Praise the Lord! For it is good to sing praises to our God;
for He is beautiful, and a song of praise is fitting.
Ps. 147:1 ESV

Dear Friends in Christ,

   Greetings on this last day of September, a lovely Lord’s Day here in Illinois where from my sunroom I’m watching fall arrive, ushered in on a gentle breeze. As I write, leaves are just beginning to swirl and dance in the air like butterflies as they descend to earth. How quickly this year has gone by, filled with lots of good things and, hopefully, much accomplished. Sadly for me, however, I had to take a "fast" from writing newsletters in 2007 in order to finish a book, and very soon now the manuscript will be turned over to my publisher. Some of you have feared your names were dropped from the mailing list, but, no. Apart from computer glitches, they are there and hopefully in the year of our Lord, 2008, there will be the time and strength to write to you of the many things that weigh on my mind and heart to share with you.

   How I wish all of you who so desired could have been with us in the Wheaton PCM this past June! The testimonies of healings and even full conversions are still, three months later, coming in. There were 800 of us in attendance, and it seems that almost all have a wonderful story to tell of how God met them in their hunger or in their brokenness, in such very special ways. And to all of you who wrote, know that I have read your glowing accounts, and only wish it were possible to adequately respond to all your letters and cards.

   One of the things that God always does in our PCMs is restore to the needy and the penitent the knowledge of the Holy, and with that, all that is transcendent and that completes us. It is a remarkable thing to watch, as I do, from the front of a large auditorium, and see broken and needy ones begin, if ever so slowly at first, to hope—then as the power to repent and obey is set in, begin to receive from the God of their salvation.

   During this past conference, the Lord moved more strongly than ever, it seems to me, to open the eyes of all present there to His beauty: that of Father, Son and Holy Spirit—three Persons yet one. This knowledge can only come with true worship, with adoration. Many folk come to PCMs because they cannot find such worship in their home churches, try as they may. Beauty, transcendence in the midst of the dread darkness in our culture is what Christians hunger for, and yearn to reclaim.

   Created in the image of God, we arrive in this world with an inborn hunger for the transcendent, even for heaven. Something in us is born knowing. In such a time as this, when the Western world finds itself in the horrors of a spiritual and moral freefall, many come out of this culture to our conferences trapped in the ugliest of sinful compulsions, having forgotten this inborn holy craving. And it is in the presence of the Holy One, the very coming into sacred space filled with true worship, that these dread bonds begin to break and fall away from them. The true self that yearns for the good, the beautiful, the true, and the noble then begins its heroic journey up and out the false self, with its layers and layers of sordid behavior, and breaks through into God's light with His pathway in sight. Again, it is no small thing to have the privilege, year after year, of seeing this miracle of redemption occur.

   Jubilation, singing to God a new song in worship, plays a large part in these miracles. And never has the music been more blessed than in this last PCM. Most of the letters flooding in exult in joy over the music that led the way into what was for many their first taste of the transcendent, the holy, all the glory that a worshiping people bring down upon themselves. A year or more before I had asked Doug Carrington to put together a list of some of the greatest hymns and anthems of all time, and he in effect compiled a PCM hymnal (yet to be published). He put an enormous amount of research and work into this as he searched out some of the greatest music from all times and places, and together with John Fawcett leading at the piano, and John Cannon playing the organ, gave to our people the classic music that adores and exalts the Lord. It was stunning.

   Another thing that came forward in a brief, albeit special way was teaching on the Person and the work of the Holy Spirit. The modern church’s appalling neglect and lack of knowledge of the Third Person of the Godhead has long been a grief and an amazement to me. I asked the church gathered there to give Him His rightful place and to shed any false theological notions they may have had concerning Him. I wanted to stress that He is not an “It”, and that we should not behave as though He were almost the member of the Holy Trinity we are not to talk about or adore! None say this better than Fr. Alexander Schmemann, and so I quoted from his book Of Water and the Spirit.¹

Theology defines the Holy Spirit as the Third Person of the Trinity; in the creed we confess Him as proceeding from the Father; from the Gospel we learn that He is sent by Christ to be the Comforter, to “guide us into all truth” (John 16:13) and to unite us with Christ and the Father. We begin each liturgical service with a prayer to the Holy Spirit, invoking Him as “the Heavenly King, the Comforter, the Spirit of truth, Who is everywhere and fills all things, the Treasury of Blessings and the Giver of life.” ...

Truly the Holy Spirit is at the very heart of Divine Revelation and of Christian life. Yet in speaking of Him, it is extremely difficult to find proper words—so difficult indeed that for many Christians the church’s teaching about Him as “person” has lost all concrete, existential significance, and they see Him as divine power, not as “He” or “Thou”, but rather as a divine “It”. Even theology, while maintaining of course the classical doctrine of the Three Divine Persons when speaking of God, prefers—when dealing with the church and Christian life—to speak of "grace", and not of a “personal” knowledge and experience of the Holy Spirit.

This word of truth went over the people like a divine benediction, wave after wave, and gave the Holy Spirit all the more freedom to move and the Lord Christ freedom to heal His people.

   Esther Daflucas, who has for many years served on the PCM team and teaches a workshop on the healing of lesbian neuroses, wrote:

Every PCM is a taste of heaven to me as we gather together from various denominations and many countries to worship the Lord, but this past PCM held an even deeper and more profound focus on both the holiness of God and the unique work of the Holy Spirit. In deeply reverent worship which focused on the holiness and wonder of who God is, we were helped to look straight up to the throne, and to consistently take in the love, glory and beauty that is always shining down on us.

   And according to your letters, many of you are passing this glory on, the faith in God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit that changes individual lives, and thereby impacts and changes nations as well.

   May we be His lamps, shining with the glory of heaven, glowing with His light, toward that end of being the light in the quickly falling darkness of the world in which we live.

   Next year’s PCM is scheduled to begin June 15, ending on the 20th. Before the end of the year, we will make these dates certain.

Under the Mercy,

Leanne Payne

¹St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1974, p 104.