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Opinion

East Texas Church Arsons: Trial by Fire

By James Ellis
Guest Writer

CBN.com - In 2010 in East Texas, ten churches burned down in five weeks.  No one knew why the fires were set but East Texas residents turned their region inside out looking for the perpetrator and guarding their church buildings.

Then, ironically, once arrests were made the mystery only grew stranger and larger. The arsonists who had terrorized the 50-mile area, it turned out, were two older teens, Jason Bourque and Daniel McAllister, who had met and grown up in together in my church. Two kids had I had long known now were mug shots on television, soon to begin serving multiple life sentences at the demand of the pastors whose houses of worship they torched. And yet long before a match was struck, as their worlds were falling apart, God had told me to go to them.

As the boys suffered from heartache and death in their families, a parent’s suicide attempt, and their own slides into drug addiction, I know they asked God for help. And I know God heard them because he told me to go, to love them and call them into repentance. He told me to leave the 99 and find his lost sheep. But I chose not to. I chose to focus on building the youth program the church paid me to lead. I chose to ignore God as he told me to do the opposite of what I wanted to do.

And I am left with two strong fears. First, that if I had obeyed God—if I had I followed scripture and sought the hurting and lost with love that covers sin (1 Peter 4:8)—I could have prevented tragedy on tragedy. I could have helped bear Jason and Daniel’s burdens and fulfilled the law of Christ (Galatians 6:1-2).

Second, I fear that East Texas’s message to the world is our concern for our buildings. We grieve for the loss of our walls and sanctuary but not for the lost souls outside them. In the push for severe sentencing, in the absence of forgiveness, we communicate that our God helps and forgives only those inside our houses of worship. I fear more and more people will leave the church feeling unloved and unwanted because it refuses to change and leave the 99 to go find the one who is lost. That person is a soul created by God, who breathed life into him. We are to love him and leave our buildings to find him as Christ lowered Himself from heaven to seek those who are lost.

For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost" (Luke 19:10).

I know my failure, and I’m careful not to say what a particular church could have done differently. In every case, the Holy Spirit must lead. When God told me to go find Jason and Daniel, I was redecorating and running a sound system. The church wanted me to focus on who was coming, who was there.  Yet any church can look at its rolls to ask who’s drifted off. If I’d kept up better with two boys—with the two families having a hard time--I would have found them when they needed to be found.

A building is something people go into. A church is people who go out.  It’s not about how many people come to us but how many people we go to. And when hard things happen, churches must act on the forgiveness they preach.

One more thing: a life in prison is not a life lost or thrown away. That person is still made in the image of God, and the church is to continue to forgive and reach out.

If you are tired of going to Church, then join me in becoming the church. We are known as disciples of Christ by our love for one another (John 13:34-35). Let the fires that Jason and Daniel meant for evil instead fuel our drive to remake the church into God’s people who are seeking those who are lost.

James Ellis is a lifetime East Texas resident and a former youth pastor. In the current and acclaimed documentary, "Little Hope was Arson," he is the lone voice asking hard questions about what happens after church arson--to the church and to the arsonists.


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