Fire in our hearts - The Jesus Army

FIRE IN OUR HEARTSCITY ON A HILLBut denominations seemed weighed down with the armourof Saul. Vigour and vision lay with the radical churches, andthey began to get the flak we had experienced. The housechurch movement grew stronger and the Dales Weeks becamea force to be reckoned with. ‘Gird up your armour, yesons of Zion!’ the thousands sang enthusiastically. The Spirithad come to prepare an army for God. The nation was in analarming decline and unless the churches rose up to confrontthe 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 — mendingthe nets for a larger catch. The fruits of past revivals hadoften been lost for lack of radicalism. Thousands were convertedbut little was built.Wesley had made no such mistake. ‘Souls awakened underWesley’s ministry, he joined in class, and thus preserved thefruit of his labours,’ wrote his friend George Whitefield. ‘ThisI neglected to do, and my people are a rope of sand.’ Bothwere great evangelists but Wesley was also a builder.We, too, heard the call of God to build in the eighties, butsuccess would depend on the church being a holy, alternativesociety. We agreed with Ern Baxter, a popular speaker at theDales Weeks: ‘When I see Babylon falling, I am looking forJerusalem to emerge...! expect us to return to the simplicityreferred to in Acts 2. There we find loyalty, integrity, covenantrelationships, community’ 56 .Like the Methodists we imitated the ‘love feasts’ of the earlyChristians (Acts 2:46; 1 Cor 11:20). Once a week we sat aroundour ‘Agape’ meal for a few hours, eating, worshipping, and195