My grandfather’s workshop held an item that was of special interest to me when I was a boy. Sitting off to the side of his cluttered workbench was a wonderful object – a model railroad locomotive. It was black with silver markings painted on it, dusty and dull by now, but obviously once shiny and clean. It was too heavy to move – we are not talking about some little HO gauge thing, but an engine about three feet long. It just sat there, week after week, this locomotive, but it fascinated me. I kept on asking about it. Every time we went to my grandparents’ house I wanted to see it. But it sat, gathering dust, week after endless week. I knew in my eight-year-old soul that there was more to it than a filthy heap over in the basement corner.
One day my grandmother showed me something that made my hunger even greater. She pulled out a yellowed photograph. There in that picture was that very locomotive, with its tender, placed on a circular track, and with a number of quaintly dressed gentlemen standing around. She asked me if I knew who the young fellow right behind the train was. I was quite surprised when she told me that this callow youth was my grandfather, and even more surprised when she said that he and his brother had crafted this machine themselves, all by hand. The photograph had been taken at some fair, where the Harpole brothers had exhibited their handiwork. The train in the basement had once been the object of excitement and wonder for crowds of people.
Well, it was the object of excitement and wonder for just one eight-year-old boy, and I really took notice when my grandmother said that it was a working steam engine, and that it ran just like real trains do – with coal burning in the firebox and steam in the boiler. Now I just had to see it work. I went back downstairs and pushed and pulled on the little levers, but of course nothing happened. I opened the tiny firebox door, but there was nothing in there but a spider. The wheels and the drivers would move only if somebody stronger than I picked up the machine and let me turn the wheels by hand. But this was not enough. I wanted to see it work as it was designed to work.
Grandpa said he couldn’t do that. First of all, he didn’t have the track anymore, and trains cannot just be put out on the floor. They need tracks. And second, he didn’t really have any way to fire the firebox. He had no coal, and stoking a tiny firebox with miniature pieces of coal would be dirty and dangerous. Couldn’t I just be satisfied with looking at the engine? Wasn’t it fun enough just as a museum piece?
I have to tell you, that whetted my appetite all the more. I’ve always been the kind of person who, when told something couldn’t be done, wanted all the more to do it. I didn’t like “just look but don’t touch” when I was eight years old, and I don’t like it now, a mere, oh, thirty-one years later! So I kept on whining and pushing to see that locomotive actually run.
So one day my grandfather said, “Come downstairs. I have something to show you.” When we arrived, I saw something wonderful. I saw a clean and shiny locomotive, not a dusty, dull one. I saw it not tucked away under the workbench, but propped up on wooden blocks, so that its wheels turned freely. And I saw a gas tube, with blue flame shooting from its mouth, aimed right into the firebox. Puffs of steam poured from vents in the boiler. Grandpa said, “Pull this lever”. I pulled and with a whoosh the steam took hold, the drivers began to work, and the wheels turned. Faster and faster, with tiny puffs and a noisy clatter, I had a steam engine. A working steam engine.
Now it still couldn’t go anywhere, because there was no track and because the source of heat couldn’t move with it. But it was a lovely sight when for so long it had been only a cold, lifeless, hunk of iron. With a fire in its belly, the craftsmanship that two teenage boys had put into it was working again. The power of the fire.
I
That, to me, is a parable of the church. The church of the Lord Jesus Christ was designed by the master workman to be the engine of His purposes. The church was called and designed to be a redemptive power in the world, and, though it began as a small and seemingly insignificant band of disappointed and disoriented men, once the fire came, it found power and energy and it began to move.
After Jesus was raised from the dead, He instructed His disciples to wait. He told them that they would receive power after the Holy Spirit would come on them, and that, once they received that power, they were to be His witnesses, beginning in Jerusalem, then moving to Judea and Samaria and the farthest reaches of the earth. But they were to wait for the power.
And when that power came, it was in the form of fire. Tongues, as of fire, on the heads of the believers. Fire that empowered them to speak to one another across barriers of language and race and culture. Fire that filled them with energy and drove them to carry the word about a crucified carpenter to Europe and Africa and Asia. Fire on the earth!
II
But throughout its long history, the church has too many times become like my grandfather’s model steam engine. Still well crafted, organized to the hilt, but covered over with dirt, immobilized by changing circumstances, set aside by people with other things on their mind, allowed to grow cold and lifeless. If you know your church history, you know that there have been many such periods in the life of the Christian movement.
But you will also know that our God always raises up new leaders, new insights, new opportunities. You will know that He blows fresh breezes through His church. You will know that God fans the flames, so that His church may once again come alive. Name them if you like … Francis of Assisi, Martin Luther, Billy Graham, Martin Luther King, Henry Blackaby and his Experiencing God materials … and many others who keep bringing new energy to God’s church. There is new fire and new empowerment.
III
Still, with all this fire, there is a problem. And the problem is that too often the church is all fired up with no place to go. We get excited, we get motivated, we get in touch with Christ, we’re all dressed up. We even dress in red clothes! But then what? Are we going anywhere? Are we on the way? Or are we like my grandfather, who did the best he could for a curious little boy, and it made for quite a sight and sounded impressive – but even when fired up, it still didn’t go anywhere.
Two years ago, we began to experience the empowering fire of God’s Holy Spirit here in our church. In June of 1999, led by the Spirit, we began to speak of four important thrusts. Four things in which we felt the empowering fire and the presence of the Holy Spirit. We began to speak about deepened discipleship, multiplied ministries, winsome worship, and systematic stewardship. Do you remember? We ought to lift these up more often and more clearly – deepened discipleship, by which we meant that we were going to offer many ways of learning to practice the Christian faith, on a careful, disciplined basis. Multiplied ministries, which has meant that we have cut the red tape down to nothing, and we simply invite you to tell us what you believe the Spirit is burning into your heart, and then stand up and say so, and see if others will go with you. Multiplied ministries.
We went on to talk of winsome worship and of systematic stewardship. We were aware that we had been spinning our wheels. We had been crafting a wonderful organization, we had been writing procedures for everything under the sun, we had been talking about what needed to be done and how somebody ought to do it. And the Spirit, at Pentecost 1999, called us to trust Him, to trust ourselves, and just to step out and let the fire burn. We felt His power!
The results have been wonderful. In short order, the Spirit led some to create ministries for substance abusers, for tending these grounds, for visitation, for health education, for debt retirement, for a Saturday Club for children. Scores of us have been through discipleship classes. Two new Adult Sunday School classes have been formed. In twenty-four short months we have seen the Spirit of the living God empowering us, firing us up, driving us forward, energizing us, getting us moving. I thank God for all that He has done!
IV
And yet -- fires have a way of going out. Energies wane. Interests flag. People get distracted. Lives get complicated. Crises intervene. Fires have a way of falling back into little more than glowing embers. And we at Takoma Park Baptist Church, we who are really such a quiet and modest people, we are always in danger of letting the fire of the Spirit die down. Just as my grandfather eventually turned off the gas jet and let the boiler’s energy play out, so also we find ourselves, from time to time, growing cold and listless, lethargic and slow, running out of steam.
I have a word, then, for us today. And that is: feel the fresh winds of the Spirit. Feel the fresh wind-driven, free-blowing fire of the Spirit. Even when we are quiet, do not assume that your church is dying. The very gates of hell will not prevail against us. For if you touch your church at just the right places, you will feel the empowering warmth of the Spirit.
If you listen for the laughter of children, and discover that our involvement with children has expanded remarkably, you’ll feel that warmth. It’s the power of a wind-driven fire.
If you watch for the kind of commitment that gets hold of a person’s life, and claims it, so that they know that the Lord has called them for professional Christian service, you’ll feel that warmth. Minister Yolanda Sampson is part of the evidence, but she is not alone. There are others. It’s the power of a wind-driven fire.
If you care about what is happening to people’s lives, and you know that we can do more by gathering the resources that God has created for ministry, you’ll feel the warmth of the Spirit-driven fire as I am able to announce this very day that as of this week the articles of incorporation for our non-profit subsidiary, Basin, Incorporated, have been accepted. We are in business, expanding Kingdom work.
If you are aware of the resources God has put into our hands, then surely you have felt the power of the Spirit as we have reduced our church’s debt from a whopping $200,000 eighteen months ago to somewhere around $35,000 today; surely you have felt the power of the Spirit as we in only a few short weeks have raised some $10,000 more to create a computer lab and prepare to train children and youth and seniors through that facility. Surely, you have felt the power of the Spirit’s energizing fire in these things!
If you have known anything about the anguish families feel in our community, with deteriorating marriages and painful decisions about relationships, then as you have watched us work toward a family life ministry that would offer hope and healing to an entire community, then surely, without question, you have also been in touch with the power of the wind-driven, Spirit-driven fire that is in our hearts and on our heads and will not go out!
And when men and women, boys and girls, walk this aisle and give themselves to Christ and to His church, do you not see that the wind-driven fire is powerful? One or two at a time, not a rush of people, but a steady stream. When a new member tells me that she feels love poured out toward her in just a few short weeks, do you not feel the power of the wind-driven, Spirit-driven fire?
We are being empowered by the Holy Spirit. I am absolutely persuaded of that. We, like Moses, are called by the one who burns and burns, with boundless energy, but does not consume. We, like the first apostles, are touched by the one who comes like a tongue of fire, empowering us to love one another. The fire is in the belly; the steam is in the heart; the machinery is in motion; all we need to do is to follow the tracks. The one thing my grandfather never solved. Find and follow the tracks. Our tracks were laid down by the one who said, “If anyone will come after me, let Him lay down His life, and follow me”. Even when life ebbs out, when energies grow short, when the light seems dim, trust Him. Trust His Spirit. Follow Him. Follow Him to the place of sacrifice. Life always follows death. Follow Him to the waiting place. The Spirit will come. Follow Him to the gathering place. Here, today, feel the power of the wind-driven fire.
