Today I worshiped at First Church Charlotte, a Pentecostal church on the east side of Charlotte. Despite having lived in Charlotte for more than twenty-six years, I looked up the church on the internet and didn't have any idea where it was or how to get there. But I did find it eventually and in time for the 9:15 service. I had a great time and I encountered some big themes about myself.
Pentecostalism is as much a style of engaging with the Holy Spirit directly as it is a unique denominational and theological branch of Christianity. Because of this vague categorization, I am unclear on how to state the number of Pentecostal churches where I have attended worship. I think it makes sense to say that this was my fifth time participating in a Pentecostal service.
This was one of those places where the congregation ecstatically pleads with Holy Spirit to be in their presence. And, of note, the pastor referred to that key part of the Triune Godhead as "The Holy Ghost," a less-used term these days.
I got to First Church at 9:00, before the service started.
Here is a picture of the exterior of First Church:
As I entered, I noted a few things. This is a congregation that is extremely diverse across racial lines. Black, white and Asian members were mixed together, which is a very common part of Pentecostalism. This mode of worship appeals to people from all walks of life and from all of America's communities.
This observation allows me to assert a finding that I can now say definitely based on this spiritual pivot - denominations are very often a form of segregation.
The highest degree of segregation is evident in the Orthodox lines. There are Orthodox churches for Egyptians (Copts), Russians, Greeks, Serbians and so on down the line. One church for one nation of people.
Then there is Catholicism, which has deep historical ties to certain nationalities - Spanish (and therefore Latin American), Irish, Italian, Slovenian, Filipino, Polish and Austrian are the largest nationalities that contribute to the global Catholic community.
Then there are the mainline Protestant denominations of Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists and Episcopalians. While they are each somewhat diverse, these groups almost always divide into congregations that are internally segregated by social class and race.
Not so with Pentecostals.
My experience is that these particular Christians are very diverse in a natural way and have achieved that level of diversity without any votes on amendments at some national synod or something like that.
Pentecostalism is that place where all people are gathered together as one.
And can I get an Amen for that? :)
The music started. It was fantastic. I have developed a deeper affection for church music that gets one out of the seat and swaying, dancing, lifting one's hands. Hymns are elegant, complex and beautiful. With that said, they hold less appeal over time in a world of rapidly evolving and increasingly global musical styles.
I did get caught up in the music. The place felt alive.
Most people were dancing, or at least swaying. There were some ecstatic shouts. It clearly was a Pentecostal event, so very different from the settings in which I have spent most of my life. It is something that is increasingly familiar and enjoyable to me.
As I swayed and prayed, did I feel that familiar touch in my heart and mind that always reduces me to a divine mess? Actually, I did not. Nor did I witness the things I saw at places like Fire Church and Morningstar, where people spoke in tongues and were knocked over in their seats, slain in the Spirit.
Despite this difference, I definitely felt engaged. I enjoyed myself as the music spun the congregation forward while they cried out to bring The Holy Ghost into the sanctuary.
Pictures and video of the music.
(of note, every woman at this church wore a skirt)
The music died down and a woman came on stage and greeted the congregation. By this time, everyone was nicely warmed up. The exchange between this woman and the assembled faithful had the characteristics of a familiar conversartion. As I pieced things together, I learned that she was Charla Elms, wife of Nathan Elms, the Head Pastor of First Church. After she greeted everyone, there was a short video that described some recent activities and events that the church was offering.
After that, Nathan Elms himself came on stage and gave a great sermon. It helped me and was thought-provoking.
Before he gave the sermon, he emphasized two things.
First, that he had been sick this week (not Covid) and if anyone heard him cough, not to run out of the sanctuary (laughs).
Secondly, he said that the church was having a meeting later in the day during which there would be an exploration of The Holy Ghost "for people who had never had it come upon them."
This was a glimpse of Pentecostalism's core message - The Holy Ghost is alive and present in the world and It can touch you directly, bringing you into direct union with God.
If I had stayed for that meeting on The Holy Ghost, this might have been a different kind of essay.
Alas, I did not.
His sermon covered two stories, one Old Testament and one New Testament.
The first was of a time that David seemed to divest himself of his position as King of Israel, instead submitting to God as more of a Priest for a period of time. David wife told him that he was making a grave error by leaving the role that God had appeared to have for him.
David had departed his ordinary and expected course in life to experience the uncertainty and exhilaration of following God directly.
The second story dealt with John 4, when Yeshua encountered the Samaritan woman at the well. Israelites and Samaritans shared the land that is now known as Israel, but they were alienated from one and other in many ways. Their beliefs on the nature of Judaism differed. Their ethnic categories had drifted over time, with the Samaritans being of "impure blood" after they mixed with neighboring people. This, combined with the fact that men did not interact with women outside their families in a public setting, meant that Yeshua was breaking with convention in a radical way.
Talking to a woman in public outside of one's family. Not supposed to.
Talking to a Samaritan as an Israelite. Not supposed to.
An Isrealite talking to a Samaritan woman! Not supposed to twice over.
Scandal!
Revelation.
Yeshua had departed His ordinary and expected course in life to experience the uncertainty and exhilaration of following God... and in His case, being Emmanuel, God With Us.
Some excerpts of the sermon:
The main point? Leave your lane. Depart the ordinary. Leap into the unknown and the uncertain. Break with convention. Live outside of your current role. And do all of this relentlessly and consistently if these are the barriers that must be broken so you can come into alignment with God.
This resonated with me in a very deep way. It might be said that I have had a naturally rebellious disposition for much of my life. Conformance to a norm while being stationary has sometimes felt like a form of soul death to me. While that rebellious disposition has been the source of some of my greatest accomplishments, it has also been the source of great heartache, as well.
My mother (with a smile) says that if I had been her first, I would have been her last. I hear these words in the spirit they are intended. I was an extremely willful child and it must have been extremely challenging to parent me at different points in my young life. The fact she says it with a smile shows that the difficulty of raising me has been tempered and softened with the passage of time.
The young, serious man who enjoyed wearing sport coats to high school ended up shaggy, disheveled and living in a commune on the edge of the forest in Ohio by 1990. I lived many of those years in pursuit of what I thought of as cognitive expansion.
The safe and familiar bubble of the Fairfield County where I was raised could have held next-level opportunities as I considered building my life around the hustle and bustle of New York City. Instead, I lobbied to move and start life anew, with a newborn baby, in North Carolina. A place where we had no job prospects, as well as no friends or family. Or even acquaintances.
Working hard for years in a beautiful and growing Charlotte culminated in acquiring a nice home in Montibello. It all looked absolutely great. And it was! A few years later, I moved the family to India for two years.
It's a pattern. If there is a conventional path that I am supposed to adhere to, I put it to the test. I devolve mandates. I break things down to see what I can build back up on my own terms. I refuse to be told what to do.
Life on my own terms.
Autonomy.
And it has been fantastic, at time!
This tendency has been the source of my greatest strength. It has also been a source of great difficulty, even calamity. Many people in my life who have experienced me in the act of devolving something, of challenging a set of expectations, of deconstructing a facet of existence... well, some of them have found it very difficult.
Including me, eventually.
Lately, I have started to look back at my life and see things in a more varied way than I used to.
There are some great edifices of accomplishment in my past. There is also a bit of smoldering carnage. To be kind to myself, I need to remember that this is the vista that everyone has of their own life.
We live the best of times, we live the worst of times.
And I trust that I have finally learned what I needed to learn.
It is this - everyone is seeking meaning and hope in the midst of a world that seems to offer, at times, precious little of either.
And the only thing that has never failed to carry me through and animate my heart are the Cross and the Empty Grave. Nothing else has, and I assure you I have sought far and wide.
What does all of this mean? It means so very much. But it's often useful to simplify, so I will make an effort to do that.
The Cross and the Empty Grave all boil down to four simple themes.
1) This all exists for a reason. Everything. The entire Cosmos have an intent.
2) Divinity is the foundational reality of everything, of reality itself.
3) We each have a chance to achieve union with that Divinity through a preposterous gesture from a God that loves us so much as to become the Slain Lamb on which the whole Cosmos pivoted forever.
4) In short, God loves me. And He loves you. And God is Love.
And that reality allows me to fully integrate an idea which I have declared with my words, if not always with my deeds, since I was a boy of eleven - Jesus is Lord of All.
What must I do in the face of this reality?
Yield.
My strength, my ambition, my hungers, my wants, my presence, my sense of power, my pain, my venom, my hopes, my possessions, my safety, my identity, my relationships, my yearnings, my fears, my money, my aspirations, my guilt, my pride, my shame, my gladness, my goals, and even my very life itself. Until my last breath. And then beyond.
Yield.
I trust God to fashion my tendency to "leave my lane" toward new and higher things that serve His Kingdom. Time and providence alone will tell where it is all going.
But I yield it all now.
How do I feel?
It is well with my soul.
Amen.
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