Dear friend,
what I decry in our evangelical culture is the distaste for anything that is old. I have often said that most evangelicals believe church history began when Billy Graham was born. I exaggerate to make the point that we are untrained in the ancient. We don’t read our forefathers. We don’t relish their words. Therefore, we keep innovating worship, adding our human ingenuity to church methodologies, always trying to outdo the next local assembly in gadgets and lights. And the church keeps losing; losing the youth, losing our identity, losing our history, and losing our Gospel.
For this reason, we need All Saints’ Day! We need it to remind us that we come from a long line of faithful travelers “tortured, refusing to be released so that they might gain an even better resurrection.” Our history is not a beginning history, but one that has begun long ago. We follow in their train; a noble army of men and boys, the matron and the maid. We continue their journey to that eternal city.
Happy All Saints’ Day!
