Light Bulbs and Plastic Chairs
In Nicaragua they have a simple solution for church services that are too big for the church building. A string of wire with light bulbs spliced in and three hundred plastic chairs, which turns any city street into a revival service. This particular three night event was organized by a fifteen year-old friend of ours named Imelda Rios (in Nicaragua people don’t wait to ‘grow up’ before they start living out their dreams).
There is something extra exciting about having church in the street. There is a heightened sense of expectation and everybody knows that anything can happen. After a long and anointed worship set in Spanish Julie Peters (now an intern with Bethel International) went up to preach and gave us an introduction that I’ll never forget. The perspective in this photo came from the stage of the ‘church’ just in front of the drums and between a couple microphone stands. As Julie took the mic she spoke boldly saying, “I’m going to take a picture of you all tonight because after this moment you will never be the same again. ”
At this point we all had no choice, but to believe that Jesus had good things in store for us. Julie, in her typical half drunk in the Spirit style, preached about God’s heart for us all and told her story of being healed from schizophrenia. There was so much of God’s love on that message and it was the kind of moment that felt frozen in time even while it was happening.
We had ministry time complete with a fire tunnel and healings, but the best story came to us months later through a friend who had first connected us with Imelda. There was a lady who lived on that street and she never had the nerve to attend any of the three services, but she could hear what was going on. She had cancer in her body and I guess our church service was just too close to her house because while we where there she was completely healed of her cancer. She later went to the church telling them what God had done for her and she gave her life to Christ!
I suppose that she’s hiding in this photo, in the dark shadows behind our neat rows of plastic chairs and I suppose that she was never the same again.