Sparks Are Gonna Fly

49 "I have come to bring fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! (Luke 12:49 NIV)

I grew up in a very traditional, small-town Methodist church. There was beautiful stained glass, a majestic pipe organ, and a robed choir directed by my father. The music was a blend of high-church anthems from classical literature and spirited hymns from the little brown Cokesbury hymnals. We were quintessential mainstream Protestantism and worship was, well, very predictable, appropriate, and tame.    

A block away from my house was a church that offered a completely different world. It was a small, Pentecostal congregation that met Sunday morning and evening and Wednesday night. Like most churches in the 1960s there was no air conditioning, so on hot summer Wednesday nights they opened the windows which allowed my friends and me a chance to catch a glimpse of a very different way of going to church. Though we couldn't see in the windows--they were too high off the ground--we could hear the singing and shouting that carried around the block on the moist, summer breeze. I distinctly remember hearing drums and guitars and people singing like their lives depended on it. 

Then, when I was somewhere around 11 or 12, I got to see for myself. A couple of my friends from the neighborhood who went to that church invited me and a couple of other boys to attend a service just for young people. It was a hot summer night, but my mom insisted I wear a shirt with a tie because that's they way you dress when you go to church. (I think the same idea is behind always wearing new underwear with no holes when you travel--you know, in case you're in an accident) I remember walking in wide-eyed and tingling with expectation, if also a little embarrassed because I was the only person there wearing a tie. There was no stained glass, but, sure enough, there was a small set of drums on the platform right next to an amplifier with two guitars propped up against it. There were tambourines scattered on top of a small, electronic organ that didn't have a back so the tubes and wires were visible to the congregation. 

The service started as most services start with a welcome and a prayer and an invitation for all the guests to stand up and be recognized. Then the song leader started a hymn a capella and the band found the key and took flight. One of the guitars was a bass and I remember feeling the sound thump my chest as we sang. It made we want to know the songs better so I could sing louder. In fact, I had never heard music like that in church. The singing from the congregation quickly overpowered the little PA system. The organ sounded wonderfully distorted as it tried to keep up with the climbing decibel level, the tubes glowing bright orange inside. It all blended into an edgy, cacophonous roar that made my heart race. 

After 30 minutes or so of singing the band stopped and the minister took the platform to pray accompanied by the prayers of the congregation creating a different kind of roar that was mysterious and very rich. Suddenly, the minister began to preach, and I say suddenly because he, at once, stomped back from the pulpit and shouted that his "Helper" had arrived. The next hour was confusing, frightening, exhilarating, and totally fascinating. I have no real recollection of what was said, but I vividly remember how it was said and the transforming effect it had on the congregation. My fixation on the preacher and his passionate shouts and wails was only broken by my friends' mom who had been sitting with us but was now crawling on her hands and knees to the altar crying and shouting her son's names.    

Please don't read this as a cynical attempt at humor or a derisive analysis of a different manner of worship. There was never even a momentary impulse to elbow my fellow visitors and snicker. I was all-in, emotionally and spiritually, and left there transformed at some level I still can't deny or explain. But I am convinced of this much. The fire that Jesus said he had come to ignite swept through that little church and warmed every soul in the place. The fire Jesus is anxious to light is the same fire John the Baptist spoke of in Luke 3:16. John, and every other preacher who came after him including this one, applied the water of baptism which is a sign of what Jesus came to do: to ignite the world with the fire of baptism which is nothing less than the transforming power and presence of Almighty God through the person of his Holy Spirit. It was this same Spirit who blazed through that little church in my neighborhood and longs to blaze through every church that features a cross on its steeple. 

Of course, we don't have to shout and dance in worship to give evidence of the Holy Spirit's presence. Seems like there is a story about a "still, small voice" that transforms with whispers. But the lasting impression from that Pentecostal service years ago is that the people in that church checked their inhibitions, their inappropriate sense of propriety, and their preconceived limitations of what God might do at the door. If a fire were going to break out, they were committed to be kindling, not water. As we continue our journey toward the cross and the baptism of sacrifice Jesus had reserved for only him, could we commit to checking our preconceived notions of what God can and can't or will and won't do at the door and just be kindling in a world that needs transforming fire? 

Blessings,
Larry