Re-imagining the Holy Spirit
13 Sep 2009
Christianity magazine in March last year published an article on the decline of the charismatic amongst Christians.
I’ve previously referenced this development along with Robbie McAlpine’s excellent book (that explores this in detail) ‘Post Charismatic?’ with regards to how little there is within emerging church resources about the Holy Spirit.
My church plant is located within The Association of Vineyard Churches that was founded in the ‘third wave‘. Whilst many of my long standing emerging church friend are post-charismatic, we have tried to explore our emerging identity and remain within our charismatic tradition.
Starting today, I begin a series on sundays that I hope will sum up our beliefs, understanding, and experience of the Holy Spirit from within our church community.
It’s not an academic series, and is aimed at helping christians understand the Holy Spirit, and sets out why and how we are still a charismatic church.
By way of research, I’ve been reviewing early Vineyard Church source materials, drawing on my own studies/research, and the experience of 12 years of the planting and day to day life of our emerging church.
You can find the series on our Church site here, or on itunes here (please give us a few days to get the first talk online, subscribing to the podcast means you’ll get them automatically as they are loaded each week)
Tagged: charismatic, Holy spirit, Resources
23 comments
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Comment by Ben DeVries
6.22 pm on 13 Sep 2009
Thanks Jason, and I look forward to more in this series. I don’t come out of the charismatic community within the church myself, in fact in my early years was raised to be highly skeptical of it, so I appreciate and welcome very much an engaging and authentic look at the work of the Holy Spirit and how it plays out in the church such as your own – Ben D.
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Comment by Jason Clark
7.15 pm on 13 Sep 2009
tnx Ben
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Comment by Steve Burnhope
9.22 am on 14 Sep 2009
Thanks Jason. I would probably count myself as ‘post-charismatic’ too. I haven’t (yet) read Robbie’s book, but for my part I think the charismatic movement was strong in emphasising (1) that the Holy Spirit had not been pensioned off shortly after the apostolic era, and, (2) that we should expect to personally engage with him as the agent of God’s dealings in the world. Before the Seventies, or thereabouts, Trinitarian thinking tended to be God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Scriptures. Where the charismatic movement was weak, I would say, was in its popular-level teaching of the extent of his work and our expectations of his ways and means. It gave rise to a significant dualism in popular Christianity, the legacy of which is still evident, and to many unmet expectations, which I suspect has led to a good deal of disillusionment and hence, the ‘post’ prefix.
Recognising that charismatic and pentecostal are not synonymous, it is nevertheless notable, to me, how there are relatively few pentecostal theologians.
The gap between the popular understanding of charismatic matters (exacerbated, if not caused, by preachers who should know better – or do, but choose to ‘keep it simple’ so as to encourage experiential faith) and academic theology’s understandings seems surprisingly wide.
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Comment by Jason Clark
11.18 am on 14 Sep 2009
So are you more, ‘post’ than ‘non’ charismatic?
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Comment by Steve Burnhope
12.57 pm on 14 Sep 2009
Yes, definitely. Analagous to being a post-conservative evangelical (Roger Olson), which is how I would describe myself, rather than a post-evangelical (Dave Tomlinson). Olson rejects the latter on the grounds that it implies ‘non’.
Which, it occurs to me now, raises the question whether there’s a word missing here. Others may like to suggest the missing word, and I’m sure will come up with something better, but my sense of it is ‘post-naive charismatic’ or ‘post-dualist charismatic’.
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Comment by Jason Clark
1.00 pm on 14 Sep 2009
Post seems to denote ‘beyond’ as in it is after, beyond.
I prefer the prefix ‘neo’, as in revived
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Comment by Steve Burnhope
1.06 pm on 14 Sep 2009
Interesting. As with all these terms, they need defining, or points of reference.
I guess it rather depends on what it is that we’re reviving or renewing.
An early 20th century understanding?
A mid-late 1st century understanding?
A 1960s understanding?
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Comment by Patrick Oden
9.06 pm on 14 Sep 2009
Wee bit of a plug. I wrote It’s a Dance: Moving with a Holy Spirit as an exploration of a expanded understanding of the Holy Spirit’s work. Basically, it’s my suggestion that the traits of emerging churches are in a lot of ways key works of the Holy Spirit–which have been seen in places throughout history but not noted as being specifically Spirit oriented.
I spent a fair bit of my time as a Pentecostal/Charismatic, and even as I’m not involved in those communities now, I’d still say I’m not ‘post-’. In fact, in talking with a lot of Pentecostals recently I’d say there’s a strong interest in seeing an expansion of understanding the Spirit into more holistic directions.
Charismatic churches do talk a lot about the Holy Spirit, and emerging churches hardly talk at all about the Holy Spirit (and seem uninterested in such talk), but that’s not itself a sign that the former really gets the Spirit or the latter doesn’t engage the Spirit. Indeed, I think it’s the case that the emerging churches are a lot more in tune with contemporary studies of the Spirit, even if a fair amount of this is instinctual.
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Comment by Jason Clark
4.36 pm on 15 Sep 2009
HI Patrick,, great to hear from you.
You said, ‘Charismatic churches do talk a lot about the Holy Spirit, and emerging churches hardly talk at all about the Holy Spirit (and seem uninterested in such talk), but that’s not itself a sign that the former really gets the Spirit or the latter doesn’t engage the Spirit.’ Good point and very valid.
Do you think it also works the other way, not talking about the Spirit doesn’t mean you are engaging in the spirit etc.? By that I mean I get that the Spirit does much more than our talk about him, but there does seem in the NT and church history an awareness and theology of the spirit that is vital to the Spirit being at work, other than a general animation of the Christian life.
By that I think we lose something when we assume that Spirit only moves when we talk about him, and we also lose something vital when we stop talking about Him, and His works?
Thanks for getting me thinking.
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Comment by Patrick Oden
5.30 pm on 15 Sep 2009
Jason, I think you’re right and it absolutely works the other way around. I think that’s a big reason why I’m personally interested in getting more “Spirit” talk out there, and why I’m excited to find others doing the same.
It’s not that the Spirit doesn’t work when we don’t speak of the Spirit. But, an awareness of the Spirit, acknowledging the Spirit’s work as the Spirit’s work, brings all kinds of helpful tools of discernment and insight and encouragement. Community, for instance, is something that can be pursued deeply without talking about the Holy Spirit. But, acknowledging the Holy Spirit in it helps a group of people to also think about the other priorities of the Spirit–such as unity and diversity, making a group of people one through their different gifts and personalities. Understanding the ideal of community (or leadership, or giving, or whatever) through the lenses of the passages on the Spirit in Scripture gives excellent boundaries. We can pursue the same ideals without talking about the Spirit, but it then becomes so much easier to see these ideals with different motives or rules. The same basic goals that can be life-giving in and through the Spirit can become alienating and destructive and misguided apart from the Spirit.
Understanding the Spirit’s work as the Spirit’s work is immensely helpful in guarding against the usual disasters that communities fall into.
And on both sides of this equation, considering the work of the Holy Spirit helps each side to see how much the Spirit really is doing, much more broadly than much Christian theology has historically discussed.
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Comment by Steve Burnhope
7.12 pm on 15 Sep 2009
Excellent, Patrick. Really good to be reminded about all those aspects of the work of the Spirit, which are so vitally important.
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Comment by Steve Burnhope
7.35 am on 15 Sep 2009
Thanks Patrick – the book sounds really interesting (I’ve just looked at some of the reviews of it on Amazon too).
You know, this subject is really all about the question of the Holy Spirit’s interactions with us in this world. It’s to do with how he operates. And that, in turn, takes us back to how God interacts with us in this world.
Does God actively and specifically intervene in human affairs, in response to us, our needs and our petitions? Is God present with us, acting in us and through us? Is he ‘in us’ in some very personal way? If so – I would say ‘yes’ – all of these things would be through the Holy Spirit.
So, to what extent are the ‘classic’ pentecostal or charismatic interpretations ‘right’, in how they conceive/expect the particular forms that that intervention, that presence, those actions and that indwelling takes? And not just the forms, but the frequency and the ‘predictability’.
In answering that question, I suggest we need to think of ‘the Spirit’ not as a Person in isolation, with a separate theology (as pentecostal or charismatic thinking often seems to infer), but to be theologically informed by our wider understanding of the nature and character of God the Father as revealed to us through God the Son.
I suggest that traditional pentecostal or charismatic expectations of the Spirit are too narrow, too influenced by a systematic view (a study of the verses that mention the Spirit), and take insufficient account of this Trinitarian aspect.
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Comment by Patrick Oden
5.37 pm on 15 Sep 2009
Steve, your thoughts about the Charismatic/Pentecostal expectations being too narrow are exactly right, I think.
That’s why I’m not at all rejecting my own Pentecostal influences. I think they have a great deal right, and I think they emphasize a very important part of our worship with God. But they don’t go far enough. Or, what I like to say, they read the first bit of Acts 2 but don’t read the whole chapter. And seem to skip the whole rest of the book. The Spirit gives tongues, gives dynamic preaching, gives the healings and the miracles. But the Spirit also empowers the people, gathers together in community, reaches out into the streets, sending and deepening in a holistic way.
God is indeed active in this world. That’s the testimony of the whole Scripture. God doesn’t call people then isolate them. The Holy Spirit is out and about, teaching and guiding and calling. The disciples in Acts were constantly having to catch up to what the Spirit was already doing. The Spirit propelled the church into new cultures and new habits and new understanding of thought and practice.
And this is, as you say, so immensely Trinitarian. We are drawn up into the eternal dance of the Triune persons–and as we better understand this, we can better embrace this, and participate in the Spirit’s work in our life and the lives of those around us.
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Comment by Steve Burnhope
6.37 pm on 15 Sep 2009
“… they read the first bit of Acts 2 but don’t read the whole chapter. And seem to skip the whole rest of the book. The Spirit gives tongues, gives dynamic preaching, gives the healings and the miracles. But the Spirit also empowers the people, gathers together in community, reaches out into the streets, sending and deepening in a holistic way.”
Absolutely. To my mind, the most significant aspect of the Spirit’s work in Acts is the immediate transformation of the Christian community (Acts 2:42 onwards and Acts 4:32 onwards). If you will forgive the expression, he hasn’t come just to do ‘tricks’ in ecstatic meetings, but to empower the answer to our prayers for ‘thy kingdom come’. The greatest miracle, and the greatest human need, is truly, radically, transformed hearts.
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Comment by Jason Clark
10.02 pm on 15 Sep 2009
Steve & Patrick, have you guys read Tom Smail’s ‘The Giving Gift’? It’s the most wonderful outline of the Holy Spirit as a response to the Charismatic movement, in terms of Tom suggesting what might have been missed by it.
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Comment by Steve Burnhope
2.47 pm on 16 Sep 2009
Jason, I haven’t read it, but I have just ordered it from Amazon!
Do you know at what stage in the evolution of Tom’s thinking it was written? I think his views changed somewhat, from his early Fountain Trust days (NB I remember as a teenager going to meetings at the Westminster Central Hall).
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Comment by Jason Clark
8.21 am on 17 Sep 2009
It was first published in 1988, and I thin reads as a manifesto for helping the charismatic renewal not go off the rails. I wish my tribe had been able to heed it in some way.
I think it offers a road of recovery for ex-charismatics…
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Comment by Patrick Oden
1.31 am on 17 Sep 2009
Jason, I haven’t read it yet either, but it’s not on my Amazon wish list, and hope to get it before too long.
I’m really curious about your continued thoughts on this. The emerging churches in the UK do seem to have a fair bit more charismatic background than the emerging churches in the US, and that makes for probably more developed thoughts on this.
I’ve proposed elsewhere that as the emerging churches find a really developed understanding of the Holy Spirit, which I really do think is right there to find, they’ll have a strong form of neo-Pentecostalism. The earliest days of Pentecostalism had that holistic aspect that was quickly lost in the face of persistent racism, sexism, ego, and power issues.
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Comment by Jason Clark
8.16 am on 17 Sep 2009
Hi Patrick, I think rather crudely that the UK emerging church was very much birthed by evangelical charismatic anglicans in reaction to their experiences of church, whilst the US was largely spawned by reaction to the rise of the mega church.
We might have had a charismatic renewal but it came at the expense of a loss of the sacramental, now we see a sacramental renewal with a loss of the charismatic. At least that’s one of my thesis/ideas I’m exploring.
Warmly, jase
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Comment by Jason Clark
8.21 am on 17 Sep 2009
It was first published in 1988, and I thin reads as a manifesto for helping the charismatic renewal not go off the rails. I wish my tribe had been able to heed it in some way.
I think it offers a road of recovery for ex-charismatics…
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Comment by Patrick Oden
1.33 am on 17 Sep 2009
Oh, and while there’s book suggesting going on, one of the best books on the Holy Spirit I’ve read recently was Jose Comblin’s The Holy Spirit and Liberation. He’s writing from a liberation theology perspective, but has a strong interest in bringing Pentecostal thoughts together with liberation values–just the sort of thing that I see going on in the emerging church. Very holistic and exciting contribution.
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Comment by Jason Clark
8.16 am on 17 Sep 2009
thanks for the heads up on that
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Pingback by Re-Imagining The Holy Spirit: New blog series at Deep Church at Deep Church
8.13 am on 17 Sep 2009
[...] to my last post on the Holy Spirit, I’ll be hosting a blog series here on the Holy Spirit for several weeks, [...]
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