Magyar Egyház, 2010 (89. évfolyam, 1-4. szám)
2010-01-01 / 1-2. szám
MAGYAR EGYHÁZ 5. oldal The second, a boy, stood up and added his sentence, 'I believe in Jesus Christ, his only son, our Lord.’ But then silence descended over the class. Finally, one girl, who felt she knew what was wrong stood up and announced, 'I’m sorry, sir, but the boy who believes in the Holy Ghost is absent today!’ And that’s the way it is in most Christian churches: the Holy Spirit is strangely absent. Yet, were it not for the giving of the Spirit, there would be no Christian Church. We celebrate Pentecost not only as the birthday of the Church, but because there is something about the strange, ecstatic events of that day long ago that is available Sunday after Sunday in our church and in every church. They were there: Peter, John and James, and the other apostles. Acts 2:1-21. They were there when the Spirit descended. And today we are in our churches, waiting as they waited for the gift of God’s Spirit. We wait for God”s Spirit to heal us, to take away the wounds of the past, to take away our sense of have been shamed and betrayed by those who were supposed to love us. We wait for God’s Spirit to heal our bodies of illness and weakness. We wait for God’s Spirit to heal our minds of doubt and fear and loneliness. We wait for God’s Spirit to heal us of selfcenteredness, of self-pity, of self-loathing. We wait for God’s Spirit to renew us, to give a visions and dreams so powerful that the very utterance of them pulls us toward their fulfillment. We wait for God’s Spirit to release our creativity, to call forth our gifts and talents. We wait for God’s Spirit to recreate us as the Church, just as the Holy Spirit melded and empowered the rag-tag band of which we read in Luke’s account of Pentecost. And if God’s Spirit fills and indwells and excites and validates and commissions us, what will be the result? What can we expect as we together approach a new century? Lets talk obout the mission of our Church, which could be the statement of our congregations. Our mission is to provide a sanctuary where the congregation can worship God according to the teachings and spirit of Jesus Christ; to nurture the spiritual, moral, and intellectual growth of each person in our congregation; to serve God with our talents, our time, our energy, and our money, accepting full stewardship for our community - the World; to encourage others to join us in our ministries. Our Mission Statement is vision of our Church as it moves toward to the future. It is a vision of the emergence of a Spirit-fdled church. And what exactly is a Spirit-filled church? A Spirit-filled church is a Christ-centered church. What is this church’s greatest asset or any church’s greatest asset? Its buildings, its programs, its worship services, its music, its finances, its wonderful people? Truly, it is none of these. For these are only the temporal building blocks. The eternal foundation of this church or of any church is the will of God revealed in the person of Jesus, the teachings of Scripture, and the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit. Understand Jesus in any way that suits you. Regard him as a prophet, a sage, a seer, a holy man, God’s most perfect image, God incarnate, the coming king, and the heavenly judge. Know him as the divine spark within each of us, the true Self at the core of each person. Know him as Jesus the man or as the cosmic Christ, as the teacher of moral maxims or as the eternal Word through whom all things were made.Know him in any way, shape, or form you can, but know him. A Spirit-filled church is a worshiping church. A church is a sanctuary, a place of refuge, a place to celebrate, to rejoice, to praise God. Worship is the central act of the believing community. It is the single act that constitutes and maintains the community as a community. Coming to church is coming to a sacred place at sacred time to deliberately bind ourselves to God and to one another. Worship is the intentional, God-directed, Christ-centered, Spirit-charged act of the total personality within the fellowship of believers. Accept no substitutes. A Spirit-filled church is a biblically literate church. The secrets of life and death are there - in the sacred text. The message that each of us needs in a time of doubt and despair is there. But we resist and we ignore that message. We fear most what we understand least. A Spirit-filled church is a thanksgiving church. Worship is our way of telling God that we love him; stewardship is our way of showing him. All that we have comes from God. He is the source of our lives and the landlord of the universe. Thanksgiving is merely paying the rent due to our Creator. Nothing more obviously reveals commitment to a church than one’s personal giving pattern. Show me a person’s check stubs and 1 will show you what he or she really believes. Nothing creates greater excitement and forward movement in a church than increased financial support. And nothing better enables a church to do the work to which it is called. Moreover, people who are generous with their money are generous in their appreciation of one another. They see life as a gift and live it with gratitude and zest. Nothing cures depression and low self-esteem like generosity. A Spirit-filled church is a love-centered and caringthrough-sharing church. A Spirit-filled church is a praying church. Prayer is the stretching out of the divine within each of us to the God who made us in his own image. Prayer brings love alive among us. Prayer lies at the heart of all personal godliness. Prayer throws us onto the frontier of the spiritual life. Of all the Spiritual Disciplines prayer is the most central ... it is the discipline of prayer that brings us into the deepest and highest work of the human spirit. Real prayer is life-creating and life-changing. 1 am convinced that every activity of a Christian church and every day of every individual Christian’s life should begin and end with prayer. A Spirit-filled church is a culturally aware and socially active church. A Spirit-filled church is a progressive church. We never become truly spiritual by sitting down and wishing to become so. You must undertake something so great that you cannot accomplish it unaided. And I would add, the place for greatness is here. The time for greatness is now. A Spirit-filled church is an evangelism-intensive and evangelism-affirming church. A Christ-centered, worshiping, biblically literate, and generous church cannot help ut attract members. A caring, praying, aware, and progressive church will always draw likeminded and like-spirited people as surely as a magnet draws iron filings. A Spirit-filled church is a secret that cannot be kept. A Spirit-filled church cannot keep itself from reaching out to others. And even as we reach out, those who are hungry for the Spirit of God will be find us, and those who are being fed will stay. They were there and they reported, “We hear the wonders of God in our own tongues. We will be in our churches on this Pentecost, ready for the wind and the flame of God’s Spirit, ready to be part of the wonders of God here and now. And our hearts cry out, "Come, Holy Spirit, come!” Sándor Szabó. Bishop
