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GOING GLOBAL
I greet you in this Season After Pentecost on behalf of the West Ohio Conference Center staff, the district superintendents and the pastors and laity of over 1,150 congregations in the West Ohio Conference.
Ordinary Time is the common name given to the season after Pentecost or the long months between Pentecost Sunday and the beginning of a new year at Advent. It is called Ordinary Time because during this period we turn ourselves back to the business of applying Jesus’ teachings to our day-to-day lives. This is the season in which we apply the incarnational disciplines that express our deep-seated intention to devote our entire, ordinary lives to Christ –
the season in which we seek to be and become the kingdom of God.
But this time is anything but ordinary, because with Pentecost the Church went global. The Holy Spirit compelled the followers of Jesus to be his “witnesses in Jerusalem, in all of Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” (Acts 1:8) A global, Spirit-led movement witnessing to every nation and ethnic grouping is anything but ordinary. Pentecost turns all ordinary time into an extraordinary festival of living in the Spirit.
I thank God for the hundreds of “ordinary” congregations in the West Ohio Conference that are becoming nothing less than extraordinary offerings of God’s love to their neighborhoods, communities and the world. They are filled with Pentecost energy. They are fulfilling our mission of making disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world. They have gone global. Thanks be to God!
Bishop Bruce Ough
May, 2010