Pentecost!

In the midst of a celebration, the Holy Spirit showed up, and they understood each other.

On April 23^rd the United Methodist church turned 50 years old.  While the Wesley brothers were inspiration for the beginnings of the church in the mid 1700’s , while on a mission trip from the Church of England, the actual United Methodist Church was defined in 1968.  
The official celebration for the church is on Heritage Sunday, which we will celebrate on May20^th—Pentecost Sunday! We will celebrate the birthday of all that makes us unique as a United Methodist Church while we celebrate the big church—the conglomerate of a variety of voices and practices.  We might call this the church without walls.

Frederick Beuchner wrote:  “The visible church is all the people who get together from time to time in God's name. Anybody can find out who they are by going to church to look. The invisible church is all the people God uses for his hands and feet in this world. Nobody can find out who they are except God. Think of them as two circles. The optimist says they are concentric. The cynic says they don't even touch. The realist says they occasionally overlap.”

This is the perfect time to think about church, the church you first attended, the church you attend now and the church that was born at Pentecost.  What did Peter think would happen after that gathering?  Could the first home churches imagine that they would have organs and pews, hymnals and pulpits?  Did they ever imagine committees and reports?  Did John Wesley ever imagine that the horse would give way to a car, and that clergy would live in parsonages and walk next door for church?  Of course today there are many pastors who feel a bit like John as they travel and hour or more to church or as they care for two or more congregations.

  How close is the worship you partake in on Sunday to the worship you dream of?—Consider this your Pentecost dream, the one that comes with flames and fire and a dove blown in by the Holy Spirit.
As a church in the 21^st century we are constantly being challenged to be on alert for the rustling of the Spirit, to understand the foreign voices, to hear God’s call and to see ourselves as one unique part of something so much bigger than us—the hand clapping, feet stomping body of Christ.