And the fire of the Lord fell

Saturday, August 25. The day we had awaited since, well, probably Saturday, August 26 of last year. Fan the Flame 2007 had finally arrived.

The morning was a crazy bustle of furious activity as we tried to finish up what absolutely had to be done. I was up at the church at nine. I always like to be really early for stuff like FtF and the Easter program, but in this case it was more a necessity than a convenience.

12:45 pm. Fifteen minutes to showtime. Apart from our youth, only about twenty people had showed up. Yikes. Where IS everybody? Did they not hear about 12:30 registration? (One youth leader had called the church earlier and announced that her group was ready to be there at 2; I made her aware of the fact that we started at 1 and needed them to be there at 12:30).

And then people started showing up. Our registration line stretched out in the overhang. And it stayed out there for the next thirty minutes as we continued to have more trickle in.

Needless to say, we did not start at 1:00 as planned. It seemed counterproductive to begin the event knowing that a bunch of people were still waiting to get in the church. It was about 1:25 before we finally kicked off.

After a "trailer"-like video intro, emcees Daniel and Trevor jumped up on stage to welcome everyone to the event. After some door prizes, a skit, and a two-minute warning with Caleb Melton, it was time for worship, led by Singled Out.

It had been a stressful morning, or at least potentially so. But I was pumped about leading some worship. We started out with the brand-new "Let God Arise", followed by "Praise Your Name" and "Not to Us" with no pauses in between. The crowd was the best that I've ever led worship with, I believe; they stood and started clapping in rhythm without us telling them to, and sang along loudly when they knew the words.

We toned everything down quickly with the new "Awesome is the Lord Most High" (with my brother Daniel making his debut singing harmony), then went worshipfully soft with the classics "How Great Is Our God" and "Heart of Worship". The Spirit was moving, and it thrilled me to hear the voices in the crowd and see upraised hands. Done for now, and it was time to hand off to Christopher Russell, our first speaker.

Chris immediately started in with a hard-hitting, in-your-face Gospel message centered around the Cross. He preached from Isaiah 52-53 and other passages, and actually hammered together a cross on stage and adorned it with nails and paint to represent blood. He talked about Christ's sacrifice for us on the cross, and about sin, and hell, and salvation.

In Chris' invitation, ten young people came forward to make decisions, and five of them prayed to receive Christ. Praise God!

After the invitation, we did a couple more songs: "Rescue" and "The Wonderful Cross." Then, after our second skit -- starring Daniel and Trevor as a couple of wacked-out military dudes -- it was time to dismiss everyone to the afternoon sessions.

In the first afternoon session, half the youth went to classes while the other half got free time. After an hour, they would switch places. I was taking a break and drink in the hallways, watching the first group shuttle around to their classes, when this girl stopped and talked to me. She then proceeded to follow me around all afternoon. It was wonderful.

I absolutely loved getting to be together with Lana as a couple in public for the first time. A totally new experience, to actually be expected to go everywhere and do everything with this one person, but totally awesome. We hung out, talked to some of our friends, searched for missing teenage girls (uh yeah, seriously), and ate supper together (well, she ate supper; I was way too keyed up to eat and just had a piece of bread). We both immensely enjoyed ourselves.

But alas, at some point I had to abandon my fair maiden for the time being and get stuff ready for the second service. It opened with a couple of songs from Deadlife, which is basically Billy, Daniel, and Trevor doing some songs that Billy has written. They were good. Then, after a last skit and a two-minute warning with Aaron Lovelace, the band was back up to lead worship.

We started with "Salvation Is Here", a classic church camp anthem that we've wanted to do for a long time and finally did this year. Then I let everyone take some meet-and-greet fellowship time while Daniel and Billy worked frantically on the electric guitar, which had gone woefully out of tune.

By the time we got everyone back together to continue the worship, I was a bit worried because there seemed to be some raucousness in the crowd, a lack of focus among some in the audience. Thanks be to God, it didn't last long; by the time we were well into our next song, "Enough", the focus was there and I was feeling the Lord's presence. We finished with two of my favorites, "Give Us Clean Hands" and "D Medley", both powerful songs of prayer. The Spirit was incredibly strong, and everyone was singing so loudly. I thanked God for honoring us with His presence and indwelling our praises.

Enter Rickey Dustin Wright. Dusty's message was just as strong as Chris', though in a different direction: he focused on the biblical image of cleansing the temple. He brought out some great insights from the Word. One was that cleansing the temple was the first thing and the last thing Jesus did in His earthly ministry. Another was that while Jesus never used force to drive people into the temple, He did use force to drive them out of it. Great stuff.

Dusty's big illustration came in the form of a large concrete heart, which he had hanging in a special platformed box. At the end of his message, he demonstrated what our own efforts to change our hearts are like by tossing little paper wads at this "hard heart". Then, to show the power the Word of God has to change hearts, he demolished the thing with a couple of blows from a sledgehammer. It was powerful imagery.

Early in Dusty's message, he felt led to go ahead and give an invitation for those who needed to be saved. There was no response, and Dusty turned around to get his Bible and begin preaching. But just as he did so, one young man got up from his seat and came down to the front. About seven or eight more young people followed; praise God, praise God! We don't know how many decisions were made during that time, but at least a couple prayed to receive Christ. One was Lana's friend whom she had introduced to me that afternoon, Hope. It was a blessing to see the joy on her face afterwards at her new salvation.

Dusty's message-ending invitation did not see any decisions for Christ, but the altar area was filled with young people in prayer. I played and sang the chorus to "Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus" on the keyboard. After everyone was finished praying, we played "Agnus Dei", accompanied for the first ever by my sister Hannah on violin; it's an amazing worship song with words all taken from the book of Revelation, and was a terrific capstone to the day. But the day was not quite over. It was time to head outside for the bonfire service.

That's right, the bonfire service. Not only had we not been sure whether we would have it, but I had been completely sure even that morning that we would not. Our county, Franklin, has had a burn ban for some time now; we had been told that a big rain would have to come on Thursday in order to lift the ban in time for FtF on Saturday. No rain on Thursday, no rain on Friday, and I was sure that meant no bonfire on Saturday.

Oh me of little faith! It rained for most of the morning on Saturday, and then Mrs. Georgia, a faithful member of the church and Branch city councilperson, decided to take matters into her own hands. She called the county judge and the county sheriff; both told her that even though the burn ban was still on, we could go ahead and have our fire since Branch had received a lot of rain. Why did I doubt?

Everyone silently walked outside for the bonfire. Only there was no bonfire -- to start with. Dusty waited until all were present, then told the story of Elijah on Mount Carmel, gesturing to an altar in the middle that we had built. Finally he recited Elijah's fervent prayer that God send fire to show Himself to the Israelites.

To the shock and awe of most of those in the crowd, a real, genuine fire fell on the altar and consumed the burnt offering and the sacrifice -- or at least the wood we had piled on it. What a cool visualization of a true story from the Bible! (For those of you wanting to know how we did it, you ought to be able to guess.)

It was a perfect ending to a great day. FtF '07 is now in the past, but I think the impact of the day will continue to last far into the future. We at FBC Branch can't wait to see what God does in our group through this event, and we are also praying for all the groups that came and for those who made decisions for Christ. It has always been our goal that Fan the Flame not be a one-day monument to a "rally"-type gathering, but an ongoing movement where a passion for God continues to burn in our hearts.

The fire fell.