The Original Fire Service
Pentecost was everyone's first day.
I spent nearly 25 years in fire service. When Christians talk about Pentecost, we don’t often call it what it is: the original fire service. Tongues of flame. A room full of ordinary people who wanted to serve. In fire service, you get a job description. They didn’t.
Fishermen, a tax collector, the women who had followed Jesus from Galilee. Different people, different histories. On a fire scene, it doesn’t matter where you came from before that moment. Everyone moves together, speaks the same language, works toward the same thing. The Spirit has a way of doing what a good fire crew does: putting everyone on the same page, hearing the same language, having the same mission.
A seasoned captain told me something once, after he watched me get frustrated over a skill I hadn’t mastered yet. He said: “Everyone has a first day.” What I heard in those words was permission to be a beginner. To keep practicing, keep showing up, keep doing the work, even when I didn’t yet know exactly what I was doing. In the fire service, mastery was something you could measure. In ministry, faithfulness is the standard, and your faithfulness is personal. It doesn’t need to be measured against someone else’s experience.
The disciples had a first day too. They walked out of that upper room not knowing exactly what came next, filled with something they couldn’t fully explain, speaking to a crowd they hadn’t planned for. Different languages, different faces, different needs. They hadn’t prepared for those particular people. But the Spirit had. We’d love it if ministry always worked that way. Sometimes the people who need your spiritual gifts are right there waiting. Sometimes you’re the one hoping anyone shows up at all.
Pentecost puts a simple question in front of every layperson: what are you doing with that fire? You don’t have to have it mastered. You just have to begin.
Everyone has a first day.