Introducing Slow Burn Christianity
Pentecostal 🤝 Christian
This is Slow Burn Christianity with Joseph Lear, a Substack about reviving your Christian walk one step at a time.
After he was raised from the dead, Jesus walked with Cleopas and an unnamed disciple on the road to Emmaus, but they didn’t recognize him. Luke says that Jesus opened the Scriptures to them as they walked, demonstrating that the Old Testament is one big story all leading to him and his death and resurrection. It was only after Jesus broke bread that their eyes were opened and they knew him. The disciples remarked that their hearts burned within them as Jesus explained the Bible to them (Luke 24:13-35).
I will not be breaking bread with you on this platform. You’ve gotta go to church for that. But, with God’s help, I do hope to imitate Jesus in opening the Scriptures in ways that provide kindling for the Holy Spirit’s fire in your heart.
I’m a Pentecostal pastor and theologian, which means I’m part of a revival movement. Historically, my roots go back to the Azusa Street Revival, where fire fell from heaven with signs and wonders. I grew up in Burkina Faso in the Sahel region of West Africa where within 15 years of Azusa, the first Assemblies of God missionaries showed up to plant churches. I was there in 1996 when they celebrated 75 years of revival in the country.
The late 90s “Brownsville Revival” in Florida and the “Toronto Blessing” figured large in my childhood Christian imagination. When I attended Central Bible College in the early 2000s, students and faculty alike were convinced that revival could break out on campus in any given chapel service.
My Pentecostal upbringing taught me that revival is always big, loud, and gathers the masses. I assumed that meant that when there’s fire from heaven, it’s always like Elijah’s Mount Carmel experience—the fire consumes everything, demolishing idols while making God manifest.
I don’t doubt Mt. Carmels still happen, but I’ve come to see that the Bible models another kind of revival, the kind we see on the road to Emmaus. There, God was still made manifest, and there was definitely fire, but it happened in the quiet of a long walk and a humble, three-person meal.
In another post-Resurrection appearance, Jesus breathes on his disciples and so gives them the Holy Spirit. They had mourned the loss of the best friend and leader, and had suffered disillusionment and confusion. They had not been extinguished, but they needed to be fanned into flame. So Jesus breathed on them. Revival isn’t always a wildfire. Sometimes it’s slow burning charcoal that glows as hot as ever with just a little oxygen.
Why the second disciple on the road to Emmaus is left unnamed is not clear from the story. But I take it as an invitation to see ourselves on the road. So do that: feel the burning in your heart as Jesus opens the Scripture to you with the breath of his Spirit. Be the charcoal of a slow burn revival.1
I’m convinced that what you and the church at large needs in this moment is revival one step at a time. We need Christian devotion for the long road of life—and, ultimately, the long road of history. Slow burn Christianity is what’s kept oil in the church’s lamp for more than two thousand years. Let’s keep it burning. We can’t do it by human might or power. We need the Spirit of Pentecost.
A Little About Me
I grew up on the edge of the Sahara Desert in West Africa where my parents were church planting missionaries. I was a slingshot sharp-shooter, amateur packrat trapper, wilderness fruit forager, and evangelist before the age of 10. My best friends were my Muslim neighbors who taught me football (soccer), pigeon husbandry, Bambara, and how to escape the evil eye of the neighborhood sorcerer.
God spared my life from eight bouts of malaria, the Bwa revenge-takers, and three violent coup d’états during my childhood so that I could study biblical languages, attend Yale Divinity School, and complete a PhD in early Christianity in Scotland before settling down in Iowa City, IA to pastor a dying congregation.
Resurrection Assembly of God is alive, to the glory of God. Jesus is Lord because he is risen. Everything follows from that: I’ve fought for housing rights, canceling debts, accessible healthcare, just immigration, the celebration of children, and the dignity of all people. Demons have been cast out, the sick have been healed, and the poor have good news preached to them.
I’ve been a children’s pastor, youth pastor, young adult pastor, Sunday School teacher, college chaplain, lead pastor, church consultant, and overseer. All of it in about 20 years of ministry experience.
I want to give glory to God for the time his Spirit spoke to me through Ryan Furlong, who was the first one to use the phrase “slow burn revival.”