Radix Fidem is our covenant, our approach to doing religion together. The Kiln of the Soul online parish is my implementation of Radix Fidem. Anyone can take the idea of Radix Fidem and run with it; nobody needs my permission. But I am the elder of Kiln of the Soul, the actual human organization. And the only reason you join Kiln of the Soul is because you like my approach to things and have no where else to go. The only membership requirement is that you can tolerate my leadership. You don’t even have to declare it to anyone.
The primary reason anyone would join a virtual parish like Kiln of the Soul is because they don’t get what they need from any existing church. There really aren’t that many people who want a church home and can’t find one somewhere. It takes a certain sense of calling to find any use in an online parish. So far, it’s been quite rare, when you consider how many people out there claim to follow Christ. Kiln of the Soul was sort of a last resort for me, and I’m frankly surprised that is has gotten as big as it is.
Over the ten plus years on this blog, the limited interactions I’ve had with people here indicate that it will never really take off. We have just over a thousand subscribers. Current traffic is around a hundred hits per day, and often less. Of those, quite a few are interested only in the computer related stuff I’ve written. I’m glad I can serve them in one way or another. It helps give me a reason to live. But the online parish part remains a tiny portion, going by the response I get from readers. If you don’t leave a comment or communicate with me privately, I don’t know you are there as a member of the parish.
Right now, the parish appears to consist of about two dozen people.
I’m not asking you to check in; I’m not campaigning to grow the membership. There was a time when I was hoping that might happen, but the Lord has shown me that He has other plans for this ministry. It will remain a tiny handful of people working together, mostly because we have no where else to go. I would much rather people belong to a flesh and blood organization in the real world, because Christian faith is something that really does work best that way. Most of what I teach is aimed at making face to face interaction better; that’s the crux of what I teach with all this blather about covenants and Biblical Law. I sincerely wish it was unnecessary to have a virtual parish.
I have no doubt that at some time in the future, the wrath of God upon America will bring about conditions favorable to growing a physical congregation around my faith and ministry. It would really surprise if some of you folks don’t report something similar happening in your own lives. As long as people in the world around us can keep moving along in their comfort zone, they won’t be looking for something different from what they already have. I am utterly convinced those conditions will change enough to break that down. I’ve had visions and dreams about the wrath of God falling on America, if not the rest of the world in general. The same faith that tells me it’s coming is the faith that teaches me to prepare to face it. People will notice and inevitably a few will want some of that shalom.
But the mission burning in my soul is far wider than that. The thing that eats away at my conscience is how many millions don’t have any hope of shalom when it’s their spiritual birthright. They belong to Eden, but don’t have a clue how to find the path back to the gate. They belong to Jesus but haven’t found the vast treasures He left for us. The full blessings of the Covenant have been hidden from them. I could care less if they join my merry band, but they do need to find their shalom.
So the crusade here is to battle the blindness that binds them. I want them to find first the heart-led way of living. Then I want to share with them the meaning of the Biblical Law covenant. But being heart-led is the initial step, the necessary prerequisite for everything else. Without being heart-led, Radix Fidem won’t mean much to them. Heart-led is our version of “getting people saved” as our evangelism. They need to know how to find their convictions so they read them and compare what’s in them against our secondary offer of Radix Fidem. Most of them are unlikely to accept Radix Fidem, but the whole world needs heart-led.
This is why I started the curriculum. This is why that curriculum starts with a disclaimer that we aren’t trying to grow our organization. The heart-led way drives us to share the heart-led consciousness and let people decide from there where God wants them to go. That curriculum will continue eventually, including a somewhat orderly teaching about the covenant of Biblical Law. That theology and practice sampler [PDF] I wrote isn’t really a good foundation for another book, but the part about covenant thinking is the core for what will follow. It will take a while yet. It’s not the content, but the organized approach to explaining it that is the hard work.
Feel free to contribute to the thought process. Meanwhile, the one thing I really urge you to do is prepare your mind to offer to anyone a fairly organized approach to understanding the heart-led way. The curriculum as it stands so far is just an outline, a logical order that should help to open the minds of people to the work of the Holy Spirit. You aren’t supposed to memorize it, but internalize it if you don’t already have a clear notion of how to present it. That’s why it’s a curriculum instead of a statement of faith. You are the statement of faith; we are all the creed of Radix Fidem.
