Catching Up with the Spirit

Pastor’s Ponderings

June 2025

Catching Up with the Spirit 

This summer we begin a new sermon series on the Acts of the Apostles. We journeyed through the Gospel of Luke in the Winter and Spring, and the Acts of the Apostles is essentially the sequel to the Gospel of Luke. They were written by the same author.

On first reading, Acts can seem like a truly wild ride. What are we to make of stories of miraculous healings, thrilling prison breaks, dramatic testimony before tribunals, rapidly growing Christian communities, people sharing all their money for the common good, disciples suddenly speaking languages they had never learned, appearances by angels, fantastic visions, a shipwreck, and rousing sermons that either convinced or infuriated large crowds? Honestly, now, is anything on your summer reading list quite this thrilling?

Our theme for the sermon series is “Catching Up with the Spirit.” In the words of New Testament scholar Matthew Skinner: “Believers in Acts are routinely surprised by the Holy Spirit or required to figure out (or catch up with) what the Spirit is doing. They are travelers, not just across the miles of the Roman Empire, but across trails the Spirit is blazing. They often need help. Is the same Spirit that animated the churches of the first century still shining to beckon a way forward? Do lessons learned about the Spirit in the past urge Christians today to encounter God and share God’s goodness in solidarity with the wider world? Can we still discover the Spirit among us?”

During the summer we will explore the ways in which Covenant is “catching up with the Spirit”—which is not to say that we haven’t been inspired by the Spirit or that the Spirit hasn’t been active in the life of our church, but it is to say that the Spirit is always doing a new thing, and can we perceive that new thing together, and then act accordingly or “catch up”?

Join us on Sundays as we venture through Acts together and catch up with the Spirit.

Grace and Peace,

Pastor Jack