Intro: This presentation was given in early August 2024 at the âOnHoliday 5â Conference held in the Netherlands for Sword of the Sprit communities in Europe and the Middle East. â ed.
It is great to be at the âOnHoliday 5â conference among so many brothers and sisters from our Sword of the Spirit communities in Europe and the Middle East â and itâs almost a miracle for us, given the war situation in Lebanon causing flight delays and cancellations. After hours of delay, we finally made it here â though without our luggage.Â
I was in my early twenties when I first heard about the call to live in a Christian covenant community. Being a fresh convert at that time, the idea was naturally appealing to me. For those of you who do not know the details, let me give you a brief background context about the Loussavorchi Gantegh [Illuminatorâs Lamp] community. Our community is made of diaspora Armenians in Lebanon. Our grandparents were survivors of the Armenian genocide. 100 years ago they were deported from their Anatolian homes and brutally forced towards the Syrian Desert where tragically more than a million perished⊠Some of them miraculously, like our grandparents reached the safe haven of Lebanon, the country of cedars.
My parents were born there, who in turn experienced poverty, famines and world wars. We, along with them, have seen and tasted the bitterness of civil and regional wars, and have prayed for our children that they not see those same things in their day. Yet it happened again and is still happening as we speak. Although not in the same intensity but still devastating.
Regional turmoil, multiple blast-assassinations, financial and governmental collapse and then the strongest blow: The Beirut port explosion in 2020 where experts said it was one of the biggest non-nuclear explosions in history of mankind effecting thousands of people after which the Lebanese people said âOur government killed usâ⊠âWe were killed from the insideâ⊠Most affected areas were mainly Christian and some Armenian neighborhoods. People in panic bought tickets just to get out of the country. Armenians wanted to flee to Armenia. Community members started to lose hope. What could possibly keep us in that land if not for our community covenant?
The Lord reminded us again and again that we are sojourners, pilgrims in this world. As patriotic as Armenians generally are, He kept reminding us that our citizenship is not in Lebanon and not even in Armenia but in the eternal heavenly kingdom.
One of the most encouraging prophetic words to our community during the crisis was that âOur Christian life is a journey, a pilgrimage, much like the 40 years the people of Israel spent in the desertâ. We havenât reached our destination yet. We are still on our way and life is tough. Our calling is costly. âBut the Lord is with us. His cloud is leading usâ and thatâs all that matters.
All this context in order to highlight how comforting the call has been for me and many others to live in a Christian community. The early Sword of the Spirit prophecy of the bulwark made full sense to us. Living in a protected âcityâ so to speak, supporting each other to grow, raising our children and doing mission together. Of course, we understood that this protection was not physical. It was spiritual. We also understood that this bulwark was not without faults. Yet we were called, not only to live in it, but also to build it with others and invite others in.
25th Community Anniversary
This year we celebrated our communityâs 25th anniversary with great joy. As we look back and look to the present, we are grateful to have experienced years of abundance as a community⊠there were also years of âspiritual faminesâ, difficult times of course. Difficult times not only for single communities but also for the entire Sword of the Spirit. Yet the one who calls us is the Sovereign Lord. He is Holy and he is serious about our calling. I honestly believe that difficult times are a call for reflection, repentance and growth if we humble ourselves before the Lord.
A Call to be a Bulwark
I want to speak today about living out our prophetic call especially through the image of the bulwark, which I believe is crucial for us to remember in these times. Let us have a look at the initial bulwark prophecy given by Bruce Yocum in 1975 (by now many of us have memorized it).
âI will make you a bulwark to defend against the onslaught of the enemy those who are not prepared, those who are not ready⊠I will protect them behind the bulwark that I form out of you⊠âI want you to be ready to join yourselves with others and to stand together with them in battle against the onslaught that is coming ⊠In the unity you have with one another there is a foreshadowing and a prefigurement.â
â Bruce Yocum, 1975
What is a bulwark?
A bulwark is a fortified city, a monastic village that mainly provides two things: Protection for a way of life and a base of operations for work and mission. An example Steve Clark used is Fort Detroit which was built by the French in the 18th century in North America. This French colony built and lived in a bulwark to preserve its culture, way of life, faith, language, trade and carried out mission at the same time, and they were very successful at it. There are other Christian examples as well. Like the fortified Christian monasteries throughout Europe in the 7th to 11th centuries they were considered as little centers of Christian civilization in various locations. There were Protestant missionary groups as well who built communities â like the Moravians who settled in the US in the mid-1700âs.
All these had one thing in common. They built and lived in a fortified bulwark of some sort. They were a distinct people with a way of life and mission. Much like our covenant communities.
Bulwarks in Scripture
There are some vivid Bulwark images in the Scriptures: A bulwark could refer to a fortress (see 2 Samuel 22:2; Psalm 91:2; 94:22), to a strong tower (Jeremiah 16:19), a refuge (Psalm 91:2, 9; 142:5), and a shelter in times of distress (Psalm 64:10; 118:8). There are also instructions to build bulwarks: âYou shall build bulwarks against the city that makes war with youâ (Deuteronomy 20:20).
The interesting thing is that we are called both To Be & To Do a Bulwark.
To be a bulwark
It is a fact that one cannot do without being. During the International Coordinators Meeting this past May 2024, a brother shared a prophetic word that was very striking to many of us. It said: âWe need to âgo inâ before going out.â Going in deeper with the Lord means going deeper to his altar âto his holiness to build a spiritual house. In the Orthodox church tradition to which I belong, âgoing inâ is a big thing. Like Lazarusâ sister Mary, we are called to go in with repentance, humility, and sit at Jesusâs feet in order to contemplate his beauty. In a slightly different context in Luke 5, Jesus exhorted Peter the fisherman to go deep. Going into the deep with the Lord and only then throwing out the nets for mission.
Building our life is the key part of our mission. Godâs strategy involves us building âfortified cities,â places of refuge, provision, and influence.
1) We need to keep fortifying them otherwise, they will not survive. If there is unrepented sin, we will not survive. If we donât go âdeeper inâ, we will not survive. 2) We need to keep strengthening our way of life, culture and values, otherwise we will not be centers of influence. 3) We also need to be linked together in unity.
Historically whenever a bulwark was under attack or in short supply of some sort, they sent word to nearby bulwarks asking for help. They supported each other. They stood in unity. I cannot stress enough the importance of being networked with other communities in the Sword of the Spirit was for us in Loussavorchi Gantegh.
Our community is a very small bulwark. God was gracious to us by planting us next to this much larger bulwark which is the People of God. The People of God wasnât only instrumental during our formative years but even now after 25 years, it is a source of strength and encouragement.
This was especially true for our children. Most of the kids of our communityâs first generation did not respond to the call as we hoped they would. I believe part of the problem was because they were isolated. When the next generation of kids were born into the community, from an early age we connected them to the People of God youth programs, scouts, and University Christian Outreach. Once they got over the language barrier (which by-the-way is a âthingâ for us Armenians. If one does not learn Arabic from childhood, it will be difficult to figure out all the feminine and masculine verbs and adjectives as you speakâŠ), they started to gain a wider vision, and experienced renewal, encouragement and support. My children now both serve in People of God Scouts program and University Christian Outreach and at the beginning of the past community year, they along with other Loussavorchi Gantegh community kids, started an Armenian Youth Outreach abbreviated AYO (AYO also happens to mean YES in Armenian) to invite and evangelize their friends.
I remember calling Nabil Barbara (Senior Coordinator of People of God) and asking him for a fixed meeting venue at the People of God Kobeizi community center, knowing well the center was already fully booked on Friday evenings. I hesitantly said âNabil, what about using the chapel?â I knew the chapel wasnât usually used for scheduled meetings but our council thought its coziness and âOrthodox likeâ paintings were perfect for Armenian youth. Nabil said, âKoko, your mission is our mission, go ahead and use the chapel. We are with you.â
As a senior coordinator I can also attest to the importance of the support I got from the outside coordinators of our community. Bernhard Stock from Brot Des Lebens and currently John Keating. When they serve us, they are not serving alone. They do not represent themselves only. They have a community a brotherhood serving with them and it has been a tremendous help. It is a treasure we have.
Brothers and sisters, we all have this treasure, and we want to live, work, and strive so that others might have it too.
âTo doâ a Bulwark
This expression does not sound right in English. I heard Msgr. Bob Oliver, while giving a presentation on this topic, propose that we use the expression âTo Do Bulwarkingâ.
Our Mission as a corporate body and as individual members of a community is:
1) First of all: To proclaim the Gospel, who the Lord is, what he has done, and what he is doing among his people (Ephesians. 6:17).
2) Second: To gather (Luke 5:1-11).
Going into the deep, Peter gathered a lot of fish. For some of our communities this is done literally in large numbers, for others in small numbers. The important thing here is our faithfulness to go deep and to throw the nets wherever Jesus leads. Throughout the years we learned it the hard way not to focus on numbers. There might be one person to reach there and it may make the whole difference for His kingdom.
Third: To leaven (Matthew 13:33; Matthew 5:13) Our discipleship and way of life should inspire people. This is an area I believe we have been tested and we need to grow in it.
Finally: To defend (Ephesians 6:10-20) The world we live in is a much more dangerous place than it was back in 1975.
So, on one hand we have the chaos of gender ideology, persecution and âcold persecutionâ of Christians and mockery of Christian values. On the other hand, unfortunately, the Christian churchâs response to these things has often been âneutral at best.â In the midst of all this, God is alive and he calls us to BE a Bulwark. How do we do this? By building our way of life with all weâve got. If we are broken, he calls us to repent, to humble ourselves and then once again to rise and keep building again. He also calls us to DO bulwarking. To go into the deep and Proclaim, Gather, Leaven and Defend.
This is our calling. To God be the Glory!
This article is excerpted from a presentation given by Krikor Elmayan at the âOnHoliday 5â conference held in the Netherlands in early August 2024 for Sword of the Spirit communities in Europe and the Middle East region, © The Sword of the Spirit.
Top image credit: Ancient Tatev Monastery in Armenia, from Bigstock.com, © by goinyk, stock photo ID: 124861403. Used with permission.Photo of 25th Community Anniversary © courtesy of Loussavorchi Gantegh.
Krikor Elmayan is the senior coordinator of the Loussavorchi Gantegh [Illuminatorâs Lamp] community in Lebanon.