And other ways the church forgets to see what God has already given

Rev. Hannah Lovaglio

Many churches today are waiting for something.

Waiting for younger families.

Waiting for financial stability.

Waiting for the right leader.

Waiting for clarity.

Waiting for the culture to shift back.

Waiting for some sign that the future will be easier than the present feels.

The disciples knew something about waiting too.

After the resurrection, and directly after the ascension, after all the certainty they thought they had about Jesus and what came next, they found themselves standing together looking into the sky while angels asked a rather pointed question: “Why do you stand looking up toward heaven?” (Acts 1:11)

In other words: What are you waiting for?

It’s a question the church still needs to hear.

Because looking up can become its own kind of avoidance. Looking up keeps things distant and abstract. Someday things will improve. Someday someone will come. Someday the answers will arrive.

But the birth of the church happens only when the disciples stop staring upward long enough to notice who is already in the room.

The Spirit does not descend upon a polished institution with a five-year strategic plan. The Spirit comes to a group of ordinary people gathered together in uncertainty, going about the rituals of faith, anyway. People who are grieving, hopeful, confused, praying, remembering, and trying to figure out what faithfulness looks like now.

And what happens next is remarkable.

The miracle of Pentecost is not only wind and fire. It is recognition.

The disciples begin to discover that the ministry of Jesus did not end with the ascension. It multiplied. The Spirit did not choose one impressive person upon whom everything would depend. The Spirit scattered gifts across a community.

Suddenly, they begin hearing one another differently. Seeing one another differently. They discover courage they did not know they possessed. They speak languages they did not know they could speak. They become participants instead of spectators.

And somewhere in that holy confusion, the church is born.

There is something deeply important here for congregations carrying uncertainty about their future.

Many churches spend so much time focusing on what they lack that they lose sight of what God has already entrusted to them.

No congregation has everything. But every congregation has something.

Check all that apply:

• A person who knows every name and notices when someone is missing.

• A volunteer who quietly fixes what is broken.

• A gifted treasurer.

• A faithful choir.

• A retired teacher who still knows how to gather children around a story.

• Someone who makes coffee and creates belonging without realizing it.

• Someone with wisdom.

• Someone with courage.

• Someone with deep roots in the neighborhood.

• Someone with deep hope for the neighborhood.

• Someone with a vision for what could still be possible.

Pentecost reminds us that the future of the church has never depended on one person carrying everything alone.  The church is born when ordinary people begin recognizing their gifts, trusting one another, and sharing the work together in the Spirit.

Perhaps part of faithful leadership today is helping congregations stop looking somewhere else for salvation long enough to truly see one another again, and recognize the gifts already in the room.

Who is already here?

What gifts are already in the room?

How might those gifts be repurposed?

Where is the Spirit already moving among us?

What possibilities have we overlooked because we were too busy waiting for something else?

No need for something heaven-sent. No dramatic rescue, just some simple recognition.

The disciples stood blinking in the sunlight after the ascension, looking up, and then at one another with uncertainty and hope. And somehow, by the grace of God and in God’s good time, the Spirit decided that what they already had was enough to begin.