GOD ALIVE AT GOSPEL CHURCH

Luanne Austin

The sun is shining, it’s 68 degrees, and the air is alive with birdsound and squirrels and green growing things. What a beautiful morning for a bicycle ride, a hike in the mountains, just sitting on the porch.

Oh. It’s Sunday. I have to go to church.

So many of us churchgoers are just putting in pew time because we’re supposed to. Then we feel guilty for not wanting to be in church. After all, it’s the Lord’s Day, is it not? These are God’s people. This is worship.

Yet I’m not running off into sin. I pray. I enjoy reading my Bible. I sense God working in my life. I see him at work in others.

So what’s wrong? My discontent, I’ve realized, is not with God. It’s not even with people. It’s with some of the contemporary models of the church.

"As I read the Old and New Testaments I am struck by the awareness therein of our lives being connected with cosmic powers, angels and archangels, heavenly principalities and powers, and the groaning of creation," says Madeline L’Engle (The Irrational Season, HarperSanFrancisco, 1977).

"It’s too radical, too uncontrolled for many of us, so we build churches which are the safest possible places to escape God. We pin him down, far more painfully than he was nailed to the cross, so that he is rational and comprehensible and like us, and even more unreal," she continues.

Happily my first church experience was not unreal. Gospel Community Church, in West Sayville, New York, made room for God at worship services.

I had never attended church before I "got saved" in 1976 at age 21 in the wee hours alone in my bedroom. Thus began my relationship with the living God. The next day, I called the only person who might understand what had happened. Thus began my relationship with Christianity.

Sherry invited me to a Bible study at her house, where I met Dennis, a former atheist who became a Christian while mountain climbing (when he began falling during a tough climb he heard himself shout "God! Help me!"); Lenny, a former junkie who was miraculously cured of his heroin addiction on meeting Christ; and Gigi, a Broadway actress who was a "completed Jew."

At Sherry’s house we shared testimonies, prayed for each other, and tried to understand what the Bible meant. After a few weeks, my vast lack of understanding became awkwardly obvious and the group suggested I attend church.

Pastor Al Isaaksen had been a milkman until his mid-40s, when he "got saved" and called to the ministry while taking a shower. He claimed the Lord called him to deliver the milk of the Word to babes in Christ. So that’s what he did. Slim and energetic with a white-haired crew cut, Al was always excited about God’s Word and what God was doing in people’s lives. He loved to pray.

I knew Gospel wasn’t like other churches. During my search for the living God I had visited a few, and they were programmed and boring compared to what I found at Gospel.

The service began predictably enough with the singing of some old hymns accompanied by piano or organ. Then a lone guitarist would lead the congregation in choruses. After a few songs, during a lull, someone in the congregation would start singing. Everyone joined in.

This set the pace for the rest of the worship service. Different people spontaneously started songs, read Scripture, gave a word of exhortation or encouragement or prophecy, led in prayer, and shared brief testimonies. The testimonies of new converts, of answered prayer, of God’s protection or healing or provision always inspired us to enthusiastic and grateful worship. Periods of silence were filled with awe and expectation.

Though the worship was unplanned by leaders or a committee, the services at Gospel were always orderly, as though planned by Someone Else. An elder always stood or sat up front but rarely interrupted the flow. The service was like springs bubbling up into streams, streams flowing into tributaries, and tributaries feeding into a great river of worship.

Al loved to teach about Old Testament types, so he always ended up talking about Jesus Christ and about his work on the cross. Bible scholars might have had some concerns, but as a new believer I learned that every story, passage, or topic in the Bible pointed to God’s love and plan of redemption. The elders, who taught on Wednesday nights, were more topic-oriented but just as Christ-centered.

In the three years I attended Gospel Church, I learned most of the Old Testament stories, the New Testament Gospels and letters, and the basic doctrines of Christianity. I learned what happened inside of me the night I "got saved," when I embarked on my new life.

A half-hour before each service, the old white clapboard church was open for prayer around the altar. This half-hour was often a time of confrontation, confession, and/or reconciliation between members.

After the Sunday and Wednesday night services, coffee and cake were served in the fellowship hall. People sat at round tables, Bibles open, discussing Scripture. Groups of two or more stood, hands clasped or around shoulders, praying together; and others just chatted, getting to know each other. Those of us who smoked cigarettes brought our coffee out to the back porch, where we fellowshipped in the same spirit.

It was during this time once that a fellow named Harry approached and asked how I was. I said fine. Then he peered at me and said, "No, I mean, how are you?"

I looked into his face and said, "Oh Harry, I’m having a terrible time."

I was quitting smoking, and it was rough. Harry grabbed a few other people and they prayed for me. On another night, the pastor’s wife, Dorothy, pulled me aside and gave me the offering money. I had not told anyone how broke my family was. It was not unusual to come away from church with a dinner invitation or to bring some folks home with you.

Gospel Church seated about 200 people comfortably, which it did at the night services. On Sunday morning extra chairs were set in the aisles. Sometimes it seemed the walls would burst. Twice in the three years I attended Gospel, elders left to start a church in another town, and people who lived in that area were encouraged to attend. So the church never lost its intimate feeling, never grew mega, never got sidetracked on a building program.

I sound sentimental about my first church experience. Yes, I do get that way, and no, the Gospel Church style of worship is not the only way God inspires. But delving deeper, it’s not just Gospel Community Church, 52 Atlantic Ave., West Sayville, New York, that I yearn for, but its qualities, qualities which fit so well my particular spiritual needs and hungers:

• Because the services were centered around members’ participation, each was different and none was predictable. We went to church knowing we might be stirred to share a Scripture, a song, or a testimony, that we might offer a word of encouragement or prayer for healing. We each went to minister as well as to receive. No person or team could be attributed with the credit for putting on a "good service."
• Jesus was at the center of every sermon. He was the reason we were there. All doctrine and teaching sprang from the way he lived his life, died his death, rose in his resurrection, and blessed believers with his Holy Spirit. We were identified as followers of nobody but Jesus.
• With worship and Word fresh in our minds, we talked about the experience around the table. Our fellowship was based on what the Holy Spirit had evoked in us during the service, what he was doing in our lives, and how we could pray for each other.
• We were friends inside and outside the church. We dined in each other’s homes and were involved in each other’s lives (we weren’t even related!) because we truly cared for each other. Even now, my favorite fellowship is around the dinner table, not in the foyer on my way to my car.

The book of Acts speaks of these things: "And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they partook of food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved" (2:46).

And 1 Corinthians 2:1-5: "For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified . . . and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God." Paul adds in 14:26, "When you come together, each one has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation."

Thinking back, the characteristic that seemed to define Gospel was its liberty. Nobody engineered the services around a theme with carefully planned readings or songs. No leader was afraid of or threatened by the participation of members. There was a respect for the spirit of God dwelling within each one of us. He—God, the Holy Spirit—was in control.

We humans consist of body, soul, and spirit. As spiritual beings, we yearn for connection with the cosmic powers, the supernatural, and creation. We catch glimpses of that other world occasionally when we let ourselves go in worship, while gazing at the stars on a summer night, or when we first fall in love.

We are nudged by our spiritual selves when we get a "feeling" about something about to happen, have an inexplicable urge to pray for a friend, or feel a sudden awareness of God’s grace.

We must pay attention to our spiritual selves, respect the spirit of Christ in others, and give the Holy Spirit lots of room in our church services.

This approach will not always lead to copies of what inspired me at Gospel Church. But if the Holy Spirit is present, something will come truly alive. The one thin I hope we never come away from church saying is that "It was a nice service."

—Luanne Austin is an award-winning religion writer and columnist at the Daily News-Record in Harrisonburg, Virginia. A collection of her "Rural Pen" columns is now available in a book, Stain the Water Clear, available at www.iuniverse.com.