. I gathered some sticks and leaves and placed them in a small pile. Then I took a match from the box, struck it, and put its flame against the leaves. Instantly the leaves began to burn, and soon the twigs burst into flames. They began to burn and burn and burn. And soon the whole woods was on fire!
At that point, I did what any small child would do. I ran for home. I could hear the sirens of the fire truck off in the distance. Someone had seen the fire and called the fire department. I ran up the steps of our house and went upstairs into our attic. I sat down in a rocking chair there and began to rock back and forth. My mother did not have to ask me: “Who started that fire?” She knew who had done it. The fact that I went rushing from the fire up to the attic and did not bother to go see the fire engines was very revealing to her. She said that this was one of the few lessons from which I did not have to have some other reinforcements to enable me to remember them. Later as I became older, I learned through Boy Scouts how to build fires properly in the woods.
We have all had some experiences with fire. Some of you may have been the victims of a fire in your home. A hotel near the church I was pastoring in another city, burned to the ground. While I was away at college, I heard that a large part of the downtown section of my hometown burned down. We have seen pictures on T.V. of the walls of flames that have consumed so much of our national forests and a whole town in California. As a congregation, St. Matthews Baptist Church, where I served as pastor, experienced the loss of its church buildings by fire before I began my ministry with them. We all know something about fire. Images and memories of it fill our minds.
Fire as a Powerful Symbol
In the Bible, fire is used as a powerful symbol. In the Old Testament Moses encounters God in the flames of a burning bush which is not consumed. God led the children of Israel at night with a pillar of fire. The children of Israel on Mt. Sinai worshiped God. Some scholars believe that Sinai was a volcano or maybe some thunderstorms were constantly at its top. But the Sinai concept of God as fire had a tremendous impact on the children of Israel and their understanding of God. Elijah departed this life in a chariot of fire. John the Baptist said that “there was one who was coming after him who will baptize with water and with fire.” Jesus said to His disciples, “I have seeded you with fire.” In the Book of Revelation, the writer tells us that the appearance of the Christ will be with “eyes like flames of fire” (Revelation 1:14).
Jesus Christ was himself the torch that ignited the flame that came into the world. In Luke 12: 49, we capture an insight into the very heart of Christ himself. He seems to be saying that he has feelings of reluctance in what he must do, but he also discloses a sense of impatience. He cries: “Oh, I would that the fire had already come, that it was already kindled.” In Christ we recognize that the fire is not truly kindled until his death comes. Jesus knew the baptism that awaited him--the baptism of fire--was suffering, crucifixion, and death. He did not go toward that crisis enthusiastically, but reluctantly and, yet he knew that through that crisis experience would come the refiner’s fire of judgement. Jesus knew the opposition and persecution which his gospel would create.
But how startling the claim seems to sound from Christ. “I, a Galilean peasant, will set a fire on the earth that will burn with a raging fury.” But he did! This same Christ brought the fire of heaven down to earth in the incarnation of his spirit. This very Christ, when his body was broken, set loose a fire that has raged down through the centuries to bring men and women to Christ. He is literally the torch that transforms lives. His death was the baptism which launched his kingdom.
Fire as Metaphor for Judgment
Think with me about some of the metaphors for fire which we find within the Scriptures. Fire is sometimes used as a metaphor for the judgment of God. Fire in the Scriptures is often symbolic of the consuming, terrible wrath, and judgment of God. The Book of Hebrews, the twelfth chapter and the twentieth verse, tells us that God is a consuming fire. In our day and age, we spend a great deal of time, which is very important to do, talking about God as a God of love. But I am convinced that sometimes our understanding of the love of God has made God’s love like mush. There is no depth or substance to it. There is no understanding of the disciplined side of love which is judgment. Any parent who really loves his or her child will give them a sense of disciplined love. They will not offer to them the freedom to be and do anything they might want. We have to understand that there is responsibility which goes with one’s actions. Love from God’s perspective carries judgment with it. Sometimes, as we encounter the power of his holiness, our sinfulness does stand in judgment and needs to be transformed and changed.
Fire as Purifying
Fire