"Lord, Do It Again!"

In his book, "The Promise of the Spirit," William Barclay remembers the early church as a group of one hundred and twenty poor, uneducated, simple people who were told their mission was to go out and change the world.  "Ye shall be witnesses unto me (Jesus)..."(Acts 1:8).  "Go ye and teach all nations."  (Matthew 28:19).  Before they went, they were told to wait for the Holy Spirit to come and when He did, those one hundred and twenty became hundreds of thousands who changed the world for the crucified and risen Christ.   

It was after this section that Barclay wrote such a hopeful word, "And when the Holy Spirit came, tasks which seemed impossible somehow became possible."  Back in the middle of the last century, Barclay spoke both to the problem of the church and the answer to its failure.  Those of us who have given leadership to the church have paid too little attention to the Holy Spirit and the church under our watch has suffered because of it.  

I remember years ago someone writing that the Holy Spirit could leave my highly organized denomination and it would run on for a very long time before anyone ever noticed.   Before we lost our way as a church, it would have been a good thing to have remembered the Root that is our origin, but then, we were too busy hurrying about to change the world with the tools we thought were needed.  Those tools are not working, have not worked, and will not work.  Maybe it is simply time to be on our knees looking toward Pentecost and praying, "Lord, do it again!"