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In Old Testament times, fire often signified God's presence. When Moses led the Israelites through the desert, God was as close as a cloud during the day and a pillar of fire during the night. When the people saw the fire, they remembered God's promise of daily provision, protection, and power for living. When God moved, they moved. When God stopped, they stopped, even for months at a time. The idea was to place themselves at the heart of God's leadership and direction.

At the time the fire of God's Holy Spirit was limited to one place, usually above the tent where they met for worship. The Spirit would sometimes come upon Moses, and sometimes others. When Jesus was on planet Earth, the Holy Spirit in him was limited to one physical body. Jesus could be in only one place at a time; but when Jesus ascended to heaven and sent the Holy Spirit to earth in a new way, everything changed. Since Pentecost, the Holy Spirit has been made available to all people. No longer is God merely with us, now God is in us. Jesus can be everywhere we are, all around the world at the same time. We are literally the body of Christ on earth, where people come and experience love, acceptance, forgiveness, freedom from fear, release from guilt and discouragement, delivery from loneliness, and empowerment for living.

At age seventeen I couldn't see the future. All I could focus on was the draft for the Vietnam War. This was about a year after my God-encounter at that gas station in rural Arkansas, but I was still filled with fear and anxiety, rather than with the Holy Spirit. I used to go across the street and play pool with a guy in my neighborhood who was in his fifties and who had studied for the priesthood. There was something different—a peace—about this guy. He knew Jesus in a way I didn't. I'd talk about my fears, and he'd talk about Jesus.

Sometimes you have a better chance of seeing Jesus while shooting pool than you do in the church. I said to this would-be priest, "I am going to be eighteen on my next birthday. I can't see past eighteen, and it really scares me. I think this may be some kind of premonition that I am going to die or something."

My comments opened the door for several conversations about my friend's experience with Jesus. I can't explain what happened because it wasn't like a crisis moment, but somehow during those "close encounters," I began to experience the mystery of the powerful Jesus. My eyes were opened, and I could see the future. Eternal life divinely invaded my body and the Spirit began to live in me. It was strange. My heart began to beat in rhythm with God's heart. My eyes began to see through God's eyes. My mind began to think with God's mind.

I was seventeen, but suddenly I could see my future! I could see how my life was going to be used for God's purpose to touch other people. I could see God's future and plan. It wasn't like I fully understood it, but I trusted the one who did, and tried to follow even when God's plan didn't coincide with my own. During my first two years in college, I studied retail management. I was going to make some serious money. The next thing I knew, I found myself in the School of Social Work, working with Appalachian folks. What happened? Jesus transformed me.

Many people come to Jesus and then expect Jesus to become converted to their worldview. But God is not the one who needs to change. To experience Jesus is to take on Jesus' worldview, to allow ourselves to be radically transformed. We must take on Jesus' outlook, Jesus' perspective, and Jesus' priorities. If we're going to be the church at all, let's be the real thing.

The opening words of 1 John refer to Jesus as the word of life, the Word of God. A lot of people believe that God "spoke" (past tense) only through scripture. True, Scripture is the word of God, but God is still speaking (present tense) through Jesus. The prophets in the Bible never limited God to "God said long ago." They used the phrase "thus saith the Lord." They remind us that God is continually speaking. The living Word of God is in you and me, speaking right now. Jesus continues to speak and to transform you and me. That is the mystery of the powerful Jesus. The world is looking for a radical experience of God.

UnLearning churches will follow God's leading, much as God's people of old did in following the pillar of fire. The body of Christ has a rudder that goes deep into the ways of God as revealed in scripture. Our religion is ancient in that it is "the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints" (Jude 3b). It is future in that it's being played out in a spiritual atmosphere of innovation and change. The people of God are directed to be continually about the new thing that God is doing. "See, I am doing a new thing," God says in Isaiah 43. "Do you not perceive it?" (43:19 NIV). The unLearning church will keep its eye on the Holy Spirit, watching where God is moving, where God is taking the church next. As Jesus said, "The wind blows where it chooses. . . . So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit" (John 3:8). When we follow the Spirit with reckless abandon, we become willing to innovate, recreate, reassess, step out, and risk going wherever God is moving.