Steve & the Holy Spirit

Monday, May 5, 2025

Steve Calos was a character. He was a Greek American United Methodist minister with Greek Orthodox cousins, Baptist cousins, Pentecostal cousins, Methodist cousins, and Catlick (Catholic in Greek American) cousins. He had a wicked sense of humor and a passion for pastoral ministry.

Steve was also immensely practical and didn’t much mix with holy roller types. While he was extroverted and effusive, I’d guess he was allergic to Christianese and wasn’t one to see angels and demons behind every rock and tree. United Methodists are known for being good, solid members of the Rotary Club, not wild eyed street evangelists.

That said, Steve had a gift. He didn’t speak in tongues, but he could interpret them. Interpretation is a sorely neglected gift in the more Charismatic corners of American Protestantism, even though it is practically mandated by the Apostle Paul in his first letter to the Corinthian church:1

1 Corinthians 14:26-28 NIV What then shall we say, brothers and sisters? When you come together, each of you has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. Everything must be done so that the church may be built up. If anyone speaks in a tongue, two—or at the most three—should speak, one at a time, and someone must interpret. If there is no interpreter, the speaker should keep quiet in the church and speak to himself and to God.

Because he was also a wiseass (and a wise man), Steve would go unannounced to Pentecostal gatherings with a friend from that branch of the church, then interpret the ecstatic utterances of participants. Needless to say, this often caused surprise and probably some consternation. He wasn’t there to debunk but to exhort, and he was as puzzled by his ironic gift as they were.

So what does this have to do with me, other than being an amusing anecdote? I have long struggled with the reality of miraculous manifestations of God’s power—does this stuff really happen, or have we been fooling ourselves into believing our own stories? Steve’s gift is hard to explain without reference to the supernatural, and he was assuredly not one to make this up. If I believe Steve (and I do) then I have to believe that God’s spirit acts in at least this one small way. If God’s spirit acts in one way, then it can in others. The camel’s nose is in the tent, and I, for one, am hoping it wriggles its whole odd, confusing, unlikely self in as well.

  1. Anyone who grew up around a church knows that 1 Corinthians 13 is the Luuuuuuuhv chapter, but most of those same folks don’t know Paul spent much of chapter 14 speaking about prophecy and speaking in tongues. Prophecy is simply speaking the word of God, so it’s not as weird as it sounds. Tongues are ecstatic messages given by the Holy Spirit, delivered in languages unknown to the speaker—languages that may or may not be spoken on earth. That is weird. And flashy (hence, Paul’s concern). Interpretation, in this context, is the ability, also given by the Holy Spirit, to understand those languages. Almost as weird but commonsensical in context. If for some reason you want to know more, consult 1 Corinthians 12:8-11 and 1 Corinthians 14:1-5 ↩︎

#thought