|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Location:
6425 Jefferson Rd. For
directions, click here.
For
some of our United Methodist churches
in North Georgia, Pentecost Sunday will
reverberate with excitement and joy!
For others, Pentecost will be observed
only casually. For still others, no
mention of Pentecost will be made at
all. It
was not that way in the early church!
For the first 200 years of the
Christian faith, there was only one
major season of celebration -- and it
wasn't Christmas. Instead, it began
around Easter and culminated 50 days
later with the festival of
Pentecost! Pentecost
was a day to stand amazed at the grace
of God. It was a day to embrace a new
Spirit -- a time to allow the Holy
Spirit of God to energize all their
worship and their living. For
the early church, Pentecost was a
highlight of the year -- a day of
excitement and sheer joy. It
was the same way on that first
Pentecost, when the disciples of Jesus
gathered in Jerusalem. Acts
2 tells us they experienced a dynamic
outpouring of God's presence that day
that all but catapulted them into
ministry -- witnessing, proclaiming,
loving, caring, teaching, baptizing,
and sharing with one
another. That
first Pentecost was God's trumpet blast
to the world, birthing the church of
Jesus Christ. The
kind of wind-and-flame Christianity
that flows from Pentecost isn't safe.
It is radically unsafe -- and
uncomfortable. It will cost you
everything. What
difference did He make in the lives of
the early believers to have the Spirit
upon them? Read
about it in the Book of Acts. They sold
whatever they owned so they could make
sure that each individual need was met;
they followed a disciplined routine of
worship, prayer, and Bible Study; they
lived together in wonderful harmony.
And everyday God added to their number
those who were being saved. "You
will receive power when the Holy Spirit
comes upon you and you will be my
witnesses," Jesus proclaimed to His
disciples. To be a witness for Him is
to be a "Christ-bearer" -- to bear the
image of Jesus Christ at the deepest
roots of who we are, what we do, and
where we go. To
that end, may God's Holy Spirit come
and fall afresh on us.
Gateway
Church gathers
for worship
Sundays
at 10:30 a.m.
(Hwy. 129) in Athens,
Georgia.
Ministry
of the
Word:
Recent
sermons
Our quarterly e-magazine
Gateway
Today
For the Gateway family
Pastor
Jerry's Weekly
E-Mail
FROM
THE BISHOP
From
Gateway
Today
The
e-magazine of
Gateway Church
SPRING
2005
Come
Holy Spirit
Pentecost
makes all the
difference
(John 7:39-39)
May
15 is Pentecost Sunday-- the birthday
of the church.
The
outpouring of the Spirit
Wind-and-flame
faith
Bishop G. Lindsey Davis
North Georgia Conference
The United Methodist
Church