Power Plants With No Fire

Ezekiel 37 and the Dry Bones of New England

Not long ago, I drove with friends to one of the most historic churches in Providence. It stands at the physical center of downtown — white, immaculate, magnificent. Its spire has risen over the city skyline for centuries.

As we prayer walked around it, I had an overwhelming sense that this place is hardwired into the spiritual infrastructure of the city. Not metaphorically — almost literally. Like ancient buried power lines laid centuries ago, connecting this building to the soul of Providence. The image that came to me was of a power plant. A great, historic power plant — built at the center of the city, designed to generate light and heat and life for everything around it.

But a second image came just as clearly: a power plant with no fire.

More than two hundred years ago, the pastor of this very church helped ignite the Second Great Awakening, summoning churches into a concert of extraordinary, united prayer. Revival came. The fire fell. But today, a congregation of thirty or forty souls inhabits a sanctuary built to hold twelve hundred. The infrastructure remains. The fire is gone. A whitewashed tomb — beautiful on the outside, but in desperate need of resurrection.

This is not one church’s story. It is New England’s story.

Across this region, in every city and nearly every town, stands a white building with a steeple. Some have stood for centuries. They anchor the town square, stitched into community history in ways no mall or city hall can replicate. They were built as spiritual centers of gravity — power plants. And across New England, the fire has gone out of nearly all of them.

Enter Ezekiel the Prophet.

The prophet was set down in a valley full of dry bones. He was invited to walk among them with clear eyes — to see the people of God as they truly were: cut off, hope lost, vitality gone. These weren’t people who needed a strategy refresh. They needed resurrection.

God asked the strangest question: Son of Man, can these bones live?

Ezekiel’s answer is one of the most honest and faith-filled in all of Scripture. He didn’t say yes. He didn’t say no. He said: Sovereign Lord, you know.

That is the posture of the intercessor — not pretending to certainty, not surrendering to despair. And then God deputized Ezekiel to participate in the answer. Prophesy to these bones. When the bones rattled and came together, the work still wasn’t finished — there was form but no breath. Now prophesy to the breath. First the Word. Then the Spirit. Bones, then breath. Form, then fire.

Many of us have written off the great white buildings, the half-empty sanctuaries, the churches whose best days seem behind them. But God has not given up.

This is the vision behind Revive New England — to walk among the bones without flinching, to speak life, to call on the breath of God to do what no human strategy ever could. We believe the spiritual power plants of this region can be filled with fire again.

Sovereign Lord, you know. Now let us prophesy to the bones.

Rev. Greg Johnson
Director, Revive New England