One of the things as a faithful person that I find the most difficult to do is just to check my ego and desire to “control” so much and rather just invite the Holy Spirit to express herself in ways I never could have imagined.

I can’t be the only one right? Surely there are more folks out there than just me who want to impose their own personal will on not only their own lives, but the surroundings around them?

Here’s the scenario …

Several months back, the pastor of a neighboring two-church parish offered to host our congregation for the five Wednesdays in Lent as they had already organized a five-part learning series on various missions and expressions of faith.

She thoughtfully reasoned that given how I’ve been a bit consumed by my “day job” of getting our shelter, housing and food pantry organization back to stable ground after a challenging year, I hadn’t had a lot of time to prepare for Lent. So why not break bread and worship together for a few nights?

It was an extremely kind gesture, and I was thrilled that when I pitched it to our church council they embraced the “bold experiment,” as I’ve come to affectionately call it. After all, we were asking our congregation to forego their familiar Wednesday Lenten services and attend instead five consecutive weeks at one of the neighboring churches.

It was easy to wonder how they would respond? … After all, this was asking our folks not only to disrupt generations of tradition, but also to possibly move out of their comfort zone, dining and worshipping in someone else’s house of worship. So, I knew we were asking something “bold” of our congregation.

You can about imagine the anxiety I was filled with leading up to the first Wednesday of Lent, as I secretly wondered how our congregation would respond.

Turns out, like in a lot of circumstances in life, the worries were unfounded. And that I should have known that the Holy Spirit had already had a guiding hand in all of this.

The first Wednesday? We had more of our congregation than would normally attend a Lenten service in our own church show up at the neighboring church! … Add in their folks, and we had a robust group of more than 50 people who broke bread and worshipped together. The joy was palpable, and we all went home knowing someone knew.

The second week was the same! … And the third Lenten Wednesday? I guess we’ll see!

But given the results of the Holy Spirit’s handiwork the last couple of weeks … you know what? I’m not going to worry about it!

Come Holy Spirit, come! … Thank you for reminding me to just step out of the way and let you do your work! Amen!

Devlyn Brooks is the CEO of Churches United in Moorhead, Minn., and an ordained pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America serving Faith Lutheran Church in Wolverton, Minn. He blogs about faith at findingfaithin.com, and can be reached at devlynbrooks@gmail.com.