It is the week after Easter Sunday, and the worship committee is meeting to think about Pentecost Sunday. Memories of Holy Week are fresh. The Easter celebrations were wonderful, but the committee is tired. When the talk comes to Pentecost, there is almost a collective sigh. You’ve done it all before: red banners, red balloons, birthday cakes, mobiles, fans, wind chimes, and candles. Every imaginable variation of wind and fire (allowed by the fire marshal!) seems to have been explored. Someone on the committee finally voices the obvious question: Why are we doing this, anyway?

“It is about gifts,”
someone exclaims!

Oh, we know about the disciples gathered in the upper room and the birth of the church, but what do we want and hope to happen at a Pentecost service? In a moment of desperation and inspiration, the group pulls out a Bible and reads the Pentecost story in Acts 2. Aside from the lack of decency and order in the biblical account, the group begins to ponder how to discover present-day congregational life in this text.

“It is about gifts,” someone exclaims! Everyone else appears puzzled. “Don’t you see? This whole business of a violent wind and tongues as of fire is the gifting of the disciples that is manifest in the proclamation of the gospel to people around the world.” Suddenly, everyone started talking at once. Slowly, we reined ourselves in and began to explore how our congregation helped members discover and exercise our spiritual gifts. Someone remembered that a group of recently baptized folks and new members were meeting each week during the fifty days between Easter Sunday and Pentecost to discern the gifts that they bring to the community of faith. In a preliminary draft for use at a Pentecost service, the following question is asked of those recently baptized:

Will you endeavor to pattern your life on the Lord Jesus Christ,
In gratitude to God and in service to others,
At morning and evening, at work and at play,
All the days of your life?

Response: I will with God’s help.

Almighty God,
By the power of the Spirit you have knit your
servants into the one body of your Son, Jesus Christ.
Look with favor upon them in their commitment
to serve in Christ’s name.
Give them courage, patience, and vision;
and strengthen us all in our Christian vocation
of witness to the world and of service to others;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The significance of this act extends to all of the baptized as it helps us to grasp the on-going baptismal journey that lasts our entire life. This Pentecost, think bigger than banners! Reclaim a vision of the church that calls us all through the waters of baptism to identify, claim, and use the gifts that God gives us in service to the world.

Steve Shussett is Associate for Spiritual Formation. Contact him at (888) 728-7228, ext. 5157, or send him an e-mail.