April/May
2019
- Vol. 103
On
Mission: Part 1
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Being a
Bulwark
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by Steve Clark
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Many communities and individual members in the
Sword of the Spirit have been hearing the Lord say
recently that this is a time of grace for us. And
many of us have also been able to point to various
events that indicate the truth of that word.
As the Lord first began speaking this way to us a
few years ago, I remember hearing a brother give a
prophecy along these lines and then get up and
share a scripture passage that seemed quite apt to
our situation. It came from the first chapter of
the prophet Joel, which begins with a description
of a plague of locusts: “What the cutting locust
left, the swarming locust has eaten. What the
swarming locust left, the hopping locust has
eaten, and what the hopping locust left, the
destroying locust has eaten.” Joel was
describing a time of great devastation. It must
have seemed as if everything had been destroyed
and the people would not be able to survive.
by the end of the first chapter, little hope is
left.
Then, in chapter 2, we read a description of
God’s people turning to the Lord, resulting in a
time of grace: “The threshing floors shall be full
of grain, the vats shall overflow with wine and
oil. I will restore to you the years which the
swarming locust has eaten, the hopper, the
destroyer and the cutter, my great army, which I
sent among you.” There are several
noteworthy things about this prophecy. First, the
Lord said that he himself sent the plague of
locusts. Then he says that he has decided to
restore what was taken away, and more. Implied, it
seems clear, is that the plague of devastation was
important for getting God’s people on the right
track. But even though the years of
devastation might have seemed like years of
irremediable loss, the Lord promised that all
would be replaced, and more added.
A Season of the
Lord's Blessing
This past decade of our history has been a
paradoxical time. Even as some were saying that
the troubles we went through would mean our
destruction, something else was going on that has
since become clear. In a recent report, the Sword
of the Spirit international secretary cited
statistics that show that this had been a decade
of growth for us. We have more than doubled
the number of fully covenanted communities, and
the overall number of communities which are in
various stages of commitment to us has increased
by about 20. We have become more international, as
well, with communities in 10 more countries than
in 1990. Even though I was aware of all those
developments, I was impressed at how positive the
tally was.
However, I am even more impressed by something
else. I am impressed by the degree of unity of
purpose, and the agreement on fundamental issues
that we now have, compared to ten years ago and
fifteen years ago. It strikes me most at
international council meetings. I have been to all
of them but one since the beginning, and what I
now see is a genuine and grace-filled ability to
work together, a remarkable inter-cultural,
international cooperation, despite the fact that
in our meetings we cannot even all speak the same
language. There is a sense of common purpose, that
we are building something together, building an
international bulwark. This is most clearly
indicated by the steady progress we can see as a
result of each set of council meetings. We are no
longer knitting a row one year and unraveling it
the next.
One fruit of that progress is this Call and
Mission Conference. It was developed by the
Ibero-American Region (whom most of us outsiders
call “the Latinos”) and in it we are presenting
what our international council has agreed on
unanimously, after several years of work, the
statement “Our Call”, capsulized in the phrase “We
are a community of disciples on mission”.
For this presentation, we will be focusing on the
“mission” part of that phrase.
“Our Mission” starts out by saying, “We are called
to live, work, and strive by the power of the Holy
Spirit, so that others might have true life in
Christ now and forever.” I would call your
attention to the word “others” here. The
fact that we exist for the sake of others
automatically makes us a people on mission.
Now, most of us would say we have become part of
the Sword of the Spirit because we have
experienced some kind of blessing: our life
works better, our families are stronger, we are
more solidly Christian. Nonetheless, we are
not just called for ourselves, we are called for
others.
We also often think of missionaries as people who
go off to a different country to serve the
Lord. If that is the sole meaning of the
word, then only a few of us are missionaries. But
there is another way of understanding a missionary
– as someone the Lord calls and gives a mission
to. If that mission is something you can
accomplish in your own city, then you are a
missionary there, without going anywhere else. In
that sense, we in the Sword of the Spirit are
missionaries. As community members, we are
missionaries wherever the Lord has put us.
Notice that the “Our Mission” summary is divided
into two sections: first, what we are called
to be to fulfill our mission, and second,
what we are called to do. Because
most of us tend to think of mission in terms of
doing rather than being, I would like to emphasize
what we have to be.
God's Strategy
The mission the Lord has entrusted to us has a
special character. We have to be something
to fulfill it – communities of disciples on
mission. If we can understand the Lord’s
overall strategy for us (which applies to other
groups as well), we can more effectively carry out
the mission he has given us. That strategy has to
do with establishing centers to radiate new life
and to be bases for reaching out to those around
us. The summary lists three different aspects of
what we should be: a bulwark, a prophetic
people and a servant people.
Let us focus on the first one, being a
bulwark. A bulwark is not a word in common
usage for most of us, but it is an old and
venerable term meaning a certain kind of
fortification or, on occasion, a fort. But
our image of a fort can easily mislead us, so I am
going to give you an historical example of a fort
that will show some features that might be
surprising, and draw some lessons for our own
mission. The example is of Fort Detroit around
1750.
Ft. Detroit1 was built by the French in 1701 by
deliberate strategic decision to further their
empire in North America. It was built on the west
bank of the Detroit River near where the
Renaissance Center in downtown Detroit now
stands. It was the start of everything we
now know as the Detroit metropolitan area.
A map of North America in that era (see map below)
shows some of the significance of Ft.
Detroit. By the 1750’s, a good part of the
Atlantic coast had been settled by the English,
but the Appalachian Mountains to their west kept
the English from easy access to North America’s
rich central plains. The French had
established a route inland by boat from the mouth
of the St. Lawrence River, where they had a
colony.
The French inland route headed west along the St.
Lawrence River and then into Lake Ontario and on
to Lake Erie. At various points along Lake Erie
there were relatively easy portages to the
Ohio-Mississippi basin, which occupies a large
part of central North America. The water
route continued north and west from Lake Erie into
the other three Great Lakes – Huron, Superior and
Michigan. From Lake Michigan there were
again relatively easy portages to the river
network of the interior. Ft. Detroit was
established right on that route at the southern
shore of Lake Huron. It was, in other words,
part of the linkage from the French colony at the
mouth of the St. Lawrence to the vast inland of
North America, which the French considered part of
their empire. Ft. Detroit in 1750 was
probably the major French center west of Lake
Ontario.
Centers of
Influence
There was a big difference between the French
colonial empire and the English colonies in North
America. The English came in relatively large
numbers and settled, so that the English area of
influence was being filled by farms and towns. The
French, however, with the exception of the
Quebec-Montreal area, had only a few, small
settlements. Most of their “empire” was territory
in which they traded and in which they were a
predominant presence. Detroit, then, was the
center of significant French influence in a large
area, covering much of what are now the states of
Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin and
Minnesota and the Western part of the province of
Ontario.
Despite its significance, Ft. Detroit was
remarkably small (see plan of fort on page 12),
with an area of about four city blocks, plus a
small settlement of farms along the river.
Altogether there were about 800 people who lived
in the fort and on the farms – in other words,
only about the number in one of our larger
communities.
Now, there are forts and there are forts.
The image most of us have of forts is of the kind
we have seen in Hollywood Westerns – a stockade
with soldiers inside, usually surrounded by
Indians trying to burn it down. The soldiers are
manning the walls and shooting at the attackers.
Occasionally they make sorties, but in most
Westerns they seem to be mainly hoping for
reinforcements to arrive before supplies run
out. Such forts were designed to allow an
army unit to hold territory in the face of
opposition.
Ft. Detroit, however, was not like that. In fact,
the Indians never besieged it, at least not when
the French were there. The only siege against it
was led by Chief Pontiac when the fort had been
taken over by the English. In fact, Pontiac wanted
to get rid of the English so he could get the
French back. This, too, does not fit our image.
Most of us are surprised that any Indians would
want to have Europeans like the French
around. Understanding why Pontiac wanted the
French to return will tell us something more about
Ft. Detroit.
A
Valuable and Attractive Culture
For one thing, unlike the English, the French were
not arranging for settlers to take over more and
more Indian land, so the Indians knew they had
little to fear on that score. But there were
positive reasons as well. One was trade. The
French brought a lot of goods the Indians wanted,
including guns. Here again, images from the movies
are misleading. Indians did at times use guns on
one another or on the English, and occasionally on
the French. But they mostly used them to hunt, and
were much more effective in hunting – and
consequently feeding themselves – as a result. But
the French brought other products as well –
clothing, metal cooking pots, knives for cutting
rope and dressing meat. The Indians preferred the
French over the English partly because the French
sold them more freely the goods the Indians
wanted.
There were other things the Indians liked.
Especially in more settled areas like Montreal and
Quebec, Christian nuns and brothers had
established boarding schools for young Indians.
And although the predominant French interest was
commercial, there was also a significant effort to
reach the Indians with Christianity. Near Ft.
Detroit there were two or three villages of
Christian Indians, small Christian communities
resulting from French missionary endeavors. There
were other villages of Christian Indians in
various areas of French territory, including the
Mackinaw area where Lakes Huron and Superior come
together. The French saw their forts as
centers of civilization, including centers of
Christianity. Generally speaking the Indians
appreciated that aspect of the French presence and
were influenced by it. To be sure, the
relationship was not problem-free, but many of the
images we have of imperialism do not fit the
French “empire” in North America.
If you went into Ft. Detroit what would you see?
You would see a village -- shops, a church and
people’s homes. Most of the fort residents were
ordinary people. Ft. Detroit did have some
soldiers, and a few of them were on duty as
watchmen on the walls and as sentries at the gates
to see if anything strange might be happening
outside. But most of the people in the fort were
“butchers, bakers, and candlestick makers”, living
normal lives. There were also people farming the
area surrounding the fort and they would come in
to buy or sell or attend church. They normally
lived on their farms unless they needed to take
refuge in the fort during some special danger.
The gates, in fact, were normally open during the
day. Farmers would go in and out, but so would the
Indians. Although they usually could not go in
armed (as we cannot go armed onto commercial
airline flights), they had pretty free access,
traded, saw how the French lived and some began to
go to church.
Detroit was indeed a fort, but not on the
Hollywood Western model. Its mission was not
primarily to hold territory against opposition but
to act as a base for various forms of
influence. It was a settlement, a community,
with trades people and farmers whose presence
provided the base for an enduring influence in the
region, allowing French soldiers, traders and
missionaries to live in the wilderness, despite
their distance from France or the French Canadian
settlements.
Keys to Success
In its day, Ft. Detroit was quite successful. It
went into English hands not because of a lack of
effectiveness, but largely for two reasons.
The first is that there were many more English in
North America, enabling them to mount a stronger
war effort on the continent. The second is
that English armies and navies defeated the French
in other parts of the world. In fact, Ft.
Detroit did not fall, it surrendered after the
peace treaty.
There were several keys to the success of Ft.
Detroit in its heyday. The first is that it was
fortified. Almost every historian would say that
if it were not a fort, it would not have survived.
If any little army or raiding party could have
come in and done whatever they wanted, the
settlement would not have lasted very long. The
fortifications and the small army detachment were
important, even though the main things that went
on were not military operations or even military
preparations.
The second key was that all who lived there – the
farmers, the craftsmen, the priests – were united
in certain ways. They all belonged to the same
nation, a different one from the Indian tribes
around them, with allegiance to the same king, in
Paris. They spoke the same French language, and
had the same French culture and way of life. They
were involved in a common endeavor that made the
fort a base and a source of influence. They were
consequently also part of something much bigger
than Ft. Detroit itself and received a great deal
of support and help from France and the rest of
the French colonies.
The French have a reputation for thinking their
culture is superior, something that others,
especially their neighbors, tend to dispute.
But when we consider Ft. Detroit, most of us would
be inclined to agree that in many aspects the
French culture was superior to the culture of the
tribes around them. They were Christians, they
were relatively moral, and on the whole they had a
higher civilization, both materially and in other
ways as well. That is one of the things that
attracted the Indians. They did not usually want
to become French, but they saw many good things
the French could provide them with. Moreover, the
very confidence that the French exhibited made the
French more influential with the Indians than vice
versa. The French did not become Indian-like: the
Indians became more like the French. The French
were passing on a culture, a way of life, and from
our point of view, much of what was good about
their culture came from the presence of
Christianity and Christian values.
There is one further key to the success of Ft.
Detroit. It was not just on its own, hundreds of
miles from Quebec. It was part of a chain of forts
– Ft. Frontenac (now Kingston, Ontario), Ft.
Niagara, Ft. Presqu’ile (now Erie, Pennsylvania),
Ft. Duquesne (now Pittsburgh), Ft. Michilimackinac
(at the straits in northern Michigan) and many
others farther west. This chain was all-important
for the long-term survival of any of the forts. If
supplies or some sort of help were needed by the
people of Detroit, they could send a boat off to
Ft. Niagara. If no help was available there, they
might travel on to Ft. Frontenac and so on.
Moreover, Ft. Detroit itself was a major center
for helping other forts when they had need or were
in trouble. There was, in other words, a whole
system of support, forts helping one another even
though they might be some distance away.
A Time-tested
Strategy
In describing Ft. Detroit, I am using what we
might call a secular example. There are many
others. We read in the New Testament, for
instance, about Roman colonies like Philippi. They
operated much like Ft. Detroit and played a
similar role in their area to that of the
inhabitants of Ft. Detroit. Cities like Cologne,
Trier, and even Paris itself, were once Roman
colonies. If we ask how the French got to speak
French, which is a form of late Latin, we would
have to attribute it to the success of the Roman
Empire and the influence of Roman colonies planted
in what at that time was called the Province of
Gaul.
But there are also traditional Christian examples
such as monasteries. These were founded throughout
Europe in the 7th to 11th centuries when what we
might now call European civilization was being
established. Monasteries in this period of
European history were settlements of Christians
who prayed, who farmed, who were craftsmen. For
much of their history, monasteries were also
fortified. In pictures of old monasteries, you can
see that most had walls around them. When
marauding Vikings came looking for monasteries to
burn and treasure to carry off, the monks would
close the gates or perhaps climb into a fortified
tower to wait out the attack. As a result
most of the monasteries survived and became
centers that radiated Christian life. But they
were also often a centers of better agricultural
methods, better building methods, and so on. They
were little centers of Christian civilization in
various locations, and they were usually linked
with others like themselves.
The Moravians are another example. They were one
of the first groups of Protestant missionaries to
come to the North American frontier – in the
mid-1700s. At the time they were formed, there
were many more Catholic missionaries than
Protestant ones. Originally the Moravians were
mainly Lutherans and they formed communities quite
similar to ours in the Sword of the Spirit,
including groups of celibate brothers and celibate
sisters. Many of the cities in the United States –
Bethlehem and Nazareth in Pennsylvania, the Salem
part of Winston-Salem in North Carolina and New
Schoenbrunn and Gnadenhutten just west of
Steubenville, in Ohio – were originally Moravian
settlements. The Moravians would not only settle
and begin to farm, they would also evangelize the
Indians, with notable success.
Fortified and
Inter-connected
These examples will hopefully give a better
understanding of what it means to be a bulwark, a
“fortified city”, in fact, a set of fortified
cities. We do differ in some respects from
Ft. Detroit and some of the other examples given
here. We do not go off into the woods to
build a city: we want to build a “city”
right where we are, in the midst of existing
cities. We also do not build physical walls, but
we do try to build other forms of protections for
our common way of life. The results are
communities that can be places of refuge when
needed, places of provision, but also places of
influence, inhabited by pioneers of the kingdom.
Similar to the French forts, our communities are
linked together into a community of communities. A
single community by itself does not usually
survive all that long. Communities that
survive are normally linked together with others
into a system of support. They also are tied to a
capital. Our capital is not Rome or Jerusalem (not
to mention Managua or Manila or Ann Arbor). Our
capital, the place where the king lives, is in
heaven. We are linked together as citizens of
heaven, as we live together here on earth. We are
outposts, colonies, of the kingdom of God in a
fallen world, cities of Christian people who are
living the heavenly life, the life lived by those
whose king is the Lord.
We have to be a protected, a fortified, group. If
we were not, we would not survive. We have to be
linked together so we can help one another. If we
were not, we would not survive. Look what happens
to so many of the Christians around us. They have
no walls, so to speak, around their Christian
life, their life together. As a result all sorts
of influences, “raiding parties”, wander in at
will, to undermine and destroy. Nor do they
support one another very actively when under
attack. As a result, many Christians are
losing their distinct identity as Christians and
are gradually being assimilated into the secular
society around them, being conformed to it,
because they have no defenses.
We try to be sure as a group that protection is in
place, but this is not our primary focus.
The Lord has put us here, not so that the kingdom
of God can gradually and politely retreat on
earth. He has put us here to be centers of
influence for the advance of the kingdom of God. A
significant part of the call we have received from
him is to be missionary bases wherever he has
placed us. At times the attack is so heavy that
all we can do is hold the line, closing the gates,
so to speak, and gathering inside the fort for
protection. A number of our communities could
recount what it is like to be “under siege”.
But most of the time the gates are open and the
people around us go in and out, and we also go out
and come back. Our communities are centers of the
life of the kingdom of God.
Remember also what I said about how most of the
people in Ft. Detroit spent their time. They
farmed, they made clothes, they made candlesticks.
They had families, they raised their children,
they went to church. In other words, they
just lived life. You might be tempted to say that
they were only part-time members of the fort and
that most of their time was spent living their
daily life, but that would not be accurate. Their
daily life was key to the fort functioning well.
If the daily life of the ordinary people in the
fort were removed, the whole support structure of
the fort would have failed, and the fort would
have disappeared. Or if it had survived, it
would have lost most of its influence.
For us, living daily life as members of the
kingdom, as members of the fort, is an integral
part of our mission. We do not have a
community and then do mission in addition to that.
Being part of community life is part of our
mission. Certainly we should send out evangelists,
host Life in the Spirit Seminars and serve in
inner city Detroit or Manila or Managua. But even
those of us who are not working in such outreaches
are involved in the mission with our whole
lives. We are all actively involved in being
a colony of the kingdom of heaven, a base for
Christian life. This is what the Lord is calling
us to.
> See Part
2: A Life That Wants to Share Itself
by Steve Clark
This article was originally
published in The Mission of The Sword
of the Spirit, (c)
2004 Steve Clark
credits:
<1> top
photo: A collage of photos depicting
some Sword of the Spirit activities
worldwide, plus family bible study by
bigstock.com
<2> Wilderness Empire map
image: drawn by Allan W. Eckert. From
Wilderness Empire by Allan W. Eckert,
Little, Brown & Co., Boston, MA., 1969.
Used by arrangement with the author.
<3> Layout of Fort Detroit
image: drawn by Allan W. Eckert. From
The Conquerors by Allan W. Eckert, Little,
Brown & Co., Boston, MA., 1970. Used by
arrangement with the author.
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Steve Clark has been a
founding leader, author, and teacher for the
Catholic charismatic renewal since its
inception in 1967. Steve is
past president of the Sword
of the Spirit, an
international ecumenical association of
charismatic covenant communities
worldwide. He is the founder of the Servants
of the Word, an ecumenical
international missionary brotherhood of
men living single for the Lord.
Steve
Clark has authored a number of
books, including Baptized
in the Spirit and Spiritual Gifts, Finding
New Life in the Spirit, Growing in Faith,
and Knowing God’s Will, Building
Christian Communities, Man and Woman in
Christ, The Old Testament in Light of
the New.
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