Obviously a firefighter is someone who fights fires.  When we started in this ministry our vision was (and still is) to help small and struggling churches overcome their problems and obstacles and grow.  What I didn’t know was often times there are some pretty serious reasons why churches are having the problems that they are having.  Another thing that I still find odd is that sometimes when God reveals the problem, the people are not willing to deal with it.  That is not unlike a man who goes to the doctor, finds he has cancer and because Chemotherapy and Radiation treatments are expensive, exhausting and painful decides to just live with his cancer.  Often when folks count the cost they decide it is simply not worth it.

 

But anyway we get these calls…our church is having problems, can you come?  The answer is usually yes, (unless we are already fighting a fire in another church.)  I have on more than one occasion driven half a day to spend a couple of hours with a pastor, discussing his situation and offering advice when there was no way for us to do anything else.  Our pastor continually tells the fine folks at Lincoln Avenue Baptist that we go to places they can’t and places that they don’t want to.  Others have said, you have to be crazy to do what you do.  I guess that is the great thing about a calling, once you surrender to a call then the choice is gone and it is out of our hands.

 

So I see our task as the Spiritual equivalent of a firefighter.  Firefighters as I see it are far crazier than we are.  They knowingly and willingly walk into burring buildings-places that people are running and jumping to get away from.  As folks are fleeing, there they go, into the blaze, looking for the source and then extinguishing the fire.  When the fire is out they go home, clean up and wait for the call to the next fire.  Not that different from our life, except that we hook our house to a truck and head straight to the next fire.