Pentecost 2000 celebrates The Lord of the Dance
By Robert P. Mills, The Layman Online, July 28, 2000
MONTREAT, N.C. – From its inception, “Pentecost 2000: Prayer that Shapes the Future” was designed to be a time of intensive prayer. Much of Thursday morning’s plenary session was spent in corporate and small group prayer for congregations, denominations and the whole Church.
Following worship and Bible study, Brad Long, executive director of Presbyterian-Reformed Ministries International, sponsor of the event, reviewed the first day and a half of the five-day prayer gathering.
Jim Logan, Long said, began Tuesday evening by talking about obedience and worship. “He gave us a better glimpse of who we are as the people of God.” Parker Williamson provided “an excellent presentation of how we really live in two worlds and of the clash between being a Christian and living in our culture.”
Wednesday night with Bill and Rinda Dean, “we dealt with blocks to the vision, things that would get in the way of us giving 100 percent to Jesus Christ. That was preparing us for where we need to go today. We need to move from ourselves to doing the corporate work of prayer.”
Leading into that work, Long next spoke about “a dynamic kind of prayer cooperating with Jesus Christ in shaping God’s reality. We have an example of this kind of prayer in Martin Luther. What ignited the Reformation was not his work of scholarship but his work of prayer, prayer that truly shaped reality. We are still being shaped by the prayers of the Reformers.”
Noting that Calvin said that, “words cannot express how important prayer is,” Long said, “in prayer, above all we invite and welcome the presence of God.”
Picking up a theme from Wednesday’s plenary session, Long cited Hebrews 12:2, “Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith,” and asked, “How do we do that? Through the Holy Spirit. Christian vision is above all seeing Jesus, having our hearts expanded by the heart of Jesus, having our hearts consumed by the love of Jesus and having Jesus’ love in our hearts. Then Jesus lets us see the world through his heart. He lets us reach with his hands. He lets us, like potters, share with him in shaping reality.
“We need to get Jesus’ vision,” Long concluded. “That will then guide us in prayer. That will give us clear direction on how to pray.”
The Lord of the Dance
Long then introduced Richard White, pastor of the Montreat Presbyterian Church, who spoke about the ballroom dance lessons he and his wife have been taking for the last few years. “Our instructor emphasized that one person leads, the other follows,” he said. “If both are trying to lead, you can’t dance.”
“When you think about that,” White continued, “there are some basics. For a woman to be led, she has to know the steps, where to put her right foot first. If you have a basic understanding of the steps, a good leader can take you in directions you’ve never been.”
He then connected his dance experience with Paul’s instruction to “keep in step with the Spirit.” That, said White, is an analogy for what the Holy Spirit does in our lives and in the life of the church. “The Holy Spirit leads. We respond. The Holy Spirit leads us in steps of service to Christ and his world. Sometimes we’ve never been through the steps, we’ve never put it all together.”
Continuing the analogy White noted that “as in dancing so in ministry, you can dance alone, but it’s not much fun. Dancing was meant to be a partner activity.” In ministry, he said, sometimes we get to the place where we know the steps and can do them alone without a radical dependence on the Holy Spirit leading us in the steps. Any level of accomplishment you have in ministry is going to be the temptation to dance alone.
Moreover, “as in dance so in ministry, there is the temptation to want to lead. Two people can’t lead. When we get out in front of the Holy Spirit thinking we know best, the Holy Spirit just stops dancing. We’ve got to come before God with humility, acknowledging that the Holy Spirit is the Lord of the Dance.
Finally, White said, “You can dance alone, you can try to lead, and you can also resist. With the Holy Spirit, sometimes we resist out of fear: ‘I’ve never done that before, I don’t want to take that risk.’ In the past year the Holy Spirit was spinning me in directions I’ve never gone before. I had to trust him rather than resist him.”
“We must also trust that God is faithful,” White concluded, “and respond in confidence that the Holy Spirit knows what he is doing as Lord of the dance.”
The work of prayer
Long then told the 500 participants gathered in Montreat’s Anderson Auditorium, “We’re going to invite the Holy Spirit to lead us in prayer. If you look at the book of Acts you get a good vision of people who danced with the Spirit, who cooperated with the Spirit, who did steps they couldn’t even conceive of, like seeing signs and wonders, seeing the gospel go to the ends of the earth. That’s the vision God wants to birth through us, to guide us specifically in our prayers.”
Tom White, founder and president of Frontline Ministries in Corvallis, Ore., came to the podium to lead in a time of confession “to unclog the pipes of any crud. That’s where we need to begin if this time of prayer is going to be focused and effective.” Encouraging participants to call out words and phrases of individual and corporate confession, White said, “If what we say and pray are to become incense before God’s throne, we need to clear away some of the clutter.”
A time of corporate prayer, confessions and challenges followed.