Get Your Pretense On!

CHAPTER 3 “There’s Plenty Good Room”: The Centrality of the Church in God’s Kingdom Advance

And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church,and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

~ Matthew 16.18

When I was a young boy, I used to love to go to church with my family. It was an amazing experience for me – all the sights, sounds, and sympathies of a poor black congregation left an indelible imprint on the consciousness of a little kid like me. I can remember seeing grown people weep and march and moan and sing. I still remember Mr. Foster, the official prayer warrior of our congregation, a rotund, deep-voiced, gentle man whom the pastor would call forward to the altar, who will echo in our little room supplications in Jesus’s name for the small yet zealous assembly. I remember Miss Jenkins on the piano, a tall slender lady with musical genius, who played the piano like a Motown Liberace and couldn’t read a note of sheet music. I still can hear in my memory the eight member choir whose “pipes” were so robust they could blow your hair back, even if you were sitting in the nether regions of that little church house. Amazing services, lasting most of the day, all amazing, all different, all anointed.

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