A Church on Fire

At Sunday’s Pentecost Service, Jan preached of a church on fire. And she did not mean any of the church buildings that had burned down that you can find on Google.

She meant a church that at its core is burning with a passion for ministry and that shows the light of Christ.

I simply cannot get that metaphor out of my head. Fire is an amazing part of our world. From a physical object come light and heat and energy. It almost seems to come out of thin air. It keeps burning, uncontrollably and chaotically at times, unless someone puts it out. And at the end, it has changed everything. What was there before is no more. It has been transformed into something else.

We are a church that has claimed as its mission to be a “transforming force for good in the world in the name of Jesus Christ.” But I’ve always had trouble picturing what that meant. Transforming? Who? What? When? It’s so distant. Not real. Not possible here and now.

But a fire? I see that every day. I know how it can change and transform things. I know how fire has given us improved lives, warmth, civilization, and the ability to control the world around us. I also know that fire has the ability to destroy things and make things into ash or dust. There is a reason that our parents admonished us to be careful with fire and not to play with it. It has the potential to control us.

A church on fire would be chaotic and likely uncontrollable. It would change things – not always in ways that we would see as better. Yet, if we desire to live out our calling and mission in life, we need to embrace it. We should desire to be a church that is neither too cold and impersonal nor lukewarm and only going about its normal business. We should be thinking about how that church giving off the light of Christ and the warmth of all of our being could transform and change our corner of the world. In short – we should be the church on fire!

I wasn’t expecting it, but something changed. After Sunday, I no longer want to be just lukewarm and go about my normal church business; I want to be on fire. And my guess is that I am not alone – you do too. So this summer, as we journey through this time of sabbatical, I hope that we can collaborate on what should be our summer calling – discovering what a church on fire might look like  and how we get there.