I saw the movie, Jesus Revolution, yesterday.  I realized that the Jesus revolution in the Catholic Church was the Charismatic Movement in the same times. It too stressed accepting Jesus as your personal Savior and Lord, but also prayer for receiving the gifts of the Spirit.                                         

 The gifts of the spirit are the Word of Wisdom, the Word of Knowledge, the gift of Faith, the gift of Healing, the working of Miracles, Prophecy, Discernment of spirits, diverse kinds of Tongues, the Interpretation of Tongues.                                                                    The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.   (Some translations of the fruits are different) 

But you can see that the gifts are for the building up of the church and the fruit would be the spiritual growth from experiencing the gifts and grace.  And then there are ministries within the church such as apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, teachers.  It’s logical that these would work together for the good of not only the church, but the world.

My experience has shown me the reality of all of these.  But sadly, also that our human tendency to let the temptations that Jesus resisted get the upper hand, often leads us to misuse them for our own profit and ego.      

 After my search and my conversion to Jesus rather than a religion, I went back to the Catholic Church. Then a Presbyterian in my ecumenical prayer group put me in contact with a Catholic Charismatic prayer group at the Sisters of Mercy’s convent. There they were experiencing what I was.  Interesting to me was that the liberal and more intellectual branch of the Presbyterian church, and the Episcopal and  Catholic churches with their formal  worship services and very structured hierarchies, seemed to be where the Spirit was exploding.  I learned that the most important fruits for leaders in this kind of renewal are faith, humility, and openness to the Spirit. In my sixty years in Catholicism, I did every ministry that women were allowed to do.  I was, at best, mediocre at all of them except being Director of Religious Education for the Catholics for the Chaplains Division at Fort Campbell. There I was good at doubling the number of students, recruiting and encouraging teachers, and finding two awesome volunteers to be my right and left hands, who put in forty hours a week working as volunteers.  My job was a civil service position, so I was getting paid.  I am a good talent scout, recruiter, and cheerleader. I am not a leader or a teacher.  I am a cheerleader. And though in the Catholic church, most of the preaching ends up as teaching.  They are not the same.  Preaching is inspiring others to be open not only to God, but to their gifts and ministries in the church.  Everyone can experience the gifts when needed for the benefit of the church, but different personalities are better suited for different  ministries. 

I began attending the Presbyterian USA denomination after being in a Catholic Diocesan Ministry Training course that went two years for women. If men wanted to be Deacons….which allowed them to Baptize, officiate at Marriages, and Preach, they went a third year.  I was certified to train Catechists. I was on a Diocesan  Education Committee with a Priest who was a Scripture Scholar for Vatican ll, a theologian who taught at a Catholic College, A Catholic Psychiatrist, and the Diocesan Director of Religious Education. So when the men needed to have someone with credentials to write a recommendation for them to become a Deacon, they came to me for it. Most admitted to me they didn’t really “get” the Scriptures and didn’t want to preach.  It was kind of the last straw for me as a woman.

I found my niche at First Presbyterian doing what I call my “Sermon from  the Molehill.”  I get to open our worship service and give a three to five minute “pep” talk at least once a month.  It’s within my skill set and praying, reading that week’s Sunday scriptures, reflecting to see connections in my own life, writing several drafts, then timing it and editing takes me from twenty to thirty hours spread out over several days.  I take any Scriptures on my Sunday as letters from God to me personally.  So it’s wonderful spiritual food for me and time listening to God. And sometimes I get feedback that what I’ve said has made a difference for someone.

I miss the Charismatic Conferences at Notre Dame and I miss the music group on Saturday nights in my years in the Catholic Church, and the wonderful friends I had there, but those experiences and the amazing things I have witnessed continue to keep me tuned into God even when I am sick or dealing with worry for someone I love. 

Thanks to my Methodist mother who, when I came home from Catholic school and told her she wasn’t going to heaven because she wasn’t Catholic, replied with great conviction: “Honey, you and your dad are going to get into heaven on my Methodist prayers, That was my first clue that nobody has a monopoly on God.  When searching in my late twenties, I attended introductory classes in other Christian denominations and realized that each focused on parts of the Scriptures and ignored others. After my conversion to Jesus as my Savior and Lord, the Scriptures came alive and relevant to my daily life. I begam to give witness talks to Sunday School classes or was on weekend renewal teams for Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian and Episcopal denominations.  I found there were people in all of them who had found what I had found in Jesus, but others who had inherited their parents religions, but had missed the main point.  God is alive and well in our world in spite of us!  Jesus lived and died to flesh out the unconditional love of God and to show us the way to grow spiritually to learn to love as God loves us.  The Spirit is within us.  But sometimes we have to let go of preconceived ideas and listen to God’s voice in the Scriptures, in the ‘coincidences’ in our life, and find quiet moments to hear the voice of the Spirit within us.