Born in Fire and Wind: The Day of Pentecost and the Diverse Church of Jesus Christ

A Reflection for Mission Presbytery | Acts 2:1–21

Rev. Bobby Musengwa, Transitional General Presbyter

Last Sunday morning I was invited to preach at First Presbyterian Church in Copperas Cove. 

I was impressed by their diversity, with people from Cameroon, Congo, Togo, and other parts of Africa, as well as parts of Asia, including the Philippines.

After my sermon, it was time to welcome new members. I was puzzled to see my wife stand up and go to the front. 

I wondered why she was joining a church that is two and a half hours away from our home in San Antonio. 

It turned out something quietly extraordinary was happening.  

A young African woman from Togo — thousands of miles from the land where she was born, where she first learned to pray, where her faith took root — was being received into membership of the congregation. 

As the welcoming portion of the service unfolded, my wife, a native of France, leaned in and translated so that this new sister in Christ could follow along, could feel seen, could know that she belonged. 

It was, on the surface, a small and unremarkable gesture. 

But for those with eyes to see, the Holy Spirit was unmistakably at work — showing up, as the Spirit so often does, in surprising and tender places.

It was, in its own quiet way, a Pentecost moment.

Wind, Fire, and the Sound of Every Voice

When the Day of Pentecost arrived, the disciples were gathered in one place. 

Then, suddenly, the rush of a violent wind filled the house. Tongues of fire rested on each of them. 

And they began to speak — not in a single, sanctioned, official language — but in the native languages of the many peoples gathered in Jerusalem that day: Parthians, Medes, Elamites, residents of Mesopotamia, Judea, Cappadocia, Pontus, Asia, Phrygia, Pamphylia, Egypt, parts of Libya, visitors from Rome, Cretans, and Arabs (Acts 2:9–11).

The crowd was bewildered. "How is it," they asked, "that we hear, each of us, in our own native language?" (Acts 2:8).

This is the miracle of Pentecost, and it is worth sitting with its full weight. 

God did not choose one language. God did not mandate one culture. 

God did not funnel the good news through a single ethnic or linguistic tradition. 

On the very birthday of the church, God spoke to every person in the language closest to their own heart.

The Holy Spirit, in that moment of fire and wind, declared a vision for the church that is breathtaking in its scope: 

everyone is welcome here. Everyone is heard here. Everyone belongs.

A Repudiation of Monolithic Power

The Day of Pentecost is not merely a pleasant story about a spiritual experience. 

It is a theological declaration — and, read carefully, a pointed one. 

The Spirit's gift of diverse tongues stands in direct contrast to the ancient story of Babel, where humanity's drive toward uniformity and domination was scattered. 

At Pentecost, God does not reverse Babel by imposing one language on all peoples. God reverses Babel by honoring all languages equally.

This matters enormously in our time. There are persistent pressures — cultural, political, ecclesiastical — toward conformity, toward the dominance of one language, one aesthetic, one way of being human and being Christian. 

These pressures are not new, but they are no less dangerous for being familiar. 

When the church succumbs to them, it shrinks. 

It becomes a chaplaincy to one culture rather than a foretaste of the kingdom of God.

The Day of Pentecost repudiates this, without ambiguity. 

The kingdom of God is not monolithic. It never was. 

The very birth of the church was an explosion of diversity, not despite the Spirit's presence, but because of it.

Three Quarters of the World

Here is a figure worth pausing on: only about 25% of the world's population speaks English. 

Three quarters of the world — billions of human beings made in the image of God, beloved children of the Creator — do not. 

And yet how much of what we call "the church," particularly in its institutional expressions, operates as though English is the native tongue of the Holy Spirit?

The Spirit of Pentecost invites us to open our eyes wider. 

To ask: who is not in the room? Who cannot understand what is being said? Who has felt, perhaps for years, that the church is a place built for someone else?

The woman from Togo who joined the congregation in Copperas Cove last Sunday is not an exception to what the church is supposed to be. 

She is an illustration of what the church, at its best, has always been called to be. 

And the act of translation — my wife leaning over, bridging two languages with a whisper — was not a logistical accommodation. It was discipleship. 

It was the body of Christ functioning as the body of Christ.

The Spirit Was Already Here

For those of us gathered as Mission Presbytery, the Day of Pentecost carries a particular resonance. 

We come from many and varied cultures, many languages, many histories. 

And we confess something important: the Holy Spirit was active and working in our communities long before any missionary set foot on our lands. 

The Spirit blew where it willed long before our particular ecclesiastical structures were ever formed. 

The faith that the Spirit has nurtured among us — in its color, texture, music, prayer, and way of life — is not a lesser expression of Christian faith. 

It is a holy expression of faith. It belongs at the table.

Having been gathered by the Spirit here at Mission Presbytery, we rejoice in that. 

We celebrate the Day of Pentecost not as spectators of someone else's history, but as participants in the ongoing and living work of the Spirit among us.

Practicing to Live Together

The church, someone once said wisely, is where we practice to live together. 

That is exactly right. Every Sunday, we rehearse the kingdom. 

We practice welcome. We practice listening across difference. 

We practice the radical hospitality that declares: you are a beloved child of God, and that is enough to belong here.

That practice is not always easy. 

It requires us to move beyond what is comfortable and familiar, to make space for languages we do not speak, for traditions we do not fully understand, for faces that do not look like our own. 

It requires translation — sometimes literal, as my wife offered last Sunday, and always spiritual.

But this is the invitation of Pentecost. 

The Spirit has not grown less creative, less boundary-crossing, less multilingual since that first wind-and-fire morning in Jerusalem. 

The same Spirit who descended on Galilean fishermen and Jewish pilgrims from across the known world is the Spirit who shows up in a sanctuary in Copperas Cove when a woman from Togo finds her seat among the people of God.

May we, in Mission Presbytery and across the whole church of Jesus Christ, have the grace to keep saying yes to that Spirit. 

To open our doors and our liturgies, our pulpits and our fellowship halls, our hearts and our imaginations, to the full, glorious, multilingual, multicultural, irreducibly diverse family of God.

Happy birthday, church. The Spirit is still moving.

"And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved." — Acts 2:21