Firemen

OK, time to be a dork. In 1951 Ray Bradbury wrote "Farenheit 451." It is a science fiction book about the future that focuses primarily on firemen. However, the firement it portrays are very different from the firemen that we have grown to respect an appreciate. In his novel, the firemen do not put out fire, they spew fuel onto fires to burn houses that contain books.

I'm not going to outline or critique the book. You can go read it if you'd like, its a quick read. What I do want to do here today is to talk about the church. Unfortunately, in most churches, we have plenty of firemen who work to stoke the flame rather than put it out. You know how it goes, we do it under the guise of "informing" or requesting that an issue be put on the prayer list. For the record, "Johnny and Susie need prayer b/c they couldn't pay their bills and had their cable cut off yesterday," is usually gossip and not a prayer request.

Don't indulge in the fires in your church, work to be an extinguisher. The Spirit of Christ is the spirit of unity, so rest assured, as you work to quelch gossip and extinguish harmful fires in your church, God will be pleased.