Fire in our hearts - The Jesus Army

FIRE IN OUR HEARTSAWAKE O ZION!togetherness and opened our lives to input from others. Paddyand Rufus were exercising leadership within the Jesus housesand a male ruling authority was taking shape. That in itselfwas a cross for some.Worldliness, too, was a headache. Here we were also fightingthe contemporary Christian emphasis on liberty and anyonewho found our commitment too taxing could always cry,‘Legalism!’ Many who didn’t hold our vision were keen to putus right. But we pressed on and ploughed our own furrow.Prophetic voices and prophetic churches were scarce enough.As Tozer once wrote: ‘We desperately need seers who cansee through the mist — Christian leaders with prophetic vision...And if they come, we will no doubt crucify a few ofthem in the name of worldly orthodoxy.’ 28Separation from the world and brotherly sharing were becomingour hallmarks. It was time for the Jesus Fellowship,as the chapel congregation was now called, to move deeperinto community.Bugbrooke Hall, just up the road from Verna’s cottage, hadbeen empty for two years. Now very run down, it was due tobe auctioned in June. Built by a rich squire in the early nineteenthcentury, this old rectory lay on the southern edge ofBugbrooke in thirteen acres of parkland — an imposing Georgianhouse of pale yellow brick, standing with its long annexelike a stately liner in a sea of grass. To the back was acourtyard complete with stable block and grassy cobbles. Allaround stood great trees of copper beech and oak, whilst astrip of woodland flanked the stone wall down to the pond.107