Navigating New Moves of the Spirit
By Jason Clark |
| |
|
| |
I’ve had several people in my church community and many more outside it, ask me what I make of Todd Bentley in Florida (and mixed in there is often the name John Crowder).
These questions, from good people in my church, and other friends, are enough for me to take it seriously and offer some responses.
 By way of method, I’m not going to deal with them directly. I don’t want to offer an assessment or critique of Todd Bentley and/or John Crowder. Instead what I want to offer is how I plan on navigating this movement, and the next one that comes along.
Being in the Association of Vineyard Churches for 20 years, means I have seen several movements like this come and go and many are connected to these current ones.
So what follows below is what I have learned from some of those experiences. They are in no particular order, just as they occur to me.
1. The Body of Christ is Broad: I can enjoy something of God in many different kinds of churches, but I wouldn’t want to make my church home there, nor do I have to.
2. Values: There are values within my church, and denomination of not hyping, not manipulating, not pumping people up. If God does something, great! If not, we don’t whip people up into a frenzy.
3. Theology: There’s a whole load of theological values here too for me. The Spirit is not about getting me the consumer dream, or making me feel good. Ecstatic events and tradition as vital as they are, are not self-authenticating (to paraphrase Oliver O’Donovan). The Holy Spirit works in the New Testament through ecstatic spontaneity and the establishing of traditions. We should be like the early church and be skeptical of both! A good charismatic is a skeptical charismatic, a good traditionalist is a skeptical one. A good emerging church is…you get the idea.
4. Authority: It’s not enough to say people are being blessed, therefore this is God. People feeling good, happy, excited, blessed does not self-authenticate something either. The only authority of a person, church, or movement, is the authority they point to, Jesus. Which is why when a person and tradition or new movement gets beyond reach of questioning, they have been dishonored, and so have we, and God. A sign of real authority is our willingness to critique as we engage, and for those most involved to be open to critique too.
5. Involvement: A close friend of mine was told about a meeting related to Todd Bentley that was happening locally, and the invite to him to attend was put this way. “This is God, don’t you want to go and have Jesus involved in your life and your churches?" Now I have been here myself, been so caught up in what God was doing with me and others, that I couldn’t understand why anyone wouldn’t want to be part of of it too. I was wrong. The body of Christ is bigger than any one person, church or movement, and there is no obligation like that on everyone to join in.
6. Openness: Yet when something like this, or whatever comes along next comes along, I need to pause and pray, and be open, and ask Jesus if he has something for me that I need to enter into and engage with.
7. Blessing: And as I write this, I realise, I want blessing, an experience of the Spirit for me, and my church, that makes our faith dynamic, and immanent and mission-enabling.
8. Flying around the world: I don’t have to travel half way around the world to get that. Yet I must not be arrogant and dismissive, because there are many other things like an emergent event, or research conference that I will fly half way around the world for. ‘Locational event snobbery’ does not become anyone.
Conclusion
That’s my navigational framework, and my thoughts at first blush. What navigational aids would you offer?
 Jason Clark is a pastor and on the coordinating group of Emergent-UK. This article was first posted on his blog. |
| |
|
Jason, for me here in the US Midwest, Lakeland is just half-a-country away, but I feel no compulsion to visit their revival. I watched an interview with one of Bentley's crew on the 700 Club, and while he came across as authentically engaged in trying to win people for Christ, I still felt like all the bragging about numbers is, well, un-Christian. Because of the enormous power of word-of-mouth and the press, Lakeland continues to gain steam, and they are putting teams on the road here in the US. Yes, I know a revival is meant to inspire people to come to Christ, but how are they keeping those people committed? Getting people fired up can happen just as easily at a great concert or a football game, but how many folks are just fair-weather fans of Jesus? I wonder about Lakeland's follow-through, the continuous ministry to those seeking more than just the milk they were served at their first revival. As you mention, these kinds of revival moments come and go, and once the novelty of the "bikers for Christ" thing wears off, where will these new Christians go? Let us pray that the thousands of people who truly gave their lives to Christ at Lakeland are ready to jump wholeheartedly into whatever God needs of them -- even if it means a button-down church in suburbia or a soup kitchen in the inner city or a mission to the Middle East. How will those thousands of people respond when that call comes upon them?
It is tiring isn't it, and we do miss so much that is available in the mundane of ordinary Christian life, the cruciform life.
So you found me over here?
Jason, you seem to be reading my mind.
Speaking from A Malaysian and Asian perspective, I resonate with much that you are saying. There are times when we miss what God is already doing in our context, especially when our attention is redirected to what's happening in another foreign context. The immediate temptation for many here whom are very open to "new moves of the Spirit" simply because we were never fully baptised in the "Enlightenment" categories, is to "import" the latest to our shores.
Allow me to start with a confession, it's tiring.
What has been liberating for me, is to have space in my life and ministry to say, I don't have to run people down who feel drawn to whatever "new moves" and yet not feel I or our church needs to "jump in" without due discernment. I guess intuitively I operate with a similar framework you so well articulated here.
Just my 2 Malaysian cents. There's more but perhaps another day :-)
|
So you found me over here?
Speaking from A Malaysian and Asian perspective, I resonate with much that you are saying. There are times when we miss what God is already doing in our context, especially when our attention is redirected to what's happening in another foreign context. The immediate temptation for many here whom are very open to "new moves of the Spirit" simply because we were never fully baptised in the "Enlightenment" categories, is to "import" the latest to our shores.
Allow me to start with a confession, it's tiring.
What has been liberating for me, is to have space in my life and ministry to say, I don't have to run people down who feel drawn to whatever "new moves" and yet not feel I or our church needs to "jump in" without due discernment. I guess intuitively I operate with a similar framework you so well articulated here.
Just my 2 Malaysian cents. There's more but perhaps another day :-)