This morning I woke up early and couldn’t go back to sleep, so I came down to the church office and decided to watch the Tuesday evening message from General Council (The Assemblies of God National meeting of all the pastors). Our national leader George O. Wood was preaching the sermon.
He gave a powerful word about not giving up on your dream and it really, really touched my heart. Sometimes we can fool ourselves into thinking that national leaders are not in touch with what is going on in a local church context, but I have to say he really nailed it, and gave a great call to renewed passion, vision, and action. The story about the missionaries who were sent out during the great depression, or rather, DESPITE the great depression was incredible!
I was also very impressed with watching some of this service, and how they had succeeded in blending a lot of “styles”. There was modern worship, modern staging, but they still sang a few traditional songs, 1/2 the leaders wore suits, some didn’t, and the worship team was multi-ethnic. This approach wouldn’t fly in an “entertainment” context, but in the church context, where we are FAMILY, the rough edges of transition, style, and presentation are fully accepted. just like at a family reunion, there is hip cool teens dressed in the modern clothes talking modern language, hanging out with grandma and granpa in their polyester pants and suspenders. In any other enviroment, that doesn’t work, but when its FAMILY, we look past the differences, and just see FAMILY.
This affirmed to me that we are, as a church, on the right track as we try to blend styles, age groups, and culture. Living in small town Wisconsin, from our limited perspective, sometimes you wonder how things compare here, up against the bigger picture of the national scene. I encourage everybody from church to check out these messages and see for yourself just what kind of a group us AG pentecostals really are, on a national scale, and how we “fit in” to the bigger picture.
Click here to find the Tuesday Evening Video: Genera Council Media
