one of the big questions i think i have been really trying to answer as we all look at the awesome and sweeping cultural shift that is upon us (i mean in the church as it begins to re-form in the postmodern era) is this; how will the pentecostal church fare in the end?
it is a church that embraces the experience of God. sometimes it has been criticized as too experience-based and that is partly true. instead of an experience of God i would really rather talk about an encounter with God – a face to face meeting rather than an emotional tickle, a life change rather than a series of momentary touchy feely events. nevertheless, the pentecostal church has expected the supernatural encounter of God.
it is a church that acknowledges the mysteriousness of God. even though God is mysterious we do believe he is still knowable. we know that God is invisible but believe that his presence can be sensed.
it is a church that embraces imagery and spiritual insight through sensory perception – consider the sound of rushing wind, the sight of tongues of fire, the tender lighting of a dove.
it is a church that is participatory. we trust God to enable us to speak in a spiritual language and, by the same Spirit to interpret spiritual language. we trust God to move in and through us as we employ the spiritual gifts he has given for the strengthening of the church.
it is a church that is communal. we know that from the beginning the Spirit was poured out on the church as it was meeting to pray and worship as one body.
to be honest, my underlying assumption (and, for sure, my hope) is that the pentecostal church is well suited to move into the postmodern period if it can only shake free of some of the other cultural (modern) trappings it has learned to live with.
Tuesday, October 26, 2004
Friday, October 15, 2004
brownsville blues
i have been pondering another question.
did the brownsville revival in pensacola look so much like the azusa revivals because God moved the same way as before or because that was the way people (including me. I went to brownsville in 1996) expected to experience it?
did the brownsville revival in pensacola look so much like the azusa revivals because God moved the same way as before or because that was the way people (including me. I went to brownsville in 1996) expected to experience it?
Friday, October 08, 2004
Thursday, October 07, 2004
holiness and harleys
after coming fresh off a three-day retreat i’m thinking again about the question from my last post, “how much of the pentecostal church is simply cultural and how much of it is truly a reflection of the Spiritlife?” this retreat is an annual event sponsored by my denomination where the ministers from our region head to the mountains to get alone with God, refocus on the inward journey, and … play golf.
only I didn’t play golf … because i was able to talk another church planter friend of mine (ray cowell) into riding out to the retreat center with me on our motorcycles. i had in mind that we would just ride through the nearby rocky gap state park during our free time.
now, ray has a new bike, a honda vtx 1800. in other words, an import - a not made in the usa motorcycle, a metric cruiser. okay, okay, so it's faster than what i was riding - an hd electra-glide classic. anyway, when we got to the retreat center we were surprised to see a few other bikes in the parking lot - harleys, in fact. "but, they couldn't possibly belong to any pentecostal preachers. harleys and holiness preachers? " that's what i was thinking though i had heard rumors.
as it turned out, after the evening session that first night, ray and i met four other bikers (yes, pentecostal minister bikers) who indeed had felt compelled to ride their bikes to the retreat. this was amazing; those bikes did belong to other ministers after all - pentecostal bikers - go figure.
plans were made to hook up for a ride the following day in the free time between the morning and evening sessions and ray and i went back to our room more than a little excited, anticipating a day of riding hogs while "the ladies" (what we took to calling the non-motorcycle-riding preachers) played golf.
the next day, after the morning session, we met up outside the lodge with what turned out to be a serious group of bikers covered in black leather everything - chaps, jackets, boots, gloves - and straddling chromed out two-wheeled symbols of serious cultural rebellion. are these guys holiness preachers?
without much conversation we strapped on helmets, pushed dark sunglasses back on our faces and thundered out past guys in plaid pants who were lugging big bags of gulf clubs (metal rods that each wear tiny fuzzy sweaters with numbers on them).
what happened to me - to all of us - throughout the hours that followed was subtle at first, hardly noticeable. while my ministry colleagues and i were riding, we were connecting - deeply. those few short hours riding together and the "celebration" meal we all shared afterward (thanks again for the steak, rich) resulted in the most authentic community i have ever experienced. it was so good to be real and to be known. it was amazing to be pentecostal and riding harley-davidsons with other pentecostal preachers.
one of my biggest regrets is that i didn't get a picture of all of us together. i did manage to take a few shots of the postcard scenery that surrounded us on all sides - the misty mountains, placid lakes and meandering streams that absorbed the rumble of so many chrome pipes even as our shiny metal machines went gliding furtively across miles of pavement and between snaking yellow lines.
by the end of day three of our retreat we found two more ministers who had bikes (one of them a missionary and the other a church planter) which brought our total to eight riders (five of us church planters and two of us former church planters and one guy doing college ministry).
I can't believe how much fun a bunch of pentecostal pastors had doing what most of our colleagues shake their heads at (and, i think, secretly wish they could do themselves). It was great.
Ray, Rich, Mark, Tim, Nancy, Sam, Wes, it was a pleasure riding with you.
only I didn’t play golf … because i was able to talk another church planter friend of mine (ray cowell) into riding out to the retreat center with me on our motorcycles. i had in mind that we would just ride through the nearby rocky gap state park during our free time.
now, ray has a new bike, a honda vtx 1800. in other words, an import - a not made in the usa motorcycle, a metric cruiser. okay, okay, so it's faster than what i was riding - an hd electra-glide classic. anyway, when we got to the retreat center we were surprised to see a few other bikes in the parking lot - harleys, in fact. "but, they couldn't possibly belong to any pentecostal preachers. harleys and holiness preachers? " that's what i was thinking though i had heard rumors.
as it turned out, after the evening session that first night, ray and i met four other bikers (yes, pentecostal minister bikers) who indeed had felt compelled to ride their bikes to the retreat. this was amazing; those bikes did belong to other ministers after all - pentecostal bikers - go figure.
plans were made to hook up for a ride the following day in the free time between the morning and evening sessions and ray and i went back to our room more than a little excited, anticipating a day of riding hogs while "the ladies" (what we took to calling the non-motorcycle-riding preachers) played golf.
the next day, after the morning session, we met up outside the lodge with what turned out to be a serious group of bikers covered in black leather everything - chaps, jackets, boots, gloves - and straddling chromed out two-wheeled symbols of serious cultural rebellion. are these guys holiness preachers?
without much conversation we strapped on helmets, pushed dark sunglasses back on our faces and thundered out past guys in plaid pants who were lugging big bags of gulf clubs (metal rods that each wear tiny fuzzy sweaters with numbers on them).
what happened to me - to all of us - throughout the hours that followed was subtle at first, hardly noticeable. while my ministry colleagues and i were riding, we were connecting - deeply. those few short hours riding together and the "celebration" meal we all shared afterward (thanks again for the steak, rich) resulted in the most authentic community i have ever experienced. it was so good to be real and to be known. it was amazing to be pentecostal and riding harley-davidsons with other pentecostal preachers.
one of my biggest regrets is that i didn't get a picture of all of us together. i did manage to take a few shots of the postcard scenery that surrounded us on all sides - the misty mountains, placid lakes and meandering streams that absorbed the rumble of so many chrome pipes even as our shiny metal machines went gliding furtively across miles of pavement and between snaking yellow lines.
by the end of day three of our retreat we found two more ministers who had bikes (one of them a missionary and the other a church planter) which brought our total to eight riders (five of us church planters and two of us former church planters and one guy doing college ministry).
I can't believe how much fun a bunch of pentecostal pastors had doing what most of our colleagues shake their heads at (and, i think, secretly wish they could do themselves). It was great.
Ray, Rich, Mark, Tim, Nancy, Sam, Wes, it was a pleasure riding with you.
Tuesday, September 28, 2004
what is a pentecostal anyway?
people (inside and outside of the church) have been asking that question for a long time. as a teen i never knew what to say when people would ask me about this. i remember telling them, "were a protestant church (though, not even sure what that meant) and, well, we're kind of like baptists." most people seemed to know what baptists were even though i really didn't know much about their church. i did know that the baptist church and our church had a lot of the same basic beliefs but mostly i knew they were more readily accepted by people than we were. this answer kept me from having to go into the "tongues" thing in the middle of parties or explain that, "no, we don't handle snakes or drink poison in our church."
it did make things weird, though, when i would bring a friend to church. i remember thinking (praying), "oh please don't let sister blue hair give her weekly message in tongues this week, oh please, oh please." of course, she always did. not that i didn't believe in what sister blue hair was doing it's just that my friends usually had no idea it was coming and i had no idea how to prepare them for it. how it would turn out, you never knew for sure. some of my friends freaked at what they heard and saw at our church and others said they were able to feel God for the first time in their lives.
as i think back over all my experience growing up in the pentecostal tradition i wonder how much of what we saw and did was simply cultural. i don't mean that our pneumatology in itself was cultural but maybe most of our expressions and our explanations and possibly even our means of engaging the Spirit were greatly influenced by the cultural and historical context from which pentecostalism was birthed.
as acts2 people we have had a tendency to try and recreate the circumstances of a move of God. whenever there is any kind of "outpouring" at a particular church we are a little too eager to build a model out of it and hold seminars about it and write a book about how it was "done." but even all of the more current moves of God seem to look amazingly like the azusa street revival meetings where it all began (there is even a group of folks meeting near asuza street who are praying for the same "fire" to fall as it did in 1906-1909) .
what i'm wondering is if our tendency to hold onto history (which is not bad in iteslf) is so closely tied to our way of seeking a move of God that we can't conceive of the Spirit causing people to act in any other way than what we have experienced. in other words, how much of the pentecostal church is simply cultural and how much of it is truly a reflection of the Spiritlife?
it did make things weird, though, when i would bring a friend to church. i remember thinking (praying), "oh please don't let sister blue hair give her weekly message in tongues this week, oh please, oh please." of course, she always did. not that i didn't believe in what sister blue hair was doing it's just that my friends usually had no idea it was coming and i had no idea how to prepare them for it. how it would turn out, you never knew for sure. some of my friends freaked at what they heard and saw at our church and others said they were able to feel God for the first time in their lives.
as i think back over all my experience growing up in the pentecostal tradition i wonder how much of what we saw and did was simply cultural. i don't mean that our pneumatology in itself was cultural but maybe most of our expressions and our explanations and possibly even our means of engaging the Spirit were greatly influenced by the cultural and historical context from which pentecostalism was birthed.
as acts2 people we have had a tendency to try and recreate the circumstances of a move of God. whenever there is any kind of "outpouring" at a particular church we are a little too eager to build a model out of it and hold seminars about it and write a book about how it was "done." but even all of the more current moves of God seem to look amazingly like the azusa street revival meetings where it all began (there is even a group of folks meeting near asuza street who are praying for the same "fire" to fall as it did in 1906-1909) .
what i'm wondering is if our tendency to hold onto history (which is not bad in iteslf) is so closely tied to our way of seeking a move of God that we can't conceive of the Spirit causing people to act in any other way than what we have experienced. in other words, how much of the pentecostal church is simply cultural and how much of it is truly a reflection of the Spiritlife?
Wednesday, September 22, 2004
i was a teenage pentecostal
as a guy who has grown up in the classical pentecostal church i'm getting started with this blog probably more than anything as a sort of "soul therapy." i guess what i'm trying to do is work out the postmodern implications of living not only the Christlife as a product of the modern church but also as one who has embraced the Spiritlife. i'm beginning to get a picture, foggy as it still is, of the "new kind of christian" that will inhabit the church but i wonder how acts2 people will fit into this "church on the other side." i don't really hear anyone talking about this. there are probably a few folks in this conversation but i don't know of any.
anyway, i kind of feel like a quarterback who just threw an interception. all i can do is helplessly look on as everyone goes running in the other direction, and hope i don't get clobbered in the process. the church is changing "direction" again and i want to be a part of what's happening but i appear to be on the wrong team. it's no big deal, as pentecostals we're pretty used to that kind of thing. i was just hoping that the emerging church would be past the idea of separate teams.
the funny thing is, we have always embraced the imminence of God. you want experience? we got it baby! we've never been afraid of that. and the truth is we have always had a good handle on the theology behind our experience though we have been accused otherwise. we simply didn't feel compelled to codify everything or create pneumatology text books (except that we are doing more of that nowadays). we just shared our acts2 stories (and, subsequently, our theology) in community.
anyway, as for me, i have experienced the Presence. i'm one of "those" people who speaks in "tongues." i have felt the rush of his spirit like a river flooding the church building - divine healing, dreams, visions, prophetic insight - all those things have been and continue to be a part of my experience. and what i'm wondering is this; am i going to be more accepted in the postmodern world than i have been in the modern one we're all leaving behind? if so, bring it on!
well, i have a bunch of other questions too but before i get to those i'm hoping to churn up some dialogue on the subject because I wonder who else is feeling out of place. i wonder who else in my particular tribe (assemblies of god) may be involved in this same process. i wonder what the pentecostal church will look like on the other side.
anyway, i kind of feel like a quarterback who just threw an interception. all i can do is helplessly look on as everyone goes running in the other direction, and hope i don't get clobbered in the process. the church is changing "direction" again and i want to be a part of what's happening but i appear to be on the wrong team. it's no big deal, as pentecostals we're pretty used to that kind of thing. i was just hoping that the emerging church would be past the idea of separate teams.
the funny thing is, we have always embraced the imminence of God. you want experience? we got it baby! we've never been afraid of that. and the truth is we have always had a good handle on the theology behind our experience though we have been accused otherwise. we simply didn't feel compelled to codify everything or create pneumatology text books (except that we are doing more of that nowadays). we just shared our acts2 stories (and, subsequently, our theology) in community.
anyway, as for me, i have experienced the Presence. i'm one of "those" people who speaks in "tongues." i have felt the rush of his spirit like a river flooding the church building - divine healing, dreams, visions, prophetic insight - all those things have been and continue to be a part of my experience. and what i'm wondering is this; am i going to be more accepted in the postmodern world than i have been in the modern one we're all leaving behind? if so, bring it on!
well, i have a bunch of other questions too but before i get to those i'm hoping to churn up some dialogue on the subject because I wonder who else is feeling out of place. i wonder who else in my particular tribe (assemblies of god) may be involved in this same process. i wonder what the pentecostal church will look like on the other side.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
