Fire in our hearts - Jesus Army

FIRE IN OUR HEARTS
CITY ON A HILL
But denominations seemed weighed down with the armour
of Saul. Vigour and vision lay with the radical churches, and
they began to get the flak we had experienced. The house
church movement grew stronger and the Dales Weeks became
a force to be reckoned with. ‘Gird up your armour, ye
sons of Zion!’ the thousands sang enthusiastically. The Spirit
had come to prepare an army for God. The nation was in an
alarming decline and unless the churches rose up to confront
the prophets of Baal, Britain was on course for disaster.
Encouraging voices declared that revival was on its way.
Many converts had slipped through the net in the early seventies,
but God had been restoring the churches — mending
the nets for a larger catch. The fruits of past revivals had
often been lost for lack of radicalism. Thousands were converted
but little was built.
Wesley had made no such mistake. ‘Souls awakened under
Wesley’s ministry, he joined in class, and thus preserved the
fruit of his labours,’ wrote his friend George Whitefield. ‘This
I neglected to do, and my people are a rope of sand.’ Both
were great evangelists but Wesley was also a builder.
We, too, heard the call of God to build in the eighties, but
success would depend on the church being a holy, alternative
society. We agreed with Ern Baxter, a popular speaker at the
Dales Weeks: ‘When I see Babylon falling, I am looking for
Jerusalem to emerge...! expect us to return to the simplicity
referred to in Acts 2. There we find loyalty, integrity, covenant
relationships, community’ 56 .
Like the Methodists we imitated the ‘love feasts’ of the early
Christians (Acts 2:46; 1 Cor 11:20). Once a week we sat around
our ‘Agape’ meal for a few hours, eating, worshipping, and
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