Yep. We’re back. For those of you who have been "out of the loop", my wife & I spent just over a week in Maui. The trip was the gift of a house church friend whose family lives there and does property development on the island. For a week we had a lovely condo in Kihei to ourselves along with a car (a Mustang convertible, if you must know). It took us three days just to "unwind" and realize we were really there and had nothing we "need to do". We found a nice stretch of beach to sit on, attended a luau (I was disappointed that there was no "boar’s tooth ceremony" like in South Pacific, but hey, it was good), ate too much and did nothing for 7 whole days! Yep, its been a while and we were in serious need of this. Mahalo, Doug.

One should always be careful what one takes to read while on vacation. My wife took a copy of "The Heavenly Man," the story of Brother Yun of the Chinese house church movement. I took my copy of "The Shaping of Things To Come" by Frost and Hirsch. It can be a dangerous combination, two convicting books and too much time on your hands to read and think about them. And that’s where I found myself. Somewhere between a Mai Tai and a Piña Colada (O.K., no cheap shot jokes. I’m confessing here, so cut me some slack), I had a realization which cut me to the quick. "The Heavenly Man" is an inside account of the Chinese house church movement as seen through the life experience of one man who was (is) one of its distinctive leaders. From this book I came away with the deep realization that the Chinese house church movement is essentially a missionary movement made up of martyrs who have counted the cost and chosen to pay it. Frost and Hirsch make the point that the western church is an institution that needs to become a missionary movement. And there’s the contrast between west and east. It is the contrast between a missionary movement of martyrs and an institution of consumers in search of a mission. Just to add guilt to our sense of conviction, the Chinese house church movement has made a commitment to take the gospel "Back to Jerusalem". And what lies between China and Jerusalem? Ninety percent (90%) of the Muslim world. That’s right. The Chinese church has chosen the path of missions and martyrdom, and they know it. The western church, on the other hand, has chosen to take the gospel "Back to Starbucks". What lies between us and Starbucks? Every WalMart in town. The "good news" is that if our Starbucks strategy fails, we can always open a Café in the Church lobby and declare "mission accomplished" (O.K., in the interest of honesty and "full disclosure," I am writing this while sitting at a Christian Café sipping my overpriced "caffè e latte").

Brother Yun’s observations regarding the western Church are poignant and heart breaking (he and his family are now German citizens - a long story you’ll read in the book). One of his first experiences in the western church was to be attacked by "bible teachers from California" who attacked him and called him a fraud, a hoax and a stool pigeon for the Chinese government. I suppose that’s what the church of Laodicea does when rudely and unceremoniously aroused from its slumber. We’re a surly bunch when our comfort levels are challenged by authentic believers who have lived lives of little or no comfort.

As you can probably discern, the combination of Brother Yun’s story and Frost & Hirsch’s observations regarding the "post-Christendom" church (read the book) touched me very deeply. They forced me to ask questions about myself and about the House Church movement of which I am a part. Questions like, "What are we doing? Why are we meeting? What’s our mission? Where are we going?" Because you and I are a house church or a simple church doesn’t mean we have avoided the pitfall of being "an institution in search of a mission." The deadly spiritual calcification of institutionalism can occur among 12 people meeting in a living room just as easily as among 1,200 people meeting in an auditorium. Is it occurring among you?

While we were in Maui a couple of other things happened of note. First, one morning the Holy Spirit woke me up at around 4:45 in the morning to pray. As I sat in the early morning quiet of the condo, praying and watching the sunrise, the Lord spoke very clearly: "I am going to give My Church an Isaiah 6 experience of my holiness." The word was as clear as any I have ever received. The reference, of course, is to the prophet Isaiah’s vision of God in the temple found in Isaiah 6:1-6. I’ll have more to say on this passage in an up-coming e-letter, but for now, let me make this observation. Isaiah 6:1-6 tells us four critical things which each of us needs to know: 1) It tells us who God is, 2) it tells us who we are in relation to Him; 3) it tells us what He has done for us; 4) it tells us what we are to do in response. To summarize, it was Isaiah’s dramatic encounter with the holiness/fear of God which led to his obedience.

The other item of note while we were in the islands was a personal visit to the Arizona Memorial on Oahu outside of Pearl Harbor. As an amateur history buff who has read Gordon Prange’s definitive history of the events leading up to Pearl Harbor ("At Dawn We Slept") several times, this was a "personal pilgrimage" for me. It felt like the closure of a chapter. There are actually three memorials there. The first is the Arizona. The second is the battleship Missouri, on whose decks the Instruments of Surrender were signed in Tokyo bay, ending the war in the Pacific. The third is the U.S.S. Bowfin, a submarine which saw action in the Pacific. Walking through the "garden" of memorial markers to submarine crews which were lost in action (often with no trace) with the inscription "Eternally On Patrol" was a thought provoking and somber experience that cannot help but cause one to reflect.

Memorials are markers created by one generation in the hope of reminding future generations of what happened and why. Like stones placed and left in the river Jordan by the Israelites, they are intended to cause future generations to ask: "What mean these stones?" Civilizations and people are known by their "memorial stones." But memorials are just that - memorials. The Arizona was once a battleship. But no longer. The Missouri was once a battleship. But no longer. If war should break out, neither would be of any use.

There is a lesson here that dawned on me as I spent a long morning reflecting on all that I saw. Physical warfare mirrors spiritual warfare in many ways. Physical memorials mirror a spiritual reality in many ways too. The best I can do is to sum it up like this: Our history is our heritage, but it is not our destiny. The warfare of our generation, spiritually speaking, is quite different from the warfare of our fathers and grandfathers. Let me explain what I mean. For a time after I wrote my book on the Welsh revival of 1904, I would receive e-mails periodically from people proclaiming how they were going to return to Evan Roberts’ home church (the Moriah Calvinistic Methodist Church in Loghour) and "re-dig the wells of revival." Simply put, this is spiritual nonsense. In the present day spiritual contest for revival and spiritual awakening, one can no more "re-dig the wells of revival" to achieve spiritual victory than one could raise the Arizona and send it into battle today to win the war against terrorism. The Arizona, along with the Missouri and the Bowfin, represent our history and our heritage, but neither represent nor can make a meaningful contribution to our destiny, except for the lessons which they embody. And that is the purpose of a memorial - to remind and to teach.

O.K., time to wrap this up. Like generals accused of building present plans around the last war, much of the church is looking to past awakenings and past structures for the future, as if history and heritage are our destiny. But just as the era of the battleship is over, Frost and Hirsch argue that the day of institutional Christendom is also over. It represents our history and our heritage, but not our destiny. In the spiritual battle of our age, and the spiritual awakening which is unfolding, the River of God’s Spirit is going to flow, not from old wells which have been re-dug, but through new channels like simple house churches which He is sovereignly raising up. New vessels to reach a new generation. God’s will along with our spiritual destiny is always ahead of us, never behind us. It is time to leave the old wells behind, to move beyond the memorial stones of past battles, and to cross over into the new thing God has for us. The River of God is looking for new vessels to fill. Are you and the simple church in your house a vessel He can use?

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