What A Day!

We had a great day in church today! I'm blown away. Nothing manufactured or hyped, just good Holy Spirit ministry.

Like most churches around the world we celebrated the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost today. I think what hit me the most was a couple of unscripted incidents.

For some weeks we have been collecting coins for the "Turn On the Tap" appeal being run by Samaritan's Purse. The idea is that you fill an ordinary drinking bottle with coins and then send them the proceeds. Last Sunday we closed it off and this morning I announced that we had collected $181, which I thought was a good effort. But someone said "Why don't we have another go around and finish off the $250 which would supply a village with a bore and hand-pump?" So we sent the bottle around and, when it was counted later, we had surpassed the total and were on the way to the second pump. So Tim said "We might as well get the second one as well", so he went and got his wallet and started putting in serious notes and then David joined him as well and by the time they had finished we had enough for the second pump!

Then people hung around through morning tea and well into the afternoon, which was really good. Community is really growing in our church.

This evening we had what amounted to a soaking service, with an extended worship time and a short message. We just put on the CD and let it run without words on the screen, and let God minister whatever He wanted to do in us. Powerful stuff.

Again we had people stay for ages afterwards, just sharing together about what God is doing.

Awesome Pentecost Sunday!