Long ago in a galaxy far away.....

I just received a note from someone who commented on what he observed in the early stages of the group that eventually would become Calvary Chapel Yorba Linda, then in 1982 change it's name to The Vineyard Christian Fellowship.
The thing he pointed out was the simplicity that earmarked this group and he is right in observing this. It was very simple in it's formula, we would 'worship' for a long, long time, which in terms of song selection was really challenging at that time, because we didn't have the catalogue of worship songs that we have today. When we finished worshipping we broke up into little groups and we prayed 'for one another'. The ground rule was that you could only ask for prayer for yourself. You weren't allowed to talk about other people or other churches.

His note caused me to reflect on this time and some of the other elements that appeared to create an environment where God could move. There seemed to be a quite and corporate brokenness, a deep sense of need and a hunger for God. No one was thinking of starting a church at the time, there was no 'vision' or agenda in the beginning, just a sense that as Christians we had lost our pure and innocent relationship with Jesus. We had sacrificed it for 'service', ministry, mission ....fill in the blank, but the purity of simply seeking to be a follower of Christ had been lost along the way and we certainly didn't know how to get it back, in fact we probably couldn't have even identified the fact that we had lost it. We just knew that something wasn't right on a very deep level, the passion was certainly absent and the fullness of what we had experienced as young Christians had now turned into a sense of emptiness and there was a sadness concerning this loss. So first and foremost this time was earmarked with a deep awareness of our need.
It was also a time of real humility, those who had once been so sure of themselves were having to face the fact that they didn't have all the answers. Those who had been puffed up, had become deflated by their own failures and shortcomings. And everyone was willing to admit it openly not caring how others would judge them, but the surprise was no one was in the mood to judge anyone else, it appeared that God had imparted a sense of weakness in all of us.

It was in this environment that God came and moved on the hearts of a little rag tag group of people, it was a time of innocence, purity, neediness and humility and our ability to connect with God through our worship as infantile as it was, brought such healing and restored so much hope.

I guess the sad thing is that it was long, long ago, we grew, we caught attention world wide, we became 'something' and we became self conscience. We noticed that God was using us and the reality is over a period of time the innocence was gone, the weakness became strength, the humility became pride, and the purity was polluted. I guess that is what we can expect when we no longer 'glory in our weakness', when our need to do becomes greater than our need to be. Driveness and hard work take the place of dependence and rest.

So as I think about that time on the one hand I am blessed to know that God in His mercy would move in the way He did. I'm also saddened at how hard it would be today to identify any of the characteristics of that earlier time.

May God have mercy on us, one and all and make us aware that 'we can do nothing apart from him'. We may look like we are doing something and it may look like God is at work, but if He is not in terms of the values of the kingdom of God, I wonder if it's worth it?