I went to the theater when I was a kid to see Rocky IV. With a big family and a small budget, our trips to the silver screen were few and far between, but this movie was special—after all, it was 1984, and it was the latest chapter in the Rocky story.

Rocky is pitted against the up-and-coming Russian boxer, Ivan Drago—his superior in terms of height, weight, reach, strength, speed...you name it. So why does Rocky submit to the match-up? Drago came to America for an exhibition match with Apollo Creed, once Rocky’s arch-rival but now his friend and professional confidant. But Drago took things way too seriously, not only knocking out Apollow but ending his life as well. So Rocky agrees to fight Drago in the dead of winter in Russia for a little payback.

While the movie places the greatest American boxer against the greatest Russian boxer, it also acknowledges the longtime Cold War tensions between the world’s two superpowers. It was democracy versus communism. Reagan versus Gorbachev. The Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave versus the Evil Empire. Rocky IV took a complex international relationship and made it human and immediately accessible: My best guy against your best guy.

The flick played out with a bearded Rocky training in Siberia, old-school style, his cold and rough environment juxtaposed with Drago’s training in a state-of-the-art gym with the aid of steroids. Rugged American toughness against Russian “cheaters.” The sentiments weren’t lost on an impressionable kid like me. I was enthralled.

The climactic fight arrived, and it raged, round after round and punch after punch. Drago thought he’d knock out Rocky quickly, but the opposite happened. Rocky, outmatched, dug deep into his emotional reserves and found a way to win—of course via a knockout in the 15th and final round, donned in Apollo’s famous red, white, and blue striped trunks, and the once-hostile Russian fans now parroting the famous “Rocky! Rocky!” chant.

And then a strange thing happened.

The theater exploded in applause. Moviegoers erupted, jumping out of their seats and contributing to a rousing ovation. I felt the surge of emotion myself and stood with them all.

That was the only time in all my movie experiences that anything like that ever happened.

Years later I figured out why.

Rocky IV—a story that appealed to American audiences and was embroiled in political overtones to which its viewers could relate—moved the audience. This movie became an event.

An American Fixation
We are enmeshed in a culture fixated on events, but the definition offered by dictionaries doesn’t seem to really describe what we mean here. I could only find phrases like “a noteworthy happening” and “something of importance”—but really, what we mean by event in the milieu of student ministry is an organized occurrence that just really, well, blows you away. American culture loves stuff like this, so it’s no surprise students love it, too.

A good starting point for truly understanding the power of an event is to look at what may be the most popular and most common event and easily the most accessible (and you’ll see why I chose the Rocky IV anecdote in a second)—a trip to the movie theater. At least the numbers seem to say so.

Last year Americans bought $9.2 billion worth of movie tickets, at an average ticket price of $6.55 per. Indeed we purchased more than 1.4 billion movie tickets. That’s a lot of event desire! Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest is a case in point. As the highest grossing movie of 2006, it brought in more than $423 million to box offices; selling more than 64 million tickets, Pirates was seen by a quarter of the American population.

One movie has this much power.

The Hays Code
Movies were destined for greatness, though. With the advent of talking pictures in the early part of the twentieth century, movie producers realized their new product had a special kind of power. Among their ranks was Will H. Hays, a lawyer and political mastermind, who was hired to be the first president of the Motion Picture Association of America. He wrote a little treatise called The Motion Picture Production Code of 1930, more commonly known as The Hays Code. It was the first attempt at self-censorship by the motion picture industry, and it worked quite well until the 1960s.

The Code set forth all sorts of decency rules producers must use when making films. It even offered a reason why movies have a moral obligation in the first place. From the Hays Code:

•    Most arts appeal to the mature. This art appeals at once to every class, mature, immature, developed, undeveloped, law abiding, criminal. Music has its grades for different classes; so has literature and drama. This art of the motion picture, combining as it does the two fundamental appeals of looking at a picture and listening to a story, at once reaches every class of society.
•    By reason of the mobility of film and the ease of picture distribution, and because the possibility of duplicating positives in large quantities, this art reaches places unpenetrated by other forms of art.
•    Movies generate mass appeal across a wide spectrum of people. Also, movies are mobile and easily produced, allowing for various theaters in various cities to show the same film, unlike painted art or plays. Therefore, because anyone can come at anytime, movies owe it to the general public to present something of decent value.

The Code goes a little further, too:

In general, the mobility, popularity, accessibility, emotional appeal, vividness, straightforward presentation of face in the film make for more intimate contact with a larger audience and for greater emotional appeal.

These words were written in 1930. Almost prophetic, they describe the very essence of going to the movies as an event, capable of exuding “greater emotional appeal.” And that is a workable indication of a true event—a function that can generate great emotions from its audience. No surprise that such an experience is held with high esteem by Americans.

The Great Escape
It’s a contagious feeling. We want that same appeal in our homes, spending money for the best home theater technology. One of the most celebrated television programs in history is an event which showcases singers and gives us the power to choose which one we like best.

Sporting events attract hundreds of thousands of fans at their locations, and many millions more via telecasts. Even now, the owner of the Dallas Cowboys, Jerry Jones, has plans to build the world’s first billion dollar venue for his football team.
All of this is done because we yearn for some form of escape, some ability to remove ourselves from our lives, for a few moments, and be somewhere else, to feel something else.

“Bread and Circuses”
We have inherited this, you know. Scratch your heads and remember the Roman Coliseum, visually recreated in a little film by Ridley Scott called Gladiator. A quick look at a few scenes and you get a glimpse into the birth of Western culture bent on events.

The Coliseum was such a powerful venue, and its value for entertainment was such a draw, that its use continued even after the Roman Empire fell. As a matter of fact, entertaining events were so popular, and deemed so necessary by the Romans, that Juvenal, a Roman poet and cynic who lived in the first century, observed that maybe a good event was the only thing the Roman populous really craved. His famous phrase, bread and circuses, was used in his observation that, of all the brave acts of nationalism and government the Roman people achieved, bread and circuses were really all that concerned them.

Bread and circuses. Cheap food and good entertainment. Now this is a really great definition of event. And more importantly, not much has changed in a few thousand years.

A Delicate Balance
This brings us to student ministry—a direct descendent of all the past people of history who saw the value and power of events.

You struggle with a delicate balance. You worry about a ministry too laden with the emotional highs of an event, then further worry if you can sustain that apex, and then worry when your students find their ways back to reality. Sometimes you feel guilty when you work diligently to provoke those same euphoric and satisfying feelings from your students, but you still hang your ministry on those events by filling your calendar with the next big thing. And then you judge your own personal performance by how “good” your students feel when they leave. It’s no wonder why we debate their place in our ministries.

So let’s talk about one: Pentecost.

The Backstory
The 11 apostles are a little confused at the end of the Gospels. Their collective experiences had taken them through countless miracles, followed by the death of their Rabbi, and then his mind-blowing resurrection, then an unbelievable ascension of this resurrected Messiah. These 11 men returned to Jerusalem, and were secluded in a room with other believers and witnesses to these incredible things. Peter stood among them, assumed his prophetic role as leader of this group, and the eleven become twelve again.

Jerusalem was alive with celebration when the second chapter of Acts begins. It was the Feast of Weeks, one of three required gathering festivals, or pilgrimages, for all Jewish people, as commanded by God in Exodus 34 and Deuteronomy 16. The New Testament calls it Pentecost, but the Jews called it Shavuot. And it was a special event indeed.

Shavuot was held after Passover, a very well-known event dedicated to celebrating the salvation of God from the hands of the Egyptians. It begins on the 49th day after the second day of Passover, and each of these days are counted in a ceremony called the Counting of Omer. The Counting of Omer consists of seven weeks beginning with the presentation of the first measure (omer) of barley in the temple and the presentation of the first offering of wheat in the temple. Its purpose was to commemorate the giving of the Word of God—the Torah—to Moses on Mount Sinai 50 days after the Israelites left Egypt.

The Birth of the Church
So as the story unfolds in Acts 2, it’s safe to assume not every Jew alive is in Jerusalem; but Luke records that there were Jews in Jerusalem from every nation. That seems to be enough for God.

The believers, now led by Peter, then experience something like an eruption, an explosion of sound, as a violent wind fills their room and tongues of fire rest on them. This explosion was loud enough that those in Jerusalem went to investigate the unexpected sound. Upon arrival, a horde of Jewish pilgrims heard the believers in their own native languages. Peter gives his famous sermon, and 3,000 believers were added to the disciples.

What’s important for us is the mere fact that, of all the things God could have used to begin the church, God used an event. Moreover, it was an event to which the visiting Jews were familiar. They were in town that day to commemorate the giving of the Torah to the Israelites, the beginning of God’s covenant with the chosen people. And it’s during this event that God, again, brings a new covenant.

All of the standard qualifications of an event were present here, at least described by the Hays Code—mobility, popularity, accessibility, emotional appeal, vividness, straightforward presentation of fact. These new converts heard the message of Christ on the day of Pentecost in a charismatic, dynamic way, and the words were so pervasive and convincing that they prompted a large group of people to rethink their views on religion in the middle of a festival celebrating the very religion they left!

Lasting Change
We want the emotional highs and life-changing occurrences in the events we plan, but we’re all intelligent enough to understand that it’s nearly impossible to live all of life in those emotionally high moments. The true value of an event isn’t its flash and glitz but what long-lasting change occurs because of the event. This is what student ministries really crave—or at least, what we should crave.

In the final verses of Acts 2, genuine, sustaining change emerged from this first church service. We find a budding community of believers who responded to God’s arrival during this event in five different ways:

1. They were devoted to learning. (2:42a)
2. They were devoted to fellowship. (2:42b)
3. They were devoted to each other. (2:44)
4. They devoted their income to the needy. (2:45)
5. They were devoted to their community. (2:46)

These, in fact, should be the goals of an event—and these are the changes a really good event should inspire. From Acts 2, we need events that encourage learning, that encourage fellowship with a church, that encourage familial relationships, that encourage an active worldview in ministering to those in need, and that encourage a faith lived openly in a secular environment. Actually, this would make a pretty good mission statement; not only for every event we plan, but for the ministries we lead.
If you look for an active theology for events, look no further than the first church service on the day of Pentecost. An exciting event that inspired real, lasting change must have been what God planned when penciling this event in the heavenly calendar in the first place. God planned a big event, and then planned for even bigger change.

So should we.