Holy Spirit can do amazing things in our churches

The Witness revealed two encouraging articles on evangelism recently.
The first took place at Mount Wesley Conference Center in Kerr-ville in July (“God keeps moving through young people who will shape our future,” July 27). Rusty Freeman wrote a report on the dynamism of the Holy Spirit among the youths at this Methodist church camp. It’s amazing what can be done when the Holy Spirit is released to reign free to do what he does best.
Rachel Toalson’s reporting on the work of Sue White in evangelism in our conference is exactly the type of work on which a Christian body should focus (“Retired pastor to help UMs tell faith stories,” Aug. 10).
Kudos to both Freeman and White. 
Barbara Ruth’s article on cynicism within The United Methodist Church hit upon a critical point (“Sin of cynicism may keep young adults from participating in life of our churches,” July 27).
Cynicism of a broad nature within the church suggests a spiritual prob-lem. Cynicism should not be an issue requiring highlighting within the Christian community, what with the many promises (see Max Lucado’s God’s Inspirational Promise Book) God renders to all believers.
God is in the promise-making and promise-keeping business. How many of his promises are we aware of, and how much do they figure into personal, family and church planning?
Think of the myriad issues on all levels in our denomination that require organization by committee. Calling upon the Holy Spirit to guide all these undertakings should be axiomatic, and that goes beyond simply opening up a meeting with a perfunctory prayer. Total dependence upon God should permeate the very at-mosphere of all meetings. 
If we are not calling for the total involvement of the Holy Spirit in all our church activities, I agree with Beth Moore, who says God probably trusts us more than we trust him. If that’s true, that would make a cynic of anyone.
Nehemiah is a prototype for total dependence upon God. Discover for yourself the thing Nehemiah does consistently when it becomes crunch time for decisions.
George Ricker (“John 14:6 doesn’t limit God’s ways to offer salvation,” July 27) loses me with sentences such as “Except through me? Who is this ‘me’? The Jesus of history or the Christ of faith? Christ is more than Jesus.”
In my view that position is taking liberties with selected Scripture and elasticizing simple truths by removing borders of the faith. 
Were the same flexibility to be applied broader still, how would one treat the concepts of God’s call to repentance and the forgiveness of one’s sins? Biblical canon carries substantially more credence for me than do some of the ideas that emerged from the  Age of Enlightenment and those promulgated by some early Europe-an theologians.
I don’t object to being labeled a fundamentalist if that is defined as clinging to the fundamentals of the Christian faith.
Christianity isn’t a series of beliefs that keeps evolving into something that, after a given amount of time, reaches a state of being vastly different from what was originally conceived and intended. What was given to us by God and the price that was paid by Christ are critical essentials.
Isaiah 43, for me, is one of many parts of Scripture that displays God’s love and concern toward us. There is no acquiescence to a lesser de-mand from us than what was presented through Jesus’ birth, the meaning of the cross and the mystery of the Resurrection.
If we’re not certain in our own mind how to present the Gospel message to a nonbeliever but a seeker of this knowledge, we may end up like the senior pastor of a large Methodist church in Indianapolis who had the question posed to him.
His response? ”Well, that all depends on how one defines the term ‘Christian.’”
In my view, that answer is both weak and misleading.