By Gary Nicolosi

ONE of the things I have noticed about churches built before World War II is that almost every one of them is made of stone. These churches were built to last. They were built bigger and heavier than they needed to be; they are permanent, fixed, solid structures. Go inside these churches, and the pews are bolted to the floor.

One of the first things people told me when I got to one parish was: “Don’t change the furniture! Keep things as they are. We want things to remain the same.”

For many of us, this is church – the place where we tie things down, slow down, quiet down and settle down – permanent, rock solid and changeless.

And then there’s Jesus. His words in the gospel take us by storm. “I have come to send fire on the earth! Do you think I have come to bring peace? No! I’ve come to split up families, divide homes, turn father against son, mother against daughter.” (Luke 12:49-53)

No God of safety

We want a God who is settled, orderly, established and staid – a God who will keep things as they are, and not rock the boat. Instead, we get a God who threatens to devour everything we hold dear. This God moves us beyond the safe and secure, prods us to leave our comfort zone – and beckons us to stretch the boundaries of what we think possible.

Moses had killed a man back in Egypt, and now he was on the run. He was frightened. So he hid out as a shepherd, settled down in the wilderness, got married, had a family and tried to live an ordinary life. But then a bush burst into flame, and a voice said: “I’m sending you to stand up to Pharaoh and the empire. I’m sending you to speak for me. Go! Speak! Don’t be afraid. I’m with you all the way.”

The disciples were gathered together behind locked doors after the death and resurrection of Jesus. Just following the order of worship, going through the motions, pews bolted down, doors locked, preacher droning on, ushers helping people to get comfortable. Then, sometime between the prelude and the offering, the building began to rumble, the door swung open and somebody shouted: “Fire!” On Pentecost, the church was born in the furnace of God’s fire.

A consuming fire

Fifteen hundred years after that first Pentecost, the church had become wealthy, complacent and lethargic. There was widespread corruption, abuse of power and flagrant superstition.

Then an Augustinian monk in Germany, Martin Luther, challenged the status quo ­– and called the church back to its biblical roots. As Hebrews puts it, “Our God is a consuming fire!”

Eighteenth-century England was going through the trauma of urbanization and the first industrial revolution. Alcoholism was a plague upon the land. Poverty forced millions to live in squalor. The church seemed far removed from these travesties – remote, privileged, cold.

Things got so bad that in 1736, when Bishop Joseph Butler wrote his Analogy of Religion, he doubted whether anyone would succeed him as Bishop of Durham – because it seemed improbable to him that Christianity would survive his own lifetime.

It was an age of utter unbelief, irreligion and irreverence, not unlike our own. But by the end of Butler’s life, so far from being swept aside, the good news of Jesus Christ – as preached by John Wesley and George Whitefield – had transformed the face of England.

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“I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!” says Jesus. In the church, time and time again, when we have been cold of heart, slow to move, timid and cowering, fearful of change, Jesus through the Holy Spirit has set us on fire, breathing new life into dead institutions, and igniting in us the passion to share the good news of God’s love with a world so desperately in need of that love.

As the congregational development officer in the Anglican Diocese of British Columbia, one of my jobs is to help churches grow in members. Church growth, I confess, has been one of my passions for almost 20 years.

Often I am asked, “What does it take for my church to grow?” My answer surprises people. I tell them that church growth is not going to be built by super programs, by slick advertising or even by new liturgies.

It isn’t going to be built by oratory in the pulpit or by excellence in the choir. It isn’t going to be built by high-pressure evangelism, by vast sums of money, by well-organized missions or sophisticated demographic studies.

Fired up for Jesus

Church growth happens when people begin to get excited about Jesus, when Jesus begins to live in and through them, when there’s this insatiable desire to set the world on fire the way Jesus did.

Successful entrepreneurs get all fired up for the product they believe in. Do we in the church get all fired up about Jesus? Do we have that same passion to share the good news about Jesus? Can Christians get just as enthused about growing the church as business people get about growing their companies?

One evening, a priest was introduced to someone at a social gathering. The priest shook hands with the man and said, “Your name sounds familiar. Don’t I know you from somewhere?” The man replied, “I’m a member of your church.”

The priest said, “That’s strange. I’ve been a priest here for two years, and I’ve never seen you in church.” The man replied: “I said I was a member of your church. I didn’t say I was a religious fanatic!”

Jesus is looking for a few religious fanatics. He said: “I came to cast fire.” What moves an organization forward is passion for its mission. What moves a church forward is not members on the church rolls, but people who are all fired up for Jesus.

The church needs people who are almost fanatical about loving God and loving people, as fully and as faithfully as possible. When Christians become ignited, fired up, flaming brightly, they begin to do things they never thought possible.

Francis and Edith Schaeffer dedicated their lives to ministry. Their greatest work was their L’Abri Fellowship in Switzerland which attracted thousands of young adults from around the world. Early in their ministry, they got the news that they were being asked to leave their village. For five years, they had been residents of Champery, but now they had to leave.

Their offence? According to the eviction notice: “You have had a religious influence in the village of Champery.”

I wonder: how many Canadian churches would be convicted of that same offense – having too much of a religious influence? I don’t know the answer, but I do know this: there is a fire in the church that refuses to be extinguished.

That fire can give strength to the weak, hope to the hopeless, power to the powerless, and love to those who have no love. We have a fire that can change the world.

Adapted from a sermon preached August 19, 2007

March 2010