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?

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.