Director's Message

I was never a big Jackson Browne fan, but there’s a line in Running on Empty that always leaps out at me: Gotta do what you can just to keep your love alive, trying not to confuse it with what you do to survive.

Ever felt like that? Mired in what you do to survive? The job, the routine, the commute, the portfolio management, the religious patterns that have lost vitality. And time ticks away inexorably. T.S. Elliot got to the nub of it in the Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. (I) have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons/I have measured out my life in coffee spoons.

Or, to quote the poetry of Pink Floyd in Wish You Were Here: And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage?
Get my drift?

Enough! I (and you) have but one life to live. For me, partnering with others through Torch of Faith is one way of busting out of Christianity that merely survives. It means striving to keep my love alive. Or, to put it most succinctly, it means searching for ways to pour out my life for the one I love the most: Jesus Christ.

After 20 years of pastoring in a mainline denomination, I love the local church, even with all its foibles. It is the neighborhood community of grace, the staging platform for faith in people at all stages of spiritual growth.

Yet so much of what transpires within its walls is about institutional maintenance. We follow a Savior who asked his disciples to drop everything, to let go and embark on an unprecedented adventure. Do we have too much to let go of? Have we stifled our passion and authenticity by our attachments to religion, while Jesus stands on the horizon saying “pick up your cross and follow me?”

Have you had enough of paint by number faith? Then we invite you to join us at Torch of Faith in a number of ways:

1) Share your thoughts with us about your own search for significance.

2) Join us by contributing to our work to serve the “least of those among us.” We promise you that we will search out and find ministries that are helping God’s children in the most dire need.

3) Take the One Deed Daily Pledge and redouble your efforts to serve the poor in your Calcutta.

4) Spread the word about our free Torch Books.

Let’s talk. Let’s serve together. Let’s reclaim the hours and days of lives.