ast month I reviewed the story in 2 Kings 7 about the four lepers stranded outside the gates of Samaria. They were trapped between the proverbial "rock and a hard place." Inside the city people were dying of starvation as a result of the Syrian army's siege. These lepers, completely out of options, came to a serendipitous conclusion: If they stayed at the gates, they would die. If they tried to go back into the city, they would die. They ultimately made a strategic decision that had both upsides and downsides. Their quest for food led them to decide to march headlong into the Syrian camp. Going into the Syrian camp could mean sudden death, or the outside chance that they would be favored with food. With all options being bad, they decided to go for broke.

I maintain that most Adventist churches in North America are operating on a maintenance mode at best, and dying at worst. And just like those lepers, if we stay as we are, we die. If we try to go back, we die also. It's time (given the increasingly tragic state of our world) to pull out all the stops.

With this in mind, I suggest one major area in which we must go for broke (there are certainly more): the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

As a church, we are most comfortable in teaching the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, and not the experience of the Holy Spirit. Throughout the book of Acts God's people were regularly being baptized with the Holy Spirit. Paul and the other apostles understood that water baptism was not enough.

God's people, according the Scriptures, need both the baptism of the water and the baptism of the Spirit. And yet this is rarely talked about among our ranks. We place enormous emphasis on getting people into the baptismal pool, but little emphasis, if any, is focused on people receiving the baptism of the Spirit. Sometimes I am concerned that we might even fear the Spirit's baptism. We too quickly make the leap to concerns about charismatic excesses and being deluded by counterfeit experiences.

The fact is, the counterfeit shows up only when the real thing is happening. As such, in most of our lives and churches we have little to fear from the counterfeit. But the fact remains: trying to do the great work that God has given our church without the baptism of the Holy Spirit will produce only incremental results at best.

In the book of Acts the church was being added to daily. Multitudes were joining the ranks of believers. There was a causal connection between the baptism of the Holy Spirit and the phenomenal growth and power of the church.

The Word is clear: in the days in which we are living, God will pour out His Spirit. Here's what He said: "Your sons and daughters will prophecy [preach], your old men will dream dreams, your young men shall see visions. . . . And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved" (Joel 2:28-32, NIV).

This is not some phenomenon way out into the future; God is beginning to do it now! And He is preparing people and selected churches to receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit, as this is the last great push to bring masses of people to the Lord in readiness for the final climactic events of this world, with the ultimate conclusion being Christ's second coming.

Can you imagine the young women and men of our churches not held captive by self-absorption, but being used to preach the Word? Can you see our senior members not so focused on "winding it down," but being used mightily of the Lord in their "latter" years? When our people begin to experience the reality of the baptism of the Holy Spirit, along with sharing biblical truth as it is found in Jesus, watch out!

It won't happen if we stay as we are, or if we try to go back to some nostalgic period of yesteryear. It will happen only as we go for broke--spiritually preparing ourselves by fervently turning our hearts toward God, and through fasting and prayer seeking the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

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Fredrick Russell is senior pastor of the Miracle Temple Worship Center and Ministry Complex in Baltimore, Maryland.