{"id":7492,"date":"2015-07-20T07:05:54","date_gmt":"2015-07-20T13:05:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/?p=7492"},"modified":"2015-07-23T06:50:31","modified_gmt":"2015-07-23T12:50:31","slug":"at-your-service-after-a-long-break-an-intimate-encountner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/2015\/07\/at-your-service-after-a-long-break-an-intimate-encountner\/","title":{"rendered":"At Your Service: After a long break, an intimate encounter"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Oasis\"<\/a>

Ed Kemmick\/Last Best News<\/p>

The Oasis Church in Lockwood occupies an unprepossessing building on Old Hardin Road.<\/p><\/div>\n

Oasis Church,\u00a0<\/strong>2102 Old Hardin Road, Lockwood
\nService<\/strong>: 10:30 a.m., Sunday, Nov. 9, 2014
\nLength of service<\/strong>: 1 hour, 5 minutes. Length of sermon<\/strong>: 33 minutes<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know how people get to church in the summer, or during most of the fall, for that matter. I had not consciously decided to take a summer break, but if you live in Montana you know how painfully short that season is.<\/p>\n

\"AtYourService\"<\/a>There is something to do every weekend, sometimes several things to do, and one doesn\u2019t want to miss out. And so the summer quickly passed, followed by one of the most beautiful falls I have ever experienced, likewise demanding to be cherished and celebrated in a dozen different ways.<\/p>\n

But I finally got out on this Sunday morning, two days before the thermometer was supposed to drop below zero for the first time since last winter, and went to church. I chose the Oasis because its listing in the Gazette mentioned \u201cspiritual warfare.\u201d Its website spoke of seminars on witchcraft, \u201ccurses broken\u201d and \u201cdemonic assignments cancelled.\u201d<\/p>\n

I figured a serving of brimstone would do me good after such a long break. When I pulled up to the church, domiciled in a simple steel building next to S Bar S Building Supply in Lockwood, there was only one car there. I figured either I\u2019d gotten the time wrong or that I wasn\u2019t the only person behind in his churchgoing.<\/p>\n

I walked in to find Pastor John Kyle standing amid about 50 empty chairs, and his wife, Linda, strumming on a guitar next to a music stand at the front of the room. After introducing himself to me, Pastor John said a little sheepishly, \u201cWelcome. I don\u2019t know where everybody is today. I did hear that some were hunting.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n
What is this series about?<\/h5>\n

To read the essay that introduced this series click here.<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

I took my seat, John fired up a PowerPoint and Linda commenced singing the first song. The guitar was a bit loud and the vocals a bit muted. If the words hadn\u2019t been projected on a screen behind a lectern, I wouldn\u2019t have understood them at all.<\/p>\n

At any rate, before the first song was over, another person walked in, which was a big relief for all present, I\u2019m sure. The second song was piped in over the speakers and consisted mostly of the words \u201cHoly Spirit, rain down.\u201d As the song faded out, Linda said, \u201cWe need the spirit of God to rain down, to ignite our spirits.\u201d<\/p>\n

I was trying to imagine how rain would ignite anything and before I knew it my mind had wandered off impiously to thoughts of James Taylor and his fine song, \u201cFire and Rain.\u201d I got back on track when the third song was cued up, a song that sounded like easy listening meets 1980s country.<\/p>\n

Its chorus ran, \u201cYou do miracles so great, there is no one else like you.\u201d I was soon lost again, wondering whether it was only the greatness of God\u2019s miracles that commanded respect, rather than the simple fact that He was performing them. I still don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n

At 10:55, as the third song was ending, Linda inexplicably started strumming on her guitar again, then sang another couple of verses of the song we had just been listening to for eight or nine minutes. But at last, just before 11, the music was finally over and Pastor John welcomed the other worshiper, also named Linda, and said of me, \u201cAnd we do have a visitor, so that\u2019s a blessing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"CapreAir_Variable\"<\/a><\/div><\/div>Then he launched straight into his sermon. Its theme was that we human beings are nothing without God, that \u201cour sufficiency is not of ourselves.\u201d He said that God, as it says in Psalms, protects us with a shield. If we have an independent spirit, it will open a gap in the shield, leaving us open to attacks by the enemy, Satan.<\/p>\n

He veered off briefly into quasi-psychology, saying that most of us suffered rejection from our fathers, or by others when we were young, and consequently we try to \u201cpump ourselves up,\u201d wearing pride like a mantle to hide our feelings of inferiority.<\/p>\n

But pride is false, he said, because everything of value we have comes from Jesus. \u201cThere is no fulfillment apart from Jesus,\u201d he said, quoting, I think it was, John. Here I found myself disagreeing. I\u2019m sure Pastor John would find me delusional, in the grip of the enemy, but I have felt and do feel fulfilled, on a regular basis and for many different reasons.<\/p>\n

And of course, the obvious conclusion one must draw from the pastor\u2019s sermon is that non-Christians are incapable of fulfillment. To me, believing that one\u2019s religion and only one\u2019s religion can give life meaning is a manifestation of a pernicious, very large pride. Not that I would ever expect Pastor John to agree with me.<\/p>\n

He went on a bit longer, at one point saying that if we fully trust in Jesus, \u201cwe won\u2019t need any anxiety medicine,\u201d and we wouldn\u2019t have so many people \u201cending up in mental institutions.\u201d About then, he turned to a passage from Isaiah and said, \u201cThat\u2019ll be our last Scripture today. I\u2019m gonna make it a little shorter.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even so, the sermon lasted 33 minutes. I could thank the missing congregants for its early end, I suppose. That left just one more thing, the collection. Pastor John produced a check from his own pocket and put it in the basket, which I thought was odd, then had his wife take the basket out to the other Linda and me.<\/p>\n

I had nothing but 20s in my wallet, and I was unwilling to part with any of them. The other Linda forked over a bill of some denomination and I just shook my head apologetically at the pastor\u2019s wife. Feeling a little guilty, I shook Pastor John’s\u00a0hand again and made my departure.<\/p>\n

Previously:<\/strong>\u00a0Chapter 1:<\/strong>\u00a0St. Patrick Co-Cathedral<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Chapter 2:<\/strong>\u00a0Mount Olive Lutheran Church<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Chapter 3:<\/strong>\u00a0Full Gospel Revival Tabernacle<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Chapter 4:<\/strong>\u00a0First Church of Christ, Scientist<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Chapter 5;<\/strong>\u00a0First Baptist Church<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Chapter 6<\/strong>: Billings Freedom Church.<\/a><\/p>\n

Chapter 7<\/strong>: Faith Chapel<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Chapter 8<\/strong>: Eagle Ministries Inc<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Chapter<\/strong> 9<\/strong>: First United Methodist Church<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Chapter 10<\/strong>: Pilgrim Congregational Church<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Chapter 11<\/strong>:\u00a0Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Meetinghouse<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Chapter 12<\/strong>: First Christian Church<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Chapter 13<\/strong>: Victorious Word Church<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Next week<\/strong>: Harvest Church.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Oasis Church,\u00a02102 Old Hardin Road, Lockwood Service: 10:30 a.m., Sunday, Nov. 9, 2014 Length of service: 1 hour, 5 minutes. Length of sermon: 33 minutes I don\u2019t know how people get to church in the summer, or during most of the fall, for that matter. I had not consciously decided to take a summer break, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7493,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2349],"tags":[2823,784,2821,2822],"class_list":["post-7492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-at-your-service","tag-james-taylor","tag-lockwood","tag-oasis-church","tag-s-bar-s","prominence-top-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7492"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7492\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}