Overture Progress of the Paraclete
Abstract
Pentecost is upon us. This oft-neglected holiday celebrates the event that got the disciples off their backsides and out into the world, where the good news about Jesus needed to be heard. Often called the “birthday of the church,” the coming of the Holy Spirit in Acts 2:1-21 was hugely significant for the small band of Jesus' followers who had remained in Jerusalem after his ascension. As the inheritors of that Holy Spirit-formed church, Pentecost should be significant to us as well. If the Spirit first entrusted Jesus' mission to those plucky disciples, it entrusts the same mission to us today. We would like to think the church has made some progress in the past two thousand years. Part of that desire is a natural affinity for our spiritual ancestry, but part of it is also our present-day culture's rather unnatural obsession with the notion of progress in general. In our market-dominated, profit-obsessed milieu, many cultures (Americans in particular) have a deep-seated need to register progress in every possible way. Progress means personal validation—how else do you explain the McMansion phenomenon? The church is not immune to the progress bug, either. It defines progress by numbers of warm