Refresher: What is the Burn About?

These are thoughts from a recent response to some questions that were posed about the Burn and its purpose, and some good points to remember why we do what we do, and why it looks the way that it does.

“I think if I had to narrow the mission and vision down to simple statements they would look like this:

Mission: “To connect, inform, and train people dedicated to worship and prayer for ministry until the return of the Lord.”

Vision: “The vision is a unified body seeking the Presence of God - through worship.”

I feel like we see an example of this described in Luke 2, when the angels proclaim the will of God in the earth, that Christ has come to/for all men, and through Christ peace and goodwill to all men. I feel like UNITY is what my life and personality were engineered for, and I have been working and praying very hard for opportunities to do more things in this arena.

I feel like the Burn is something that will continue to develop into something that is more corporate, but the goal in it’s present stage is not to create a corporate worship environment, but to allow people room to worship and pray out of their heart without time constraints, or limitations that can be placed by working to guide an audience or congregation into that secret place with the Lord. This doesn’t mean that there is no room for corporate prayer or worship or prayer.

In my opinion, it feels as though the corporate elements of unity also form around the perimeter of the Burn, in relationships that are being developed by business leaders, pastors, intercessors, ministry leaders and many other forms of influence in this city in particular. I have watched a network begin to form and see relationships develop, house church networks link up with traditional church, business link up with ministry etc. It is my heart that these sorts of endeavors will form themselves around a vertical channel that is dedicated to worship of JESUS, the King, and the Father, for the good things they have done. We work hard to be His hands and feet, and we find ourselves gaining a new revelation of love, grace, mercy, faith, self-control, kindness, and sort of good fruit, and subsequently our hearts respond to this revelation and we have to worship. We cannot worship without this revelation, and that is why we come to an environment where there are no guidelines for what we do, but parameters, rather, that I feel can provoke us to make our sound and dance our dance that is unique to our person, taking our hearts and minds and souls out of the box so that he can see the real us, and he can see our heart for worship - which goes beyond songs so many times.

The Burn is such an interesting thing. For as much time and energy that I have put into this for the past four years, I want to hope that it is turning into something that I can wrap my mind around, unfortunately, I don’t think that is going to happen! We have expanded to over 75 cities nationwide with this in the last two years. The Burn’s purpose is to allow/provoke us to seek His presence on His terms. There are actually times at the Burn when it does veer towards a corporate worship set, or corporate prayer set. I have seen this happen many times. However, we want to honor the Lord, as this is our 100% vertical channel, worship.