An article by Paul Cross, guest speaker at PFG 2010.

If you were to ask me the best Christian book I have ever read I would say “Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire” by Jim Cymbala. In chapter 6 he imagines a basketball game in Madison Square Garden where in a short space of time your team is getting hammered. The coach calls a time out and as you huddle one player says “Isn’t this fun? We get to play in Madison Square Garden” while another admires the gold trim on the uniforms and another waves to his aunt in the stand. Jim challenges us to imagine what the coach would say if his team acted like this? I don’t think it would be very polite! He then likens the match to the state of the church today in its inability to observe the real state of the world rather than the fantasy situation where we can believe we are doing well. He concludes “It is high time to wake up and look at the scoreboard”

What is your church’s true scoreboard showing? How many lives have you seen saved and transformed this year? These are questions we should be asking ourselves rather than hide behind the weak platitudes of “well, we are sowing seeds” or “God is doing a deep work that we cannot see”. We would all be pretty hungry if farmers produced no fruit even after one year of cultivating the land yet we can be content to accept minimal growth and believe it is due to outside circumstances or even, if we are honest, God.

As I consider these questions in our small church plant in St Mary Cray, Orpington I have become convinced that answers do not lie in formulae or church-planting techniques or new strategies although if they are God-given they can be helpful but in something more fundamental. Do we see church as a goal or is Jesus our goal? Many of you attending Passion For God will be second generation christians i.e although you have made responses to God your experience of Him is perhaps not as clear as those of your parents who came out of the world or dead church situations. I believe this presents a real challenge, for to you church can seem like something to attend or do or organise or grow rather than a dynamic expression of your love for Jesus who has revolutionised your whole life.

If PFG means anything it can only radically affect your church when you are radically affected by God’s grace and until that happens church will be “something” rather than a living organism that cannot be developed using the world’s methods. “Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire” is about how God uses simple, heartfelt praying to transform people yet even that can become another method if we are not careful. What I am talking about is when you and I get down before God and say “Here am I. Let me serve you with everything I’ve got” and are prepared to let our love for Him make job, family, church or hobby have a secondary place. The love of the Lord Jesus Christ must inflame our hearts otherwise the church will keep losing and we will deceive ourselves into thinking it is okay as we’re comfortable and going to heaven.

My hope and prayer is that PFG will make a difference – not just at the weekend or in the following month – but perpetually as the need for people on fire for God is desperate. We who have received so much should be in a position to make a real difference to our communities, families, friends and churches for the need is great. Not our need, but the need of those around us who do not know the Lord. Please come with an attitude of humble trust that the Lord in His great mercy will kindle an eternal flame in all our hearts. To quote John Wesley “Give me 30 men who love nothing but God and hate nothing but sin and I will change the world!”