Pentecostal Communion

Jennifer Thome

February 2, 2004

Glad Tidings Tabernacle church stands out from the surrounding high-rise office buildings and transportation hub of Penn Station directly across the street. The church is painted bright green with red trim. A hanging stylized cross welcomes visitors and members alike. Inside the church, the walls are painted white and rows of seats fill the main floor and balcony. At the back of the church, six men with military bearing, wearing identical black suits, stand shoulder to shoulder in two lines. When the pastor motions, the men walk in unison to the front of the pews to prepare for the ritual of Communion. They pick up gold plates filled with clear plastic cups the size of a thimble and fingernail-sized rectangular wafers to hand out to the congregation for the ritual of Communion. "Hold the elements in your hand and think. Go back into your mind to what Jesus has done for you," Pastor Carl Keyes says.

While a pianist plays classical music, Keyes asks the members to meditate on the bread and the juice. The two hundred congregants hold the wafer with both hands and bow their heads for a minute. Then with the word of the pastor the church members raise their wafers into the air. "We humbly think of him and his torture," Keyes says. "God, we take this bread as the broken body of him."

The group eats the bread and bows their heads to pick up the grape juice.

"After dinner, Jesus picked up his cup," Keyes says.

The fellowship raises their cups together in unison into the air.

"This is not a toast," Keyes says. "It is the remembrance of the blood of Jesus."

The church members drink the grape juice and the six men come around again to collect the used cups on the gold plates. The congregation is silent, once everyone discards the empty cups they take seats again in the pews.

Pastor Keyes, of Glad Tidings Tabernacle, an Assembly of God fellowship and a Pentecostal church, leads the congregation in the taking of the Lord's Supper. Glad Tidings performs the ritual of Communion only once a month, usually the first Sunday. It does not practice many rituals because Keyes says he wants them to stay away from religion. He wants people to understand the lessons rather than repeat memorized words. One member, who wants to be known by only his first name, Brad, a medical student, is not sure how often they have communion. He says the people and Pastor Keyes are the reason he comes to church.

The only two formal rituals the church performs are communion and baptism in water. This is true of most Pentecostal churches, where the emphasis is not on rituals but rather on personal encounters with God. At some services, Glad Tidings lights candles and incense to create an atmosphere for prayer. Keyes believes in experience and participation rather then sitting and reading.

He uses an acronym to explain his services: EPIC.

"E is for experience. Did I experience something?" Keyes says.

P stands for participatory.

"I is imagining a vision. To make the scripture come alive," Keyes says.

C describes connection; the connection to either God or someone else.

He equates his service to the game show, "Who Wants to be a Millionaire." He says all the elements of EPIC are in the game show and his service. Just as the television viewers yell the answers at home, see the visuals and experience history with questions, so do the members of Glad Tidings during services. Congregants speak in response to the service whenever they feel the urge and every week there are plays, video messages, and songs.

Keyes and his wife, Donna, share the duties of the church pastor. "The members here have a fat daddy and a sexy mom," Keyes says. They both came to Glad Tidings five years ago from Brooklyn and built the church on the idea of community. Both pastors know the first names of all members and frequently call on them throughout the service. They walk into the crowd with the microphone or call on people from the stage to ask for testimonials, prayers or to just say hello.

Keyes delivers his sermon through actions rather than simply lecturing. On a recent Sunday, his sermon is titled: "Dressed to Kill, The Breastplate of Righteousness." A one-minute video introduces the sermon on each of the three screens placed at the front of the church. While rock music plays on the soundtrack, dark visuals of a red sunset and a moon covered with eerie clouds appears. Elongated letters spelling "Dressed to Kill" dripping with blood flash across television screens. When the video ends, Keyes speaks about the seven deadly sins and sinetics. "Sinetics is the innate, contagious, southward propensity towards evil," Keyes says.

The forty-five minute sermon walks the congregation through each sin and how to combat those sins. It ends with Keyes telling the members not to confess to him but to confess directly to God. He then asks if anyone needs salvation. Some raise their hands and Keyes calls out the name of a member from the stage to join and pray with the person asking for salvation. The two people hug and pray.

Every week Keyes offers the invitation to salvation. He said he gives the opportunity for salvation weekly because he wants people to have that chance in case a bus hits them between Sundays.

(Updated April 19, 2004)