May 16, 2024
Dear Central Church,
I remember a little exercise my primary Sunday school teacher taught our class. We would put our hands together with our index finger pointing up and say, “Here’s the church and here’s the steeple.” We would then open up our hands, reveal all of our fingers, and say, “Open the doors and see all the people!”
The point was to emphasize the people, not the building or the steeple. Our teacher wanted us to know that it was the people that made up the Church.
That little exercise reminds me of the miracle of Pentecost that we are celebrating this Sunday. The gift of the Holy Spirit is given to bring diverse individuals together as one body. Without the Holy Spirit, we’re a collection of individuals, but with the Holy Spirit we become more than the sum of our individual parts. We become the Church!
The mission of Jesus is continued through the ministry of the Church. We’ve always been God’s “Plan A,” and there is no “Plan B.” This is only possible through the power and presence of the Holy Spirit.
This Sunday we are celebrating all that God is doing through his people. We have 20+ people who are joining Central Church and 10+ who are being baptized. Each story represents a miracle of grace and is a testimony to the Spirit moving among us.
Our Brazilian and Hispanic Ministries will come together and worship with us in a multilingual worship experience at 9 and 10:30 am. Following the 10:30 am service, we’ll have TasteFest, in which we sample food from all the different cultures represented at Central.
My prayer is that this Sunday is a little picture of what the Church looked like immediately following the giving of the Holy Spirit, “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer…They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts…And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.” (Acts 2:42-47)
As the Spirit moves among us, we can be this kind of Church. Let’s pray for God’s Holy Spirit to continue to move among his people!
Until He’s Finished,
Pastor Mark