The World According To Chris Brewer

The photo above shows our church’s exterior looking pretty spiffy, but after a few steps inside the building on 1616 North Robberson Avenue, you’ll know something definitely happened to the interior.

Sunday evening when we got to church, we all found out something horrible had happened to our church when the lights downstairs and on the east half of the church wouldn’t turn on. Half the church’s power was cut — no, zapped is more like it — when lightning struck a transformer during the windstorm last Wednesday night.

We all checked on the church’s electronic equipment and found out we’re in pretty bad shape. Twenty flourescent lights are dead, the computer in Pastor John’s office has been fried and the computer used with our projector might have bitten the dust as well, many lights downstairs aren’t working, and worst of all our projector isn’t showing any signs of life.

As bad as that is, it could have been even worse. Our sound equipment somehow made it out unscathed, and all the lights on the left side of the sanctuary do work. We have power to most classrooms downstairs and we’re still able to use all our kitchen appliances. We’re just going to have to do church like we did in 1986 for awhile.

This might sound kinda weird, but it actually felt more comfortable in the church on Sunday without all the lights and the projector. Granted, I was running sound, which I’m not too terribly fond of but it’s a good thing to do anyway, but just looking out over the crowd, the lack of light forced everyone to move over to the left a bit and the place looked a little more full as a result. Not having the projector on was beneficial because where you’d usually see people staring at the words, people improvised and worshipped on their own.

One thing I’ve noticed over my two months at Crimson House is that when something goes awry, we tend to disregard the circumstance and the Holy Spirit tends to move a bit more freely. It’s happened twice since I’ve been here. Rich and Anita were sick one Sunday and we had to worship off CD, but it didn’t matter because the Spirit still moved strong and we had a powerful altar call. Now half our power’s been cut and the majority of our electronic equipment is bacon, but we didn’t let it get us down Sunday. In fact we had two visitors, one of which received Christ.

To dig a little deeper, I have been astounded over the past week at how God has moved. Last night I had a conversation with my mom in which I revealed I’m not quite ready to take a giant leap of faith for God yet, but the time will come. Today, after I thought about that conversation, I remembered three things:

1. David, one of the good men of our church, received the baptism of the Holy Spirit last week at prayer meeting. I think it was the first time I’ve ever seen it happen when no one was even laying hands on the recipient. So the Spirit doesn’t operate like I thought it did, which is a good thing.

2. When the altar call was given last night, there was no open call for people to come and receive salvation. The young lady who stepped up and received Christ did so in and of her own accord, with the conviction of the Spirit, but no person begging her to come down and “get saved.”

3. During prayer meetings and altar services at church, when people have prayed, they have received healing, salvation, clarity, etc. instantly and without a period of begging, crying out to God for half an hour, or rolling around on the floor. It just happened, God offered it and they took it. Amazing.

With the same power that the bolt of lightning struck the transformer on the east end of our church last Wednesday, it occurred to me this afternoon that God definitely can’t be put in a box or limited by what we think of Him. And He showed me that the Holy Spirit is not dependent upon an earthen vessel in which to do His work. If He wants a work completed in someone, all he needs is a willing heart and their receptiveness to His Spirit. That’s it.

So turning back to the original point, it’s amazing how a work of nature that has the capability to kill, maim and cause untold damage, has seemingly crippled our church’s technological advancements for the time being — yet has helped us along for one weekend so far and taught me a wonderful spiritual lesson as well.

Now let’s pray the insurance claims process goes well.