Forts

The other night I got done mowing and noticed some of the boys on our street had turned a pile of dirt, cement and stuff that sits over in an empty field across from our house into a fort. Each of the boys was carrying some sort of a plastic gun, from what I overheard one had a pistol, one an assault rifle and I never caught the other two. They were different ages, the oldest being around 13 and the youngest probably 7.

What caught my attention was the fact that they were in an argument. It seems everybody in the army wanted to be General and nobody wanted to be a soldier. “I have to be on the assault team, I’m the only one that has an assault rifle.” “No, that rifle is the most powerful thing we have, you should stay and guard the fort and we’ll go attack the other fort.” “I’m the oldest so I need to lead the charge, otherwise you guys won’t know what to do.” “He can’t stay behind, he’s the youngest and if we only leave him, his gun isn’t powerful enough to defend it.”

I think by the time they figured out what they were doing, the “enemy” had long since moved on.

I had forts when I was a kid. From the ones build with a blanket over the dining room table to a couple in my backyard. My favorite one was in the back corner of our property and sat against the back of my neighbor’s garage. It had a tree that provided an umbrella of cover as it spilled down and the walls were made of stacked chunks of old concrete. From my crows nest, I could see my whole house, almost all of the back yard, into my neighbor’s yard and out to the street that ran in front of my house. Sometimes I was at war in the fort, sometimes I was there to hide but no matter what it was mine, I was safe and you weren’t allowed in without my permission.

Oregon is full of forts. Early settlers and folks who traveled the Oregon Trail (not the computer game, I’m sure it was a little more difficult than that) built them for protection. Every year we’d go over to Vancouver, Washington for 4th of July fireworks and watch them at Fort Vancouver. It is a magnificent fort made of out of the tallest and straightest trees you can imagine. Each shaved of its bark and pointed at the top like a brand new, freshly sharpened pencil. I loved those forts as a kid and tried to imagine what it was like to live there. Truth is the fort wasn’t built so much to inspire everyone outside the fort to greater heights, it was for protection. It was a symbol that life as you knew it was changing. In some crude form it was the earliest gated community. You were either welcome or you weren’t. People either smiled when you came in or glared when you dared get close.

George, that character I told you about who has a fire burning in his soul and in his front yard, said something during our lunch that caught my attention. In his opinion, the church has become too interested in building forts instead of servants. Those were his words, not mine.

If I were to throw in my two cents, it would be to remind myself that I’ve spent much of my time building forts. I’ve called them other things, kingdoms, programs, youth groups. But many carried the same characteristics of the aforementioned forts. I just don’t want to see the church go that route. If I could go undue my fort building, I would. If you are building forts, you should stop. No matter how inviting you make the front lobby of your fort to visitors, it’s still a fort. The church ought not to be about what is happening inside the fort but what its doing outside whatever walls it has to build.