A searchable, downloadable PDF of the original article appears below. Calvin Brown is the Executive Director of The Renewal Fellowship and Worship Editor of Channels.
Listen to me, 0 Jacob, Israel whom I have called: I am he; I am the first and I am the last. My own hand laid the foundations of the earth, and my right hand spread out the heavens; when I summon them they all stand up together. Come together all of you and listen. Isaiah 48:12-14a
“Listen! Listen! Listen! This is the word of the Lord!” were the shouted words that greeted me in the Lutheran University Chapel over twenty years ago. It had a startling effect. It was both alarming (that someone would shout in church!) and gripping (declaring that what was about to be said was something worth our full attention and that we had better sit up and pay attention)! Since then I have experienced many varieties of religious expression from the dramatic, highly structured liturgical to the energizing but informal charismatic. In all the expressions where I have been open to receiving God, his Spirit has ministered to me in both expected and unexpected ways. Where on a few occasions I have been judgmental or closed the Spirit occasionally breaks through in grace anyway, but most often he allows me to experience the poverty of my own negativity. I have learned it is best to stay open.
As I travel to different areas of the country I find a variety of worship styles and ministry programs, but in those congregations that are alive and hopeful I have found one thing in common – they all have a desire to be open to God. They have a sense that Jesus is among them and they have an expectation that God Almighty who has called them together has a desire to bless them, to speak to them, and to sustain them in their calling.
Our Presbyterian Church in Canada is going through difficult times with major layoffs of national staff (please keep these folk in your prayers), with declining congregations and with a sad prognosis by sociologists. What is needed is not blame-laying or a naive ignoring of the problems. What we need is to open wide our hearts and minds to the “new thing” God wants to do in our midst. Those who will not change will perish and those who have our salvation is in change will also perish. I believe what is needed is a return to the spiritual basics with an open heart. We need to study the Scriptures and our Reformed roots so we can recover what has been lost – the very message the world needs to desperately to hear afresh today. This is not, however, a call to the “good old days” and a conservative mythology. We do not believe that history is circular, like the Greeks thought, but it is linear, like the Hebrews thought. History has a beginning and an end and like Isaiah reminds us, Jesus is both the first and the last. Our life then must be centred in him and we must be willing to risk doing the new things he is doing that are consistent with the truth revealed in Scripture. No amount of strategizing or restructuring or enthusiastic rhetoric will save us. Our only hope lies in the glorious but risky work of centring on Jesus so that in a personal way we can listen and hear him, and then when he summons us we shall all stand up together.