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Introduction

What's in a name? The Evangelical Charismatic

Series

  • Letter to the Melburnians looks at what the church could be if we removed tradition and replaced it with something more biblical
  • Mission of the church looks at our overall goal and purpose, covering the Great Commission, the place of good works, the place of signs and wonders, and the extent to which we can expect change before Christ returns
  • The Spirit AND the Word attempts to reconcile a strong belief that God's Holy Spirit is alive and well today giving charismatic gifts and teaching and guiding us, alongside being grounded in biblical objective truth
  • Directionalism provides a better way forward than the extremes of cessationist and presumptionist views, in relation to the exercise of our faith
  • Criticising leaders takes into consideration a mature "don't (hypocritically) judge" as well as the need to, with understanding, rebuke and correct
  • Becoming Christian looks at how to become a Christian, and the issues of the so-called carnal Christian, multiples stages of faith, and whether we can simply pray a quick prayer to enter into eternal life
  • Word of Faith examines the New Age connection of this brand of Pentecostalism, and how we might untangle ourselves from it, while presenting a positive alternative that is more resilient and Christ-glorifying

Charismatic gifts

  • God doesn't move because we do the right thing. Rather he moves for His glory. (Unpacking Psalm 22:3 & 1 Kings 18:36-38 in series "The Spirit AND the Word 1: The problem")
  • Faith must be paired with humility, resulting in openness that God might not do as we ask (Daniel 3), allowance that God's will may override our will (Matthew 26), openness to overlook our desires for God's desires (Acts 14), and acceptance of something less than perfection for a greater purpose (2 Corinthians 12). We should take the attitude about everything of "if it's God's will" (James 4:15). Therefore, naming and claiming is presumption; copying what 'worked' previously is misplaced trust; and we should realise that 'speaking life' (being positive) doesn't change God's will - focus on Jesus and his vision (and honesty). 
  • I'm looking at how suffering and healing go together. Starting off, we have God's two wills: declarative (this will happen) and general (my desire, or my heart) in How the two wills of God help us think about healing.

Church

  • The church is a Body and this means lots of people with different gifts, helping people frustrated in their gifts, uplifting quiet achievers as essential, with multiple up-front leaders. (Unpacking 1 Corinthians 12:12-31 in What if the church believed it was a Body? and the subject of a Book review of Sam Storms' "To Love Mercy: becoming a person of compassion, acceptance & forgiveness")
  • The mission of the church is to be a witness: to Jesus' life (ethics, culture, actions), death (regarding sin, forgiveness and sacrifice), and resurrection (power over sin, death and the devil). The purpose of this is to reveal Jesus in all his glory, though for the moment it is not a triumphalist 100% extent, but nor can we limit this mission to merely saving souls while we pray "your will be done earth as it is in heaven". We act this out in every area of life, being savvy in when we act it. (Unpacking the whole Bible in series Seeking Perfection Imperfectly 8: Conclusion and Summary)
  • What would the church look like if we restarted from the Bible? We might live closer together, pursue holiness and love together, apprentice others, preach and demonstrate the Gospel, deliberately create a Jesus culture, honour women and make it easy to raise kids, worship God out of our hearts, be active peace-makers, note and uphold all the different gifts and abilities of each other, and see culturally diverse people come together, in the series Letter to the Melbournians.

Technology

  • All technology, including the way we live (structures as well as rituals), embody certain values. We can learn to perceive what they are, and, we can change these technologies and rituals to be God-honouring through an array of strategies (Embodying our values in our technology)
  • Be present-day focussed, ready to serve those around you now (not off in a digital world); connect with people locally; be prayerful and focus on listening to God, not social media (I no longer look to my phone)

Salvation

  • Salvation is not obtained by a one-liner, like a boy trying to win a girl, but rather by a surrender and authentic (non-formulaic) crying out to God until the point that God gives that person peace. There should be initial signs of the Spirit such as the fruit of the Spirit, a charismatic gift (not necessarily speaking in tongues), conviction, or other sign. There is no second stage like a baptism, though there are seasons of growth and fresh fillings of the Spirit. (Unpacking Romans 7 and different models of salvation in Becoming Christian Part 1: The One-Stage and Two-Stage approaches to salvation: Conservative and Pentecostal)

Discipleship

  • There is no general rule to not criticise leadership, the closest being to not get in the way of God's plans. When we do need to criticise, we also need a lot of wisdom, grace, and an ability to leave vengeance to God. Of course, nobody will listen to you if you judge hypocritically. (Unpacking Numbers 12, 1 Chronicles 16, Deuteronomy 32:35 & Matthew 5:38-48, and Matthew 7:1 in series "Criticising Leaders" - see Criticising Leaders 6: 10 Commandments of criticism)

Wisdom

  • Some issues like preference of biblical translation are important, but we can still be united when we realise that God is big enough to deal with our errors, and that we could wait and see the fruit, or simply hold them out for testing even while we still encourage people to make up their own minds (Romans 14). Maintaining unity when some are King James Only (or ESV only)
  • Wise people don't fall for lies, using such techniques as getting a second opinion (Proverbs 18:17), looking at the fruit of the teacher (Matthew 7:15-20), grounding it in the Word of God (Acts 17:10-12), learning more about the topic, realising the interconnectedness of revelation and interpretation, questioning the opposite, understanding the Dunning-Kruger effect, being in a 5-fold ministry church, and knowing whether you are a thinker or a feeler and the implications of that. How can we protect ourselves against believing a lie?

I must be too used to reading polemical works because I was always expecting to find just over the next page something on the KJV-only controversy, or why Christianity is better than anything else—but alas, this book sticks to history! Now history is the bedrock of good polemics, however, so I will still try to see if McGrath's book has use for them in this review (spoiler: it does!).

Introduction

I know a lot of conservative Evangelicals who simply want nothing to do with the gift of tongues—the type who recoil at anything Pentecostal. And fair enough, when what you know about Pentecostalism is from sources far removed from their day to day, such that all that is heard sounds frankly demonic.

On the other hand, Pentecostals have a large heart. They want others to join in with them, but can't understand the antagonism. All they can do is weakly, with great hope, offer a hand, knowing it probably will be rejected yet again—and move on.

I believe realising there are true and false gifts is one of the keys to bringing both sides together. How could that be?

Ben Fitzgerald's sermon

I enjoyed listening to Ben Fitzgerald speaking recently. He is well aware of the major divide between Pentecostals and conservatives, in that conservative denominations discount about a third of the Bible (the spiritual bits) because of their religion. They don't/won't believe God for a miracle.

Nice. Conservatives need to be challenged on that.

The problem

So Scripture says two contradictory things, a few times:

God wants everyone to be saved (1 Tim 2:4), but also declares the wicked will have their part in the lake of fire apart from God.

Webb contrasts his spiritually vibrant time with Campus Crusade for Christ with the typical Western conservative church experience, and then shows us how he's pioneered a way of doing church that involves people like 'Cru' did.

New Agers say that the spiritual realm is more real than the physical realm. We experience the physical realm, but it's an illusion—much like the Matrix. Materialists say that the physical realm is all that there is. There is no spirit. But God created both the physical and the spiritual, and they are both good—very good.

So 2 Timothy 3:16 appears to say that we only need the Bible, and not the church, the Spirit, trials or application of God's word in our lives—at least if we approach it within a Western Protestant bias. But if maturity is ultimately becoming like Jesus, that could help us interpret it better.

Now, rather than starting and ending with the concept of "sufficiency", it's helpful to look at the related concept of maturity. This is all about forming into something more Christ-like (Ephesians 4:13). If the principle that maturity is becoming like Jesus is correct, we can think about many other applications.

Consider the missionary, going to a remote tribe where there is no church. How can they be matured, if they are stuck for years outside the normal environment of church? This might be similar to how Jesus sent out 72 disciples, two by two, to preach the good news, heal the sick and cast out demons (Luke 10:1-12, 17-20). This is doing what Jesus did, so it matures us as we learn his ways and act as his ambassador. We live as an open Bible to others, so in that emulation of Christ, we become like him.

Hopefully all this gets you thinking, like it did for me, that if this is about the Bible being the basis for life, the authoritative final word on everything, what then is actually sufficient for life? We need the Word; we need each other—the Body; we need God, so therefore we need prayer, and repentant humility—and so on. So what is sufficient for life as a Christian?

And this is crucial because I fear that some people are too quick to say that all we need for life is a theology of the Word, and they don't know what it means to live in community, to need others and serve others. On the other hand, others are too quick to leave the Word and rely on the Spirit, and slowly move further and further away from the Word.

The Bible has a few things to say about the Spirit in relation to the Body and maturity.

But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.
John 14:26

When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.
John 16:13, ESV

More Articles ...

  1. The Sufficiency of Scripture 02: The authority of Scripture and the role of the church
  2. The Sufficiency of Scripture 01: Introduction
  3. Word of Faith Appendix 1: Can you create your own reality? Decree and declare? Take hold of promises?
  4. Word of Faith 10: Developing a biblical metaphysical reality
  5. Word of Faith 09: Dismantling Word Faith metaphysics
  6. Word of Faith 08: Metaphysics: the spiritual realm
  7. Ye are gods, John 10:34-35
  8. Word of Faith 06: A place more decisive than the throneroom of God
  9. Word of Faith 07: Faith in three worldviews
  10. Word of Faith 05: The role of doubt and belief in healing
  11. Word of Faith 04: 9 non-signs: further testing of the spirits
  12. Word of Faith 03: Discerning between spirits amongst Word Faith believers: 9 tests
  13. The principle of moderation: applied wisdom in Ecclesiastes
  14. ​Walking on water by the force of faith, Matthew 14
  15. ​Casting out demons with prayer, Matthew 17, Mark 9
  16. ​Decree a thing; speaking into existence, Job 22:28
  17. ​Law of Attraction: whatever you ask for you get back, Mark 11:24, Acts 20:35
  18. Word of Faith 02: The New Age Connection
  19. Word of Faith 01: Introduction
  20. Book Review of "Revival or we Die: A Great Awakening is Our Only Hope", by Michael L. Brown PhD
  21. What is spiritual warfare? How does it involve a clash of ideas?
  22. Directionalism Appendix 2: What about the atonement—doesn't Isaiah 53 teach that Jesus died not only for our sins, but also our physical healing?
  23. Directionalism Appendix 3: Prophesying to, preaching to and healing everyone anytime
  24. Directionalism Appendix 1: Application to methods of making miracles: Do not use the force, Luke
  25. Directionalism 5: Key takeaways
  26. Directionalism 4: Commanding healing vs asking God
  27. Directionalism 3: What this means for when God doesn't heal
  28. Directionalism 2: The principle of following God's direction daily
  29. Directionalism 1: An answer to both Cessationist and Presumptionist views
  30. Could non-miraculous gifts in fact be miraculous?
  31. How can we protect ourselves against believing a lie?
  32. Maintaining unity when some are King James Only (or ESV only)
  33. Book review of Sam Storms' "To Love Mercy: becoming a person of compassion, acceptance & forgiveness"
  34. Embodying our values in our technology
  35. The Spirit AND the Word 8: Conclusion, and tentative alternative principle
  36. The Spirit AND the Word 7: What Conservatives need to work on: undermining individual experiences because of a generality
  37. The Spirit AND the Word 6: Psalm 22:3–Applying the remedy
  38. The Spirit AND the Word 4: Objectively wrong: my experience must be yours. Psalm 22:3
  39. Criticising Leaders 6: 10 Commandments of criticism
  40. The Spirit AND the Word 3: We need both objective AND relative truths
  41. The Spirit AND the Word 2: Christ sends the Spirit, who points us back to Christ
  42. Criticising Leaders 5: Judge with a righteous judgment: Matthew 7:1; John 7:24
  43. The Spirit AND the Word 1: The problem
  44. Criticising Leaders 4: Leave vengeance to God and instead do good to evildoers: Deuteronomy 32:35, Romans 12:19-21, Matthew 5:38-48
  45. Criticising Leaders 3: Don't get in the way of God's plans: 1 Chronicles 16
  46. Criticising Leaders 2: Be slow to criticise the Lord's chosen: Numbers 12
  47. Criticising Leaders 1: Do not harm the Lord's anointed
  48. Faith AND Humility
  49. Seeking Perfection Imperfectly 8: Conclusion and Summary
  50. Seeking Perfection Imperfectly 7: Through the Lens of the New Heavens and New Earth
  51. Seeking Perfection Imperfectly 6: Through a Political Lens
  52. Seeking Perfection Imperfectly 5: Through a Cultural Lens
  53. Seeking Perfection Imperfectly 4: The Extent of God’s Kingdom on Earth
  54. Seeking Perfection Imperfectly 3: Purpose Throughout The Bible
  55. Seeking Perfection Imperfectly 2: Rediscovering the Resurrection
  56. Seeking Perfection Imperfectly 1: Introduction to the Problem
  57. Becoming Christian Part 4: Further testing of Romans 7 carnal Christian hypothesis, in light of the Corinthian church, the Pentecost experience, and the testing of false converts
  58. Becoming Christian Part 3: How should we lead people to Christ? A Once-Off Sinner’s Prayer, or a Once-Until Crying Out? The Evangelical Charismatic approach to salvation
  59. Becoming Christian Part 2: What does Romans 7 teach—the carnal Christian, the struggle of sin, or Paul’s non-Christian recollection?
  60. Becoming Christian Part 1: The One-Stage and Two-Stage approaches to salvation: Conservative and Pentecostal
  61. Letter to the Melbournians 10: Group Identity
  62. Letter to the Melbournians 9: Middle Leadership
  63. Letter to the Melbournians 8: Conflict Resolution
  64. Letter to the Melbournians 7: Worship (Singing)
  65. Letter to the Melbournians 6: Attitude to Women and Children
  66. Letter to the Melbournians 5: Church Witness
  67. Letter to the Melbournians 4: Gospel
  68. Letter to the Melbournians 3: Discipleship
  69. Letter to the Melbournians 2: Holiness and Love
  70. Letter to the Melbournians 1: Living Arrangements
  71. I no longer look to my phone
  72. Walking between Charismania and Cessationism
  73. What if the church believed it was a Body?

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Charismatic gifts

Church

Discipleship

Salvation

Technology

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