“A Spiritual Bootcamp for Spiritual Warfare”
Mt. Airy Church of God in Christ
Philadelphia, PA
By Tamesha Mills
Members of Mt. Airy Church of God in Christ (MAC) would wait in anticipation for Friday nights. It was a time when they were eager to walk through the doors of the historic church to commune with the Saints on Ogontz Avenue in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Worship would begin at 8:00 p.m. and there was no telling when it would be over and when you could expect to get home; yet no one complained. It was a gathering of all generations, and there was sure to be a conjuring of the Holy Spirit that would take over the entire night. This weekly “shut-in,” as they call it, provides the spiritual fortification that the parishioners needed in order to head back into the world for the next seven days. I watched attentively as Evangelist Karen Wallace continued recounting the experience of shut-ins with joy and conviction in her tone. I saw some Mt. Airy members respond with a slight grin. Others nodded their heads in agreement while the rest expressed excitement for what she would say next. She explained that shut-ins are worship nights at church where you are, in fact, shut in the church for hours to experience a deeper worship than on Sunday mornings. She talked about how those were the “good ole days” long before COVID, when MAC would go for hours in prayer, worship, and devotion to God. During the worship experience there was a room for prayer, another room for the manifestation of the Holy Spirit through speaking in tongues, a room in which they laid hands, and another room for other forms of worship and wailing. This experience taught members how to enter into the presence of God with honor and reverence. As explained by the Evangelist, this is important when tapping into the spiritual realm. It’s how they gain power and prepare for the spiritual battle that they will face once outside the walls of the church.
Moments like those Friday nights do not come easy in this post-quarantine era. Churches like MAC are faced with challenges to the very spiritual practices that have equipped them for warfare. How are we to shut in together when there are mandates against gathering? How will the transference of power and anointing take place if we do not lay hands on one another? What practices are safe to equip the people in a time of heightened spiritual warfare? Mt. Airy has asked these challenging questions and answered them by keeping their fundamental vision at the forefront.
Mt. Airy is a congregation that is not timid when it comes to the Holy Spirit. From its origin as a small mission church founded to take youth off the streets of Philadelphia to the now 30,000 square foot church on Ogontz Avenue, Mt. Airy has proven to be a place in which the Spirit of the Lord dwells. The church’s vision rests in the power of the preached Word and the working of the Holy Spirit on earth. It is not rare for members of the church to believe in and experience the miracles, signs, and wonders of God that we read about in the Christian canon. A seasoned member of the church tells a story of a time when he entered the church one Sunday morning and found members of MAC holding hands in prayer in a circle around the perimeter of the sanctuary. He had never seen anything like it before, and he wondered what was happening. Everyone in the prayer circle was praying hard and diligently for a miracle to happen. It turns out there was a well-known older woman in the church who fell and hit her head. He says that she wasn’t breathing, and the members immediately began to pray and call on the Holy Spirit. At the time he was fairly new to the church, so he watched in astonishment. The woman was not breathing, but the parishioners did not let up on their prayers. After a few minutes, the woman started breathing again, in just enough time for the paramedics to come and take her to the hospital. It was at this moment, he says, that he knew MAC was a very special place. In fact, “There is no place like this place, anywhere near this place, so this must be the place where the spirit of the Lord dwells.” This is a mantra of the church that is echoed the MAC congregation and staff who are witnesses of the spiritual presence and power at Mt. Airy. Sis. Cheryl Ruffin, a member for over twenty years, recounts times when the Spirit takes hold of the service. She said, “The Spirit comes into the service, and no one is able to go on with the service. The presence of God just comes in and interrupts the whole service. Everything just begins to shut down, the music and everything, to the point where the service is at a complete standstill. People are at the altar; some are on their knees just crying out for God. It brings us to a place of repentance, and then afterwards, we get testimonies.” Ruffin then tells a story of one particular testimony received in which a young lady’s life was saved:
There was a young lady that was singing, a member [of the church]. There was a visitor in the balcony and the song was, “I’m Still Here.” And after the service, the young lady [in the balcony] came to [the singer] and told her, “My plan was to come to church one last time and go back home and end my life. But that song stopped me.” With the song . . . she said she just kept crying [and] that she . . . was so sorry that she was thinking of taking her life. . . It was just a high moment of the Spirit coming in and just taking over the whole service. The hook [of the song] is, “By the grace of God, I’m still here” . . . something like that, and [the singer], because she’s so anointed, she sang that song. . . Whatever it was that young lady was going through, the singer named it in her ad-lib, [between sets as she was talking] and she said, “I don’t care.” She said, “You up in the balcony. I don’t care what you’re going through.” And the girl . . . said, “I couldn’t move.” She said, “I was going to leave right then and there.” She was going to leave and go home and end her life.
Moments like this one were not uncommon at the church, though they have not always translated into the digital sanctuary setting brought about by COVID-19.
Mt. Airy Church is a spirit-filled congregation that believes that in order to thrive in a spiritless world, one must master the spiritual disciplines found in the Christian canon. Popular scriptures resound in every worship experience and prayers of gratitude and mercy permeate Zoom and conference calls. The leadership is held in high esteem and viewed as a general or sergeant, with God as the highest rank. As the sergeant, leadership is tasked with equipping the soldiers with all that’s needed for war. I joined one of the Sunday worship services and remember the praise and worship team sing, “I’m a soldier in the army of the Lord.” The Senior Pastor, Bishop J. Louis Felton, equips his members and soldiers through his provocative preaching that is rooted in the teachings of Jesus Christ. He proclaims a theme for the congregation every year that stems from scripture and encourages lay leadership and ministries to operate under that same theme and scripture.
For 2020, the theme was “More than Conquerors,” a phrase from Romans 8:37. Members, both new and seasoned, boast about the powerful sermons they’ve heard over the years from Bishop Felton and his predecessor, Bishop Ernest C. Morris, Sr. After such sermons, members felt empowered, energized, and even motivated to study scripture on their own. Bishop Felton is described as a “preacher’s preacher,” who, like Paul, is not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ. In fact, a MAC member tells of a story in which Bishop Felton pushed to have service even when the sanctuary flooded. She describes it as a devastating ordeal in which they were all certain that Sunday worship would be cancelled the next day. All, that is, except for the Pastor. He would not cancel worship or even fathom the Word not going forth. She describes how all hands were on deck, and the sanctuary and church were cleaned out in time for worship the next day. Parishioners didn’t even know that the church had flooded the day before. Bishop Felton pushed to always have service, arguing that the Word was the nourishment people needed for their hurting souls. He was so adamant about it even during the pandemic that soon after the gathering restrictions, he began Sunday worship outside in their parking lot. He preaches two sermons each Sunday and draws people from the Philadelphia community. In a hurting world, it is Mt. Airy’s mission to spread the gospel and equip people with heightened spirituality to fight the wickedness that desires to consume their lives.
Perhaps the most fitting scripture to represent Mt. Airy as a spiritual bootcamp is Ephesians 6:10-20. They desire to put on the whole armor of God to fight against the evils of the world. Within this camp, there is a strong sense of community in which prayer is taken very seriously, as well as the needs of the members of the church. Member testimonies reveal that when there is trouble in members’ homes, the MAC community showed their support through prayer, visitations, and even check-ins by the Bishop himself. Like supporting a fellow soldier on the battlefield, MAC supports one another by carrying the weight of another sister or brother. This is no ordinary phone call to the sick and homebound“true community,” as one member tells it. Sis. Cheryl Ruffin says, “Mount Airy has a way of making you feel at home.” She shared her experience of grief when she lost her son and then her mother soon after. She said that her MAC family looked after her and supported her in ways that were unimaginable. She cried tears of gratitude as she told the story and mentioned that she would stay at the church because of how attentive the congregation was to her needs. She expresses her deep grievances related to how COVID has robbed the congregation of this support. MAC is a church that shows up to hospital beds in groups to pray for and lay hands on the sick, as well as to support grieving families. Ruffin explained how the ritual of laying hands and anointing with oil is important to the church because it signifies a covering and protection through the shed blood of Jesus Christ. Before COVID, the pastor, along with members of the ministerial staff and school of the prophets ministry, would go into the hospitals fortified in the Holy Spirit, ready with their oil to watch miracles happen. The anointing with oil is a ritual that was performed in hospitals, during worship services, and even during ordination ceremonies. At the Holy Convocation Service, the first event to be held outdoors, I witnessed this loss from COVID firsthand. There were quite a few evangelists and pastors being ordained to do ministry in the Church of God in Christ Koinonia district that day. They were prayed over and commissioned but did not have the privilege of being anointed by the Bishop, as the moment usually calls for. Sis. Cheryl Ruffin talked more about these challenges that have emerged from our COVID-conscious times. Now more than ever, people want to come into the church for prayer. She describes the experience of going into the chapel and having people rally around you and anoint you before praying over you. It’s an experience that she says is not the same over the phone. Now post-COVID, Mt. Airy has experienced the manifestation of the Spirit in different ways that have involved virtual airwaves.
In a time of heightened evil in the world, Mt. Airy’s vision for a spiritually-fortified church is needed now more than ever. COVID-19 has not deterred them from teaching, preaching, and equipping the Saints. Rather, it has transformed their efforts and created opportunities for change. Their traditions, predicated on the conjuring of the Holy Spirit in each other’s presence, have been tried and tested. Still, MAC holds true to its bootcamp culture through discipleship and spiritual disciplines. Members talk of the power of God that is present even on their prayer calls every week. Although they are not gathered with their entire congregation each Sunday, they still enjoy the Pentecostal praise and tarrying that goes on even with a select few. From the calls to Sunday worship in the parking lot to Zoom discipleship class to the first ever Holy Convocation outdoors, the church presses on toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. “That’s what makes us continue to thrive, the coming together and putting differences aside,” said Sis. Cheryl Ruffin. She is on the front lines as they battle through the transition and change that seems to happen every day. She relishes the faithfulness of the Spirit that has enabled them to step up to the challenge and still offer the support and training their congregants need to be spiritually ready. Mt. Airy Church of God in Christ remains confident that it will be prepared for whatever warfare comes its way.
