A message for the Church.

No-one who saw the Grenfell fire on 14 June last year will forget it. It was a literal towering inferno that has had ramifications far beyond North Kensington. It cost the lives of 72 people, displaced not only the survivors but also hundreds who lived nearby and broke the reputation of Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC) as one of the best-run local councils in the country. More broadly, it exposed deep-seated problems of governance that have shaken the nation.

Over the forthcoming months, the Public Inquiry will reveal more that will no doubt embarrass (in different measures) the Fire Brigade, the Council, the Tenant Management Organisation, the 60+ contractors involved in the refurbishment, the Government department responsible for fire safety and standards, and no doubt a few Government ministers, as well as Parliament. Whether responsibility will be pinned on one or a few, or be much more widely spread, is conjecture. But it is clear that there were very many shortcomings, by many different organisations.

Precisely because of its size - it was the largest such tragedy in 25 years (Hillsborough and Aberfan are both comparable in terms of loss) - and the degree to which it dominated politics and the news for weeks after the fire had extinguished itself, Grenfell needs to be seen both politically and spiritually as a national event, raising national questions.

This is all the more so as - quite ‘coincidentally’ – further tower block fires broke out in Lewisham and Glasgow on the very anniversary of the Grenfell fire. Given that the main news on Thursday was the anniversary of Grenfell, it is as if God, in allowing two fires in similar buildings to break out that same day (although thankfully neither with fatalities) is really trying to get our attention.¹ But many may well have missed these news stories.

Grenfell needs to be seen both politically and spiritually as a national event, raising national questions.

Why Did God Allow Grenfell?

Why did God allow the Grenfell tragedy to occur? First, we need to stress that there was nothing particularly bad about those who died. In Luke 13, Jesus tells his listeners that those who died when the tower in Siloam fell were not worse sinners than others who dwelt in Jerusalem (verse 3). However, he is unequivocal in the following verse that his listeners nevertheless need to repent, lest they too perish.

In other words, the collapse of the Tower of Siloam was allowed by God in order to send a wider message of repentance to those looking on. Just so with Grenfell. Too few Christian leaders regularly acknowledge the degree to which we live in a fallen world, and repentance is a neglected concept. God is very holy and we are very much mired in our sin. We desperately need Jesus’s atoning death to pave the way for eternity.

I also believe God allowed Grenfell in order to expose the sin that lay behind the fire and its aftermath. In a previous article on this subject, I noted that if there was one sin of which RBKC (indeed, the UK as a whole) was perhaps guiltier than most, it was pride, itself the root of all sin.

Thousands join a silent march marking one year since the blaze.Additionally, I believe that God wants to get our attention, as believers and also as UK subjects. It is not his delight to punish, but to show mercy – he wants us to seek his face in serious repentance (not just with lip-service), that he might pour out forgiveness and that we might be restored. Undoubtedly, searching questions need to be asked: not just about who was to blame, but about our entire direction and destiny as a society.

For this reason, Grenfell is first and foremost a wake-up call to the Church, which in turn should bear the message of repentance to the nation. How the Church responds (or fail to respond) will have hugely significant consequences for Britain’s future destiny.

Emotion and Injustice

At a local level, the Church has a role to play in the aftermath of Grenfell which the Government simply cannot fulfil. In my previous article, I looked at the historic reasons for the lack of trust, lack of hope, latent anger and hatred which mark communities in and around Grenfell Tower. I explained that decades – even centuries – of deprivation and disenfranchisement now imbue this area with deeply felt emotions, made worse by the incredible affluence on display virtually next door, in the south of the Borough.

Grenfell is first and foremost a wake-up call to the Church, which in turn should bear the message of repentance to the nation.

But while these problems strike at the heart of Government, concerning as they do issues of decision-making, empowerment and stewardship of resources, they also involve complex social and spiritual problems that our secular Government is unable to properly address - and perhaps was never supposed to.

With a relatively narrow remit, we cannot expect the Inquiry to look into these things. This is where the Church must come in: we need to ask what the role of the Body of Christ should be, and how it can bring true hope and restoration into this situation, and more widely.

Re-Commitment Needed Desperately

As a result of wide-ranging criticisms, many RBKC councillors and staff have moved on and a governance review is underway. There is much yet to be done, but few serious observers would dispute that there has already been significant change.

Whether this could also be said of the local Church is a different matter. The churches immediately surrounding Grenfell Tower responded extremely well to the tragedy. However, their ecclesiology, missiology and theology vary so hugely (and in some cases are diametrically opposed), that the question needs to be asked whether they can all be meaningfully and genuinely Christian. This issue strikes at the heart of the direction in which different parts of the Church in Britain are progressing – and implicitly raises the question of what sort of a god they worship.

In my last article, I noted the need for a re-commitment to evangelism from both church leaders and ordinary Christians, all across the country. This point still stands. As the Public Inquiry has shown, many Grenfell Tower residents were Muslims. They need the true Jesus of the Bible just as much as do the wealthier across the Borough – as indeed does the country as a whole: it is the job of all churches to evangelise the lost – from whatever ethnic background or culture they are. Few of us have shared the Gospel as we should have done, with boldness and seizing all opportunities.

What is desperately needed is a wholehearted re-commitment from churches around the nation to God’s word and his purposes.

However, even a re-commitment to evangelism (while welcome) is not enough on its own. What is desperately needed is a wholehearted re-commitment from churches around the nation to God’s word and his purposes. This would transform not only our evangelism but much else besides – and empower the Church to respond to this tragedy prophetically, declaring its lessons to the nation, as well as serving locally.

The hour is late; the time has come for fearless proclamations of truth, made in the power of the Spirit of God, as well as demonstrations of God’s kingdom purposes - to say nothing of his love. The future of churches – indeed, entire denominations - that refuse this mandate is at stake, for “Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire” (Matt 7:19; also John 15:2).

A Wake-Up Call

While much else besides, Grenfell was a wake-up call to a slumbering Church which has lost its way. The true Church – the Bride of Christ - needs to discern the wider significance of the tragedy and the necessity of repentance just as much as those not yet in the Kingdom.

Many churches local to Grenfell have given fully of themselves and are still doing all that they can. But given that this is a national tragedy, it should be the case that churches across the country are also willing to help as needed – one obvious way being in helping to carry the burden of prayer and intercession: for hope and healing, for repentance and forgiveness, and for the fullness of God’s purposes to be worked out, including through the Inquiry.

The cost of the fire will be borne by survivors until they themselves die, and will continue to mark our society even after. But if Grenfell’s stark warnings about the nation’s precarious position before God cannot be learned and applied soon, it is undoubtedly the case that further destruction will follow. If we do not listen to God’s words, we will have to endure his works: the former may be challenging - the latter much more so.

Leading the way here, declaring the warning and holding out the offer of mercy to a lost nation, should be the true Church of God! If the Church senses the great urgency of the hour and responds as the Father wills, there is yet opportunity for great positive transformation in Britain that would, in some measure, mitigate the indescribable loss of Grenfell.

References

1 See news articles from the BBC, The Guardian and The Telegraph, for example.

Further Reading

Previous article on this subject: Reflections on the Grenfell Tower Fire. Prophecy Today UK, 15 December 2017.

Everett, A, Rev, 2018. After the Fire, Finding words for Grenfell. Canterbury Press, Norwich.

O'Hagan, A. The Tower. London Review of Books.