‘The Fool of God’ Introduction

By Bobby Harrington 

I became a disciple of Jesus at the University of Calgary (Canada) and was baptized on my 20th birthday. I was discipled to closely read and obey Scripture. It was an exciting journey, and the process completely changed my life. Soon I was married to a godly, young lady and we pursued Jesus and followed the teachings of Scripture together. 

Yet, by the time we were in our mid-twenties, we were confused.  

We had spent time in a church that was legalistic and then, after trying to grapple with their approach, we left for another church. We liked the second church, but it had a progressive spirit. It was too concerned, we came to see, with molding the teachings of Jesus to fit what the culture around us was saying. We were confused about our future direction and what to look for in a church. 

A HELPFUL RESOURCE 

We then found a book that unexpectedly helped us in very convincing ways. We read The Fool of God, a historical novel based upon Alexander Campbell’s life and the principles of the Restoration Movement. 

The Fool of God was an easy and interesting read. Neither of us wanted to put the book down once we started reading it. The story of how Alexander Campbell engaged Scripture in such a raw, yet determined way captured our hearts and minds. The narrative and the specific details became more than history for us. We bought into the Restoration Movement’s core value: surrendering to Jesus’ Lordship by following Scripture alone as our final authority. 

If Campbell could be called a “fool” (per the title of the book) for this raw commitment to make Scripture his true, final authority, then we wanted to be fools like him. We both gladly adopted his Restoration ideals about Scripture. These ideals gave us direction about the kind of church we needed because we wanted to be in community with a body of believers that had the same radical commitment.  

Surrendering to Jesus’ lordship through Scripture is a resilient value, ideal for any age, but especially our age when truth is secondary to prevailing narratives. God’s truth in Scripture comes first; whatever narratives we use to make sense of our lives are subject to reinterpretation based upon a better understanding of Scripture. 

At its best, this core value of surrendering to Jesus’ kingship by following Scripture alone as our final authority is simply the pursuit of upholding “the apostolic tradition” or “the canon of scripture.” We are seeking to think carefully and canonically for God’s glory and honor. 

Then about 10 years ago, I found myself facing a difficulty in the church we had planted with a group of family and friends just outside Nashville, Tennessee. We had many new people coming to our church, from various backgrounds, and they wanted to understand our denominational or historical roots. Many were part of a leadership class that we invited people to attend over a two- to three-year period to get certified for potential ministerial or eldership roles. Many of the people in these classes have gone on to become paid ministers and/or join in serving as elders of the church. 

A THEOLOGICAL VISION FOR THE CHURCH 

What I discovered was that the single most important tool in winning these future leaders over to the theological vision of our church was the book The Fool of God. Many of the everyday disciples in our church have read it and have been won over to the core value of making Scripture the final authority, which is at the heart of the Restoration Movement vision (as well as RENEW.org Network’s vision).  

The Fool of God is historically accurate in describing all the relevant factual events and details of Campbell’s life, while the author (Louis Cochran) made up much of the dialogue to fill in the unrecorded conversations and engage our imaginations. With the republication of this book, you too have an opportunity to join with us in appreciating Campbell’s vision. We hope it will capture your heart and mind the way it has captured so many others. The movement that Alexander Campbell catalyzed now has millions of devotees in North America and beyond. 

My hope is that reading The Fool of God does more than help people like me appreciate our roots, but that it also helps us think through how to encourage a new generation toward a renewed vision of following Scripture as we head into the middle of the 21st century. We face significant cultural challenges as we seek to follow Scripture, hence it will be crucial to carefully consider our cultural moment. The following is a summary of that vision, as we contextualize that commitment to Scripture in these post-Christian times.  

We focus on Jesus Christ, his gospel, and his kingdom. 

Our hope and focus is Jesus Christ. We uphold a key saying: “The Jesus we proclaim, the gospel we preach, and the faith we teach will determine the kind of disciples we make.”  

Many have found that historically, Restoration Movement leaders assumed, but did not emphasize, doctrines like the centrality of Jesus and his gospel. They lived in a North American culture for the past 250 years where most people claimed to be Christians, attended church (even irregularly), and believed in Jesus’ atoning death on the cross. Because they could assume these teachings, they focused instead on secondary doctrines that needed to be restored regarding church organization and polity. 

Yet we must always keep our focus on Jesus Christ, his gospel, and the kingdom, as Scripture teaches. If we ask ourselves, “What does God want for every person on planet earth?” we find a simple answer throughout Scripture. God wants everyone to come to know and place their faith in Jesus Christ and his gospel, to enter his kingdom, and then, by faith, to become more and more like Jesus Christ. This clarity is vitally important and needs to guide us into the future. 

We make disciple-making the core mission of the church. 

Alexander Campbell, Barton Stone, Walter Scott, and others in the Restoration Movement helped us prioritize evangelism and local church structures based upon God’s Word. Evangelism is vital. But the point of the local church is not just to get people saved and attend a church that has practices and a structure based upon the Word of God.  

The point of the local church is to help everyone to place their faith in Jesus and then form their entire lives around him. This means that we focus on being disciples of Jesus who make disciples of Jesus, and our disciple-making results in planting churches that make even more disciples of Jesus. It means we are empowered in this great mission because of our love for God and love for people. We follow Jesus’ example, as he loved his disciples and spent time in intentional relationship with them. His priority was intentional relational disciple-making.  

We rely on the Holy Spirit through prayer and fasting.  

We seek to build prevailing churches in our cultural context as we move into the middle of the 21st century. But if we hope to build more and more of the kind of churches we have been describing, we must emphasize something that has been a weakness in many Restoration Movement circles: praying and fasting for the Holy Spirit’s presence and power. 

As we look at the world outside North America today, we see movements that are just like our Restoration Movement when it comes to prioritizing the teaching of Scripture alone as their final authority. Disciple-Making Movements (DMM), powerfully fueled by everyday disciples making disciples, have arisen worldwide in the last 30 years, yet they have not taken root in North America. These movements rely on similar values to ours in the Restoration Movement; they simply teach people to dive into Scripture with others, review what it teaches, obey what it teaches, and share what they’ve learned with others. 

Here is the key difference between disciple-making movements and most Restoration Movement churches in North America (and almost all other churches in North America): Disciple-making movements are focused on praying and fasting for God’s power. If we want to truly restore the church of the New Testament, we must restore the way Jesus and the early church prayed and relied on the Holy Spirit. 

A SUMMARY 

Every time we read and connect with the Restoration Movement story, we are left feeling both grateful and hopeful. We are grateful for the Restoration Movement and those who chose the path of Scripture as their final authority over the easier path of just following the traditions they inherited. We are also hopeful because we believe God will use our commitment to Jesus, to the good news of the gospel, to the kingdom, and to all of Scripture to bring about faith-filled, Spirit-led, kingdom-advancing collaboration in our time. We anticipate a bright, hope-filled future into the middle of the 21^st century and beyond. We want the disciples we are making to be able to look back on our time with gratitude and hopefulness because we prayerfully pursued resilience and courage. 

We hope you will join us in moving toward this vision. 

Bobby Harrington is the point leader of Discipleship.org, RENEW.org, and Harpeth Christian Church (in the Nashville area). 

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RENEW.org and College Press Publishing Co. recently teamed-up for the rerelease of The Fool of God, a historical novel by Louis Cochran originally published in 1958. The Fool of God, based upon Alexander Campbell’s life and the principles of the Restoration Movement, is available for purchase via collegepress.com, Amazon, and other booksellers. (Bobby Harrington wrote the foreword and afterword for the newest version.)