05/24/2026
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Why Can’t it be Pentecost Everyday?
There is something beautiful about the church dressed in red on Pentecost Sunday. I still remember serving a small country church with red pew cushions and red carpet. One year, an older saint in the congregation came up to me and asked why we only used the red paraments for Pentecost.
Wanting to give a thoughtful seminary-trained answer, I started explaining the liturgical calendar, the movement of the Christian year, and the symbolism of the colors. She listened patiently and then simply said, “I just like the way the sanctuary looks when everything matches.”
I smiled and replied, “Someday when we all get to glory, I pray we experience Pentecost every day.”
The older I get, the more I believe that prayer.
As a bishop, my heart is growing deeper into what it means to be Spirit-filled Methodist people. I find myself longing for Pentecost not as a yearly celebration, but as the weekly expectation of the church. I long for congregations where people gather with surrendered hearts, where prayer is more than ritual, where repentance is real, and where the Holy Spirit is not merely acknowledged but welcomed.
The early church was not built on polished programs or human strategy. It was born in an upper room where believers waited together in prayerful dependence upon God. And when the Holy Spirit came, everything changed.
Scripture says:
“They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers… And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people.”
— Acts 2:42, 46–47
That is the church I hunger for.
Not a perfect church, but a Spirit-filled one.
A church where holiness is not cold legalism but joyful surrender. A church where prayer meetings matter. A church where conviction leads to transformation. A church where people testify to freedom from sin, marriages are restored, prodigals come home, children learn to worship, and pastors preach with holy fire and tender compassion.
John Wesley never intended Methodism to become a cold institution. Methodism was born in the fire of revival. It was forged in prayer meetings, class meetings, field preaching, fasting, testimony, and radical dependence upon the Holy Spirit. Our movement was at its best when ordinary people became fully yielded to the extraordinary grace of God.
I do not want Pentecost confined to one Sunday with red paraments and symbolic flames.
I want Pentecost in our pulpits.
Pentecost in our choir lofts.
Pentecost in our Sunday school rooms.
Pentecost around our altars.
Pentecost in our homes.
Pentecost in our class meetings.
Pentecost in our children and youth ministries.
Pentecost in the hearts of pastors who are weary and churches that are spiritually dry.
I want the kind of church where people leave saying, “Surely the Lord was among us.”
Perhaps that dear woman from my little country church understood more theology than I realized.
Maybe she was right.
Maybe the sanctuary really should look like Pentecost every week.
