The (Western) Institutional Church…and everything else

28 October 2012

[In a number of ways this is a follow-up to the River Ecclesiology series.]

Suppose you want to know what God is up to, what is going on with the church and the growth of His Kingdom. Where do you look?

You could talk about this on a national or international scale, but let’s think locally for a moment. One place to start is with the telephone directory. Go that route, and you find, say, a couple dozen churches. Some of them are totally independent nondenominational entities. Others are affiliated with a denomination — some national, some international in scope. Some churches will have a meaningful denomination-type affiliation beyond the denominational level as well, as with NAPARC, the Eastern Orthodox communion, or the Anglican communion. There may also be churches with an affiliation that functions (in some ways) in place of, or parallel to, denominational ties, as with Acts 29, the National Association of Evangelicals, or the Grace Evangelical Society. All this you could establish with a phone directory, a few telephone calls, and perhaps a glance at the church org charts.

But is that it? There was a time, perhaps, when it would have been. Personal ministry has always happened mostly outside the walls of the church, but there was a time when most of the people doing personal ministry were church members, overseen (at least loosely) by their institutional church community. But no more. Today, there are countless communities and networks outside the church that exist for Kingdom purposes.

To continue your survey of what God is doing in your locale, you would now have to leave off a study of church institutions and begin to go out into restaurants and cafes, pubs and parks. There, you might find remarkable things.

You might find that the pastors of these various churches gather and pray for one another. Not one of those gatherings where you brag on how well things are going for 45 minutes and then shoot up a quick prayer for God’s blessing on all the pastors at the end. No. A serious gathering where the shepherds of the city armor up and go to war on each other’s behalf, and for their city. A quick, 15-minute sketch of where everyone’s at, then 45 minutes of laying siege to heaven. Or more. (Sounds like pure fantasy to some of you, I know, but I’ve seen it happen.) Quiet as it’s kept, you might even find the occasional Roman Catholic priest or Missouri Synod Lutheran pastor participating in these gatherings.

Given that kind of unity, informal leadership would likely emerge. In order to make things work at all with pastors from so many different denominations and backgrounds, they would have to take a great deal of care not to step on each other’s toes. But inevitably, as they cared for one another, a pattern would begin to emerge. Some few men would clearly be more capable of shepherding the others and tending their wounds, and so, as time passed, there would be a few who came to be first among equals — the pastors of the pastors, as it were.

By the way, that’s the ancient function of a bishop — pastor of pastors. So from the phone-directory-and-org-chart perspective, your town might have no bishop of its own, while at the same time having a number of denominational churches in subjection to their several bishops elsewhere, and others in subjection to no bishop at all. Meanwhile, functionally speaking, that same town might have two or three devoted local bishops deeply invested in caring for its pastors. If these men are wise, they might also be identifying the young pastors that have the potential to take on the same responsibilities in another decade or two — taking those young pastors under their wings and carefully, informally, without stepping on toes, mentoring them.

If you have that much going on among the pastors, you might also have a great deal more going on among the people: prayer gatherings; ministries to the aged, infirm, and poor; informal networks of neighbors that gather for a party at someone’s house now and then, the network of relationships among the ‘regulars’ of a particular cafe or pub that some local Christian has adopted as a Kingdom hub. These extended families of people might cross all the denominational lines, and draw in a number of people who will never darken the door of an institutional church. But they come to meet God and His people in a backyard, a park, a pub — to care and be cared for, to serve and be served.

How are we to think about these things? The host of a regular backyard gathering of neighbors would never think of his home as a chapel, nor himself as a parish priest. The Christian who adopts a pub and its regulars would not call himself a chaplain. The pastor who shepherds the other local pastors would never call himself a bishop. And yet, in a certain fairly obvious sense, aren’t they?

How do these unofficial efforts relate to the official, institutional ones? At what point are they churches? How would we know? How do they relate to sacramental observance? In abstaining from serving communion, is that regular neighborhood gathering maintaining proper boundaries and respect for the church, or is it a de facto church depriving its members of the Lord’s body and blood, to their detriment?

At a historical level, the old Reformation discussion of ‘marks of a true church’ would seem to be relevant to this discussion. However, it was born out of a very different historical situation. How can we translate that conversation into something helpful for this one?

I don’t have answers to these questions. I would very much like to. Those of you who are willing, let’s start a conversation about it.

2 Comments | Ecclesiology, Kingdom Parish, Meditations | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols

Always?

21 October 2012

Back in the day, occasionally someone in Sunday school would look up at the teacher in all innocence and ask, “How come God doesn’t answer my prayers?”

“God always answers prayer,” the teacher would glibly say. “Sometimes He says yes; sometimes He says no; sometimes He says wait.”

That little Sunday school chestnut has always bothered me. It used to bother me because that’s not what we mean when we talk about answered prayer. When people talk about answered prayer, they mean that they prayed for Aunt Martha’s gout to get better, and it got better. If it got worse instead, nobody said, “See? God does answer prayer! (He just said no!)”

So I always thought it was a little disingenuous, a slippery redefining of the terms in order to avoid having to answer the hard question of how come God clearly heard Johnny’s request that his parents would not get divorced, and — as far as any of us could tell — just decided to ignore it.

*****
I still harbor that same objection, but now this whole “God always answers prayer” schtick bothers me for a different reason entirely: the people who say it don’t really believe it either.

Suppose I ask you for a lollipop. You have the same three possible responses:
“Sure; here you go.”
“Sorry, no.”
“Hang on a minute.”

Suppose you do nothing, and say nothing to me, even though I ask again, and then once more. Would I say that you answered me? Or would I say that you didn’t answer me, even though I asked you three times?

Some of you see where I’m going here, and I can already hear the protests. “I would be answering you in my actions.”

Really? How do I tell the difference between “no” and “wait”? I can’t, except by waiting until you eventually — in ten minutes or ten years — give me a lollipop, or until I die, whichever comes first. Not the most kind and helpful possible responses, huh?

If you treated me like that, even if it was just over something as insignificant as a request for a lollipop, you’d be a jerk. How much worse if it was over a request for a job, for healing my wife, or something else equally life-altering?

But how many of you think God is exactly like that?

Jesus said, “If you, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the Father give good gifts to those who ask him?” Most of us don’t believe that God is much better than an earthly father; we believe He is incomparably worse — the sort of dad who, when we ask for a fish, would give us a viper, make sure we got bit, and then tell us that it will improve our character. We send dads like that to jail. The early Christians used to mock the pagans for worshiping gods that indulged in adultery, incest, rape, theft and every sort of debauchery while at the same time disapproving of those behaviors in human society. We have become like those ancient pagans, rather than like our fathers who mocked them.

*****
I have good news though. God is not a bit like we think He is. He really does answer prayer. For example, when Paul asked God to take away his thorn in the flesh, God answered him: “My grace is sufficient for you; My strength is perfected in your weakness.” That’s what our loving Father sounds like when He says “No.”

Know what it sounds like when He says, “Wait”? It isn’t the silent treatment; it sounds like “Wait.”

The question is, do we listen?

4 Comments | Meditations, Prayer | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols

The Kingdom of God Has Come

30 September 2012

“But if I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, then the Kingdom of God is come upon you.”

With these simple words, Jesus raised the stakes on the religious leaders. He had just cast out a mute demon, a difficult feat that some rabbis maintained could only be done by Messiah Himself. Rather than believing, the Pharisees had rejected Him again and accused him of casting out demons by Satan’s power. Jesus pointed out what a foolish thing it would be for the ruler of demons to cast out his own demons, but the real challenge was yet to come.

The real challenge was simple: What if He wasn’t using Satan’s power? What if it was the Holy Spirit? What then?

Then the Kingdom of God is come. God’s rule, already firmly established in heaven, is breaking into earth, and where that is happening, the agents of the kingdom of darkness are being driven away.

The Kingdom is future. One day, we will see God’s will done on earth as it is in heaven, and Christ’s enemies will be His footstool. As Hebrews 2:5-9 observes, that day has not yet arrived, and so we can confidently say that the Kingdom has not yet come.

But then again, there are little pockets where we see exactly those things happening — God’s will done on earth as it is in heaven, and Christ’s enemies crushed under His feet. Jesus was pointing out one such pocket. In that place, at that time, the rule of God was being asserted, which is to say that the Kingdom had arrived.

***

Abram’s servant, seeking a wife for Isaac, met her at a well. Jacob met Rachel at a well. Moses met Zipporah at a well. In the Bible, when a man meets a woman at a well, you can practically hear the wedding bells in the background. So when Jesus meets a woman at the well outside Sychar, we know what is about to happen.

Jesus is going to marry Samaria.

Samaria has had five “husbands,” five nations who possessed her (see 2 Kings 17:24*), and the nation that dominates her now, Rome, is not really her husband. The emperor is just using her for the tax revenue. She’s defeated, hopeless, oppressed — a captive, trapped in the kingdom of darkness.

She meets Jesus, and her world changes. Finally, a man who knows her: “He told me everything I ever did,” she later says. He bypasses the theological smokescreen she throws up on the Gerzim-Zion question (there was a right answer, but she didn’t really care about it anyway). Instead, He speaks to the deep need of her heart: to have reality in her relationship with God, to have life. She drinks the water that He gives, and as He promised, it wells up in her and becomes a fountain of life. All her neighbors hear about it from her, and then meet Jesus for themselves, and He remains a few days in Sychar.

Now here’s the key question: In terms of the kingdoms of light and darkness, what just happened?

Obvious, isn’t it? Yahweh’s reign has come to Sychar, which is another way of saying that the Kingdom of God has come to Sychar. Has it come perfectly? No. Has it come fully? Nope. But has it come truly?

Of course. Where Jesus is, the Kingdom is already forcefully advancing.

***

So the question is, do we believe His promise?

Jesus sent His disciples out, not just with a commission, but with a promise: “All power is given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and disciple the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to do all the things that I commanded you, and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

Do we believe His promise?

If we do, then we know that He is with us wherever we go. As He cast out demons by the power of the Holy Spirit, so we have the indwelling Holy Spirit in us, always.

If the Kingdom breaks out wherever Jesus is, then why shouldn’t the Kingdom break out wherever His Body is?

***

If we understand that it’s God’s will for the Kingdom to break out wherever we go, then we can pray boldly. He wants to break the domain of darkness through us. From driving away oppressing spirits to freeing broken people, we are agents of God, seeking to establish His reign. Knowing that He sent us out, that He is with us, and that He wants to establish outposts of His reign on earth, we pray as Jesus taught us: “Thy name be hallowed; Thy Kingdom come; Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

_________________
*many thanks to Michele for pointing out the 2 Kings 17:24 connection.

3 Comments | Kingdom of God, Meditations, Telos of the Gift, Theopoetics | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols

God Speaks

23 September 2012

There are certain experiences that are just common to being a Christian, and pretty much everybody who’s been a Christian longer than a few days has had them.

Here’s one: You’re reading your Bible, minding your own business, when out of the clear blue sky one of the verses smacks you right between the eyes, with an immediate practical effect. It might be that you suddenly know what to do about a certain situation in your life. It might be a particularly targeted word of comfort, or a sudden understanding of someone else’s point of view. You might have read that verse hundreds of times before — you might even have it memorized. But in that verse, at that moment, God suddenly opens your eyes.

Depending on your background, you may call it a rhema, a prophetic revelation, a word of wisdom, or the Holy Spirit making application of the doctrine circulating in your soul. The description does make a practical difference, but that’s beyond the scope of our discussion at the moment. The point at the moment is that if you’ve been a Christian any length of time, you’ve had this experience, and it’s undeniably supernatural.

Cut away all the theological window-dressing that we pile on top of it, and there it is: God spoke to you, and what He gave you was more than the written text of Scripture. I can hear the protesting: “No, it was just an understanding of how to apply the Scriptures!” Yes, it certainly was. Where did it come from? From God. And a moment before, you didn’t have it. God communicated that understanding to you, at a specific time and place. Whether He used particular words or a picture in your head or a sudden gestalt awareness, God spoke to you.

So let’s just dispense with the argument over whether God still speaks today. We all know better. And let’s be honest, it’s not like that argument ever had a biblical leg to stand on anyway. God makes Adam and talks to him. God speaks to Noah, Abraham, Moses, the entire nation of Israel, Joshua, numerous judges, David, Solomon, a whole potful of prophets, Peter, Paul, Agabus, the daughters of Philip. “But He doesn’t still speak that way to His people today,” said no biblical author ever. No, seriously, where does it ever say, anywhere, that He has stopped speaking to His people? Yeah. Nowhere.

I know, I know. Many leading theologians think God has stopped speaking to His people today. They have heaped up arguments and reasons until the pile rivals the size of the Tower of Babel.

But when pressed, they will admit that they, too, have had this experience. God has spoken to them just as He has spoken to the rest of us, and they know it.

In Jesus and by the power of the Spirit, we have been invited into the perichoretic fellowship of the Triune Godhead. God speaks to us, and we know it. What we can’t explain is why we hear Him so rarely, and so poorly. So let us just admit from the outset that all those arguments that God no longer speaks are so much theological thumb-sucking. They are self-comfort, a sop to our wounded consciences. We know we need to hear from God more than we do, but if we can blame it on Him, then we don’t have to take responsibility.

So let us lay aside the thumb-sucking, and commence with the much more interesting and useful discussion of why we hear God so poorly, and how we can hear Him better.

Comments Off on God Speaks | Meditations | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols

Why Reject the Call?

16 September 2012

While he has often been criticized for oversimplifying, Joseph Campbell did us all a service by showing us a great deal about how stories work. Using the world’s great myths and tales as his raw material, Campbell distilled out a basic pattern that most, if not all, stories follow. (Not that they follow the pattern slavishly, as a formula — there are a variety of elaborations, variations and so on — but nonetheless the pattern holds.) Campbell published his work in his seminal Hero with a Thousand Faces, and the pattern is known as the Monomyth, or more popularly, the Hero’s Journey.

A number of people have elaborated and popularized Campbell’s work. If this kind of thing interests you, I commend the original to your attention, of course, but for simplicity and accessibility, I actually prefer Steven Barnes’ distillation of the Hero’s Journey. Barnes boils it down to a simple narrative containing ten stages. The hero is somehow presented with a call to adventure, which he first rejects, but then ultimately accepts. He then embarks on a road of trials, on which he encounters allies and gains powers, leading him to his initial confrontation with evil, where he is defeated. The defeat causes him to fall into a dark night of the soul, from which he escapes by a leap of faith (in himself, his friends, or a higher power). He re-confronts evil, and is victorious, and at the end of the adventure the student has become the teacher. So the ten stages break down like this:

1. Call to Adventure
2. Rejection of the Call
3. Acceptance of the Call
4. Road of Trials
5. Allies and Powers
6. Initial Confrontation & Defeat
7. Dark Night of the Soul
8. Leap of Faith
9. Re-confronting Evil — Victory
10. The Student Becomes the Teacher

This pattern covers most stories in one form or another. For some simple examples, think about how it applies to the original Star Wars film or The Wizard of Oz. For a more complex variation, look at Anikin’s downward spiral in the more recent Star Wars trilogy. (The difference here is that he doesn’t make the leap of faith, and therefore continues to be defeated. Rather than becoming a teacher, he becomes a slave. The pattern still applies, it just takes a different direction at #8.)

The thing I want to look at more closely today is #2. Why is it, in story after story after story, that the future hero rejects the call to adventure rather than enthusiastically leaping at it?

I think I have an answer, and I think we can see it best by looking at Simon Peter.

In Luke 5, Peter has his first really significant encounter with Jesus. Now, he has already been introduced to Jesus by his brother Andrew, down in Judea after Jesus was baptized. Some time later, the events of Luke 5 occur, and in the intervening time Peter has returned to fishing and Jesus has begun to travel around Galilee, preaching. Jesus is preaching by the sea, and the crowds are pressing in on Him so much that He gets into Peter’s boat and asks him to launch out a little ways, just so He can get some breathing space. Jesus continues preaching from the boat.

After He’s done preaching, Jesus tells Peter to launch out into deep water and let down his net. Peter gripes at this — after all, he’s just fished all night and caught absolutely nothing. He’s not happy about some carpenter telling him how to do his job as a professional fisherman, but he puts up with it, because it’s Jesus. The net fills with fish — with so many fish, in fact, that he has to call for his partners to bring the other boat to help him. Even with two boats, there are so many fish that both boats are in danger of sinking.

This is where it happens.

Peter has just seen what is going to happen to his life if he lets Jesus run it, and he can’t take it. He falls down on his knees before Jesus and says, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord!”

Do you see that? Peter has just had the most successful day of his professional life, and he knows that he owes it all to Jesus’ presence. But he doesn’t ask Jesus to join his crew so he can make a killing every day. No, he asks Jesus to leave! Why?

Because he suddenly understands that life with Jesus is so much bigger than anything he had ever imagined doing with his life, and it terrifies him. More than that, he feels completely unworthy. That kind of life can’t be for me, he thinks. It could only be for really holy people, and I am a sinful man. So all he can do is ask Jesus to go away.

Every human being is conscious of God, every human being is made in the image of God, and every human being is fallen. We know in our bones that we are unworthy of the destiny we’re called to, so when we get a glimpse of the thing we were really born to do, we always balk. And in every culture, all over the world, the tales of our heroes reflect this human reality. A hero that didn’t balk at the call to adventure would be so unlike us that we wouldn’t sympathize with him, and wouldn’t be interested in a story about him.

Notice how Jesus responds to Peter — to all humanity, really. The first thing He says is “Don’t be afraid.” Contained in those few simple words is so much more subtext — “Yes, I know that you’re sinful. Yes, I know that you never imagined a life like this. Yes, I know that you feel entirely unworthy. But trust Me.” He knows it’s terrifying. He gets it, and it would be enough if that was all He said, but He doesn’t stop there. In another simple sentence, He gives Peter a completely new destiny: “From now on, you will catch men.”

When they got back to shore, they left everything and followed Jesus. Of course they did. But right at that pivotal moment, when Peter is on his knees in the fishing boat begging Jesus to leave — what happens if Jesus gives him what he wants?

If Jesus gives him what he’s asking for, then he’s got an incredible story to tell around campfires. Picture him, sitting surrounded by gawking children, the firelight dancing on his face. “The boats were so full of fish I was afraid we weren’t going to make it back to shore!” He shakes his head. “Most amazing thing I ever saw.”

Would’t it have been terrible if the most amazing thing Simon Peter ever saw was two boats full of fish? Think of all that was ahead of him — feeding the 5000, healing the sick, casting out demons, seeing the resurrected Christ, Pentecost, the Samaritans coming into the church, Cornelius, and so much more that we don’t even know about.

What is God doing in your life that you feel unworthy of, afraid of? Don’t be afraid. He knows everything about you, every strength, every weakness, every secret shame. He called you anyway. Embrace the call to adventure. Leave it all and follow Him.

We already know what destiny Jesus had in store for Peter. What destiny, I wonder, does He have in store for you?

4 Comments | Meditations | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols

Experiential Knowledge

9 September 2012

Naw, I don’t think life is a tragedy. Tragedy is something that can be explained by the professors. Life is the will of God and this cannot be defined by the professors; for which all thanksgiving.
-Flannery O’Connor, letter to Beverly Brunson, January 1, 1955

I remember talking with a roommate of mine in Bible college about our Spiritual Life class. He pointed out that 90% of what is taught in classes and books on the spiritual life is not actually anywhere in the Bible. Upon a little reflection, I agreed. We began to kick back and forth examples of things we’d heard that were nowhere in Scripture. I don’t remember most of them, but I vividly remember our contemptuous discussion of praying, “God, show me my sin” — a prayer we could find nowhere in the Bible. The real need, we felt, was to strip away that 90% — all the folklore that surrounded walking with God — and just stick to what it actually says in the Bible.

How silly we look in hindsight, all these years and miles later! Of course we should start there; that’s our foundation. And also of course, there are a tremendous number of superstitious fables grown up around the Christian life that actually serve to conceal biblical truth, and these weeds ought to be pulled out of the garden and burned before they cause any more trouble. But coming to understand how to apply that biblical foundation well is a skill at which we grow, and in growing, we pick up a great number of helpful hints and bits of folk wisdom.

God is a person, according to the Bible. Or three, if you like. How much of my know-how about living with my wife is written down anywhere? Much less than 1%, surely. Even if I set about to write it down, how much could I realistically write down? Maybe 5%, maybe? So despite my best efforts, 95% of my know-how about living with my wife will remain unwritten. It will come out, when it comes out at all, in a piece of advice to a friend in a particular situation: “Let it go, man. You’re not going to get anywhere with that right now.” Or “That’s a good question. Why don’t you ask her?” If my friend responds in that situation by saying, “Where is that in the Bible?” he’s going to miss some good advice.

So the astonishing thing is not that 90% of the advice about walking with God is not written anywhere in the Bible. What’s so very astonishing is that 10% of it is. It’s a testament to how much God wants us to know Him that we have so much guidance written down. But as with any other person, walking with God is an art. In the end, the know-how is experiential; we learn not by reading, but by doing it ourselves, and watching it done by others.

That “Show me my sin” prayer that my roommate and I so criticized? When a relationship is going sour and I need to come to grips with my own responsibility for it, asking God to expose my sins in the relationship so I can confess them and forsake them is a great idea. I am very glad that I have the freedom to do that, and I am delighted that He answers such prayers. I don’t need a specific verse to hang it on for it to be helpful.

I have heard “listening prayer” criticized on the grounds that there’s no Bible verse that says God speaks to us in prayer. That may be the case, but there’s certainly no verse that says God doesn’t speak to us when we pray, and when I come to God in prayer, ask my question, and then shut up and listen, well…He speaks to me. So there it is. Is this biblical? Well, yes. God did it with Abraham, didn’t He? Am I not a son of Abraham by faith, invited to share in the Triune fellowship by Jesus Himself through the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit? Why shouldn’t my prayer be a two-way conversation?

It happens all the time in Scripture that God speaks to people by a variety of means; there’s certainly nothing unbiblical about it. But as I coach someone in learning to listen to God’s voice, what I tell them will be a mix of biblical precedent and things I’ve gleaned from my own personal experience walking with God and hearing His voice myself. Mostly the latter, to be entirely honest.

Is there something wrong with that? Nope. “He who walks with the skilled will be skilled,” as the Good Book says, and I learned to hear God’s voice the same way — by being coached by people who had the skill. As I gain skill, I will coach others. This is the way God designed us to function in the Body of Christ.

Of course, if you think about it, it seems silly. Having given His inerrant and inspired Word, God then entrusts the task of teaching His people how to apply it to fallen, feeble, frail human beings. It’s amazing that it gets done, generation after generation. But that’s the mystery, isn’t it? The mechanism is us, and it looks like it will never work — but in spite of it all, Christ is building His Church into a glorious Bride without blemish or spot. A sensible, believable explanation for this eludes us — even the professors among us — but the fact of it is right there in front of us. In spite of all the good reasons that it should not be so, it is so. For which all thanksgiving.

2 Comments | Meditations, Mystical Union, Person/Proposition | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols

Living with Pentecost

2 September 2012

In the theology I was raised with, the Spirit had two major relationships to human beings. In the Old Testament, He came upon people to empower them for service, and in the New Testament, starting at Pentecost, He indwells believers. Indwelling was just as empowering for service as the “upon” relationship of the Old Covenant, but better somehow, rendering the “upon” relationship obsolete.

Lately, I’ve been moved to study what the New Testament teaches about the Spirit, and I’m finding something a bit different. First of all, Jesus promised the indwelling Spirit to the disciples in the upper room discourse (John 14:17), and delivered on this promise well before Pentecost (John 20:22). There is much scholarly hand-wringing about the latter passage, but let’s not monkey about trying to keep our systematic theology neat. Jesus said “Receive the Holy Spirit” and breathed on them. Do we imagine that it didn’t work? That His breath hit their faces, but the Spirit only made it halfway, and then hung in limbo for days until Pentecost? Let’s just take it straight up the middle: He did it, and it worked.

So they had the indwelling Spirit, but they did not yet have the promise of Acts 1:8, the Spirit empowering them for service. By the way, the language of Acts 1:8 is all about the Spirit coming upon them for service — very Old Covenant language. Interesting, huh? The promise of Acts 1:8 is fulfilled at Pentecost, and men who had been huddling in an upper room are transformed into bold witnesses. The Pentecost event is then repeated (with the same supposedly Old Covenant language, by the way) in Acts 10:44//11:15 with Cornelius’ household, and in Acts 19:6 with the disciples of John.

In a very real sense, Pentecost is an obvious case of a “second blessing.” There’s no biblically responsible way to say that there’s no such thing as a second blessing. Peter — to take an obvious example — certainly did receive a second blessing at Pentecost. The question is whether our experience today follows the pattern of Peter’s. So let’s follow Peter’s experience a little ways and see what happens with him.

What happened to Peter at Pentecost, exactly? Acts describes it this way:

When the Day of Pentecost had fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. Then there appeared to them divided tongues, as of fire, and one sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.

What did the Spirit do to them? He filled them, and this fulfilled the promise Jesus gave that they would receive power from on high when the Spirit came upon them. This is all Old Covenant language. The Spirit filled the Hebrew artisans (Exodus 28:3), particularly Bezalel the son of Uri (Exodus 31:3, 35:31). The Spirit filled Elizabeth and Zacharias to empower them for prophesy (Luke 1:41, 67), and John the Baptist even from the womb (Luke 1:15). The Spirit filled Jesus upon His baptism (Luke 4:1). And now, the Spirit fills Peter (and everybody else present).

But filling is not a one-time event. Pentecost wasn’t some unrepeatable phenomenon; it was just the beginning. The same thing happens again with Peter when he’s before the Sanhedrin (Acts 4:8). That’s his third blessing, if we’re still counting. After he’s released and returns to the nascent Jerusalem church to report, they pray, and ” the place where they were assembled together was shaken; and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and they spoke the word of God with boldness.” For Peter, that’s the fourth blessing.

Is this something all believers should partake in? The seven deacons of Acts 6 are described as “full of the Holy Spirit,” and Stephen in particular is “a man full of faith and the Holy Spirit.” And it is this same thing that we are commanded to do: “Do not be drunk with wine, in which is dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit,” says Paul to the Ephesians.

So when someone asks me today if I believe in the second blessing, I say, “Sure, but who’s counting?” I need way more than a second blessing. I’ve got lots to do yet.

The filling of the Spirit is an iterative, ongoing need, if we would minister in the way that God would have us to do. This is nothing new — the Spirit has always come upon God’s people for supernatural ministry, as He continues to do today. Whatever we are facing, we need to be filled with the Spirit in order to handle it as God would have us to do. What’s new is that it is available not just to the occasional craftsman, judge, king, or prophet, but to every believer, all the time.

The indwelling of the Spirit is a separate issue, having to do with our invitation into the Triune fellowship, as Jesus explained in the upper room discourse. The disciples received that in John 20, as we receive it today at the point of salvation. But He had not yet fallen upon them to empower them for ministry. When He did — wow. That same filling is what we are called to today — repeatedly.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

The Gift of Teaching is not for Today

25 August 2012

If a person really has the gift of teaching, then he will communicate well. As he’s communicating the content of the passage of Scripture before him, he will never make a mistake in interpretation or an error in communication strategy, because how could the divinely given gift of teaching go wrong? Is the Holy Spirit working through him, or isn’t He? If it turns out he was wrong on a content issue, or he just screwed up the delivery beyond repair, then clearly the Holy Spirit wasn’t at work, and the guy doesn’t really have the gift of teaching.

And let’s face it, most of what passes for “teaching” today is pretty weak stuff. I mean, we know what real, Spirit-directed teaching looked like, right? Paul’s speeches in Acts, his address to the Ephesian elders — that’s powerful stuff. How many sermons do you hear today that measure up to that standard? None, that’s how many. You know why? Because it’s not the Spirit’s gift of teaching at all, that’s why; it’s just a guy saying some stuff that occurred to him in the study.

Reasonable, yes? How can it be flawed and imperfect if the Holy Spirit is the one who gives the gifts? God gives perfect gifts; says so right there in James 1.

So today, we have folks who claim to teach, but they make mistakes, and even occasionally have to issue retractions because they realize they were wrong about something they said earlier. They don’t measure up to the power and vibrancy of the biblical examples of teaching, at all. It would appear, in fact, that the biblical gift of teaching is not being dispensed by the Spirit today.

**

Of course this is all hogwash. But isn’t it exactly the standard that many of us apply to the gift of prophesy? Why is that gift different?

4 Comments | Cessationism Or Not | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols

Experience gap

19 August 2012

As I’ve made my shift out of cessationism, several people have expressed concern that perhaps I’ve grown tired of the hard work of biblical exegesis and teaching, and I’m hunting for something more sensational and showy.

And they’re soooo, like, totally right. I never really liked reading and studying, and this is my big chance to fulfill my childhood dream of being a circus ringmaster for Jesus…oh, wait. No, that’s someone else.

For any position that people are committed to, there’s a story that they tell themselves about why people are committed to it, why others aren’t, and most importantly, why people give up on it. A previously committed member of the group who gives up and walks away casts doubt on the whole enterprise, and you have to tell yourself something about why that happened. There are usually a few stock explanations, and while sometimes those explanations are outright lies, usually they have become the stock explanations precisely because they’re often true. Once the stock explanations are in place, of course you turn to them before you try any other theory.

“Okay, Tim, I get it. You’re not really the ringmaster type, are you? But surely you must have seen some amazing things if you’re changing your mind about all this.”

Not really. Some prophetic words that really struck home with me, a few things like that. But I haven’t seen the dead raised or an eye regrown or a broken bone healed or anything like that.

“Seriously, you now believe all this stuff happens, but you’ve never seen it for yourself?”

Well, yes, actually, that’s exactly right. I have never seen a New-Testament-quality miracle. I changed my belief based on Scripture and reliable history. I have a couple of good friends who have seen some of these miracles, and even benefitted from them, but I’ve never seen or done one myself. Yet I now believe they happen. The truth of it is simple: I want to see God at work, however He is pleased to work. As far as I can tell from the NT, the range of what God is willing to do is considerably broader than I used to think, but my faith has a real impact on how God is willing to work. So I’m believing God for all of it, and waiting to see what He will do. In the meantime, there’s a gap between what Scripture teaches me to expect and my own experience.

It’s not like we don’t know how to handle that gap. When I experience a gap between the biblical teaching on chastity and my own experience, I don’t develop a doctrine that allows me to rationalize my lack of experience with biblical chastity. I humble myself before God, confess my sin, pray for His mercy and deliverance, and then — with authority! — call on the power of the risen Christ to rebuke my lustful thoughts, transform my heart and mind, and drive any demonic influences far from me. I speak the truth that I am a living sacrifice, a vessel for sanctification and honor, a son of the Most High, and I rebuke the temptation. Jesus already purchased the victory over sin; all things are mine in Christ. This victory is already mine; Jesus has already paid for it. I tell God I want it, and I don’t stop telling Him how much I want it until He gives it to me. None of my cessationist friends would have much of a problem with this.

So what am I to do when I experience a gap between Scripture and experience when it comes to the miraculous? Same thing, I would think. Sure, I could gin up a doctrine that allows me to rationalize my lack of experience with God fulfilling His promises, but why would I?

Why go through all that when instead I could confess that I have never believed God for these things, admit my lack of faith, and repent of it? And having repented, I now pursue a new course of action. “Earnestly desire spiritual gifts, and especially that you may prophesy.” So there it is — I’m desiring. Every time I drive past the Broadway-Hampden overpass, I pray for miraculous gifting. What will He give me? I don’t know. But He told me to desire, and I do. He told me that I don’t have because I don’t ask, so I’m asking. He told me that if I ask for something, I should keep asking all the time, like a poor widow seeking justice from an unjust judge. So I do that. Why? Because it’s obedient. What will God do? I can’t wait to find out.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Mere Supernaturalism

12 August 2012

As I have discussed my transition away from cessationism with various people, it has become clear that there are actually two related issues entangled together. In my life, they came as a set, but there’s no reason why everybody’s experience would be the same as mine.

The first issue is the question of whether certain miraculous spiritual gifts ceased operating as individually vested gifts after the initial launch of the Church. This is the issue around cessationism proper. Many charismatics don’t understand this, and thus are confused when a cessationist professes to believe that miraculous healings still happen today, that God answers prayer today, and perhaps even that God can still speak through visions and dreams today. The issue in cessationism is not healings, but a particular person having the gift of healing; not someone hearing from God in a general sense, but a particular person having the gift of prophecy. (Generally. This distinction does not hold for tongues — every cessationist I know says it’s over and done with, period.) So with cessationism vs. continuationism, we’re talking about whether the Spirit continues to dispense all the biblically attested spiritual gifts in the present day.

The second issue, although related, is distinct from cessationism: the expectation that God will intervene supernaturally. From the Red Sea to the present day, God’s people have struggled with the temptation to forget that God intervenes in the world. We tend to think of this as a peculiarly modern temptation, but a quick look at the Exodus generation shows us this is not the case.

Hold that thought a moment.

***
In eschatology, the wide dividing line has typically been between premillennialists on the one hand, and post- and amillennialists on the other. That’s where the bright political fault lines have been drawn. I want to suggest that this is a mistake.

The lines ought to have been drawn between those who look to the future with hope and expectation, and those who look to the future with gloom and the spirit of Chicken Little. This is the difference that makes a difference. I’m an optimistic premil (or if you like, a dominion dispensationalist), and I have much more in common with a patient postmil than I do with either my doom-and-dystopia premil brethren or most amil folk.

This is not to say that the theological question of when Christ returns relative to the millennium is unimportant. I believe it is an important question, and one which Scripture plainly answers. What I am saying is simply that optimism or pessimism about the future is vastly more important. We who can look at the nations raging, laugh at them with Yahweh, and seek first God’s Kingdom and His righteousness on earth as it is in heaven — we are one breed. The Chicken Littles are something else, and whatever their doctrinal statements might say, their spirit of fear and their little pronouncements about “polishing the brass on a sinking ship” are not from God, because He doesn’t give that spirit or talk that way.

***
In similar fashion, I believe that in the battles over the charismatic movement, evangelical Christians drew the bright political line in the wrong place. I know folks who are charismatic in their theology, but day in and day out, expect no divine intervention in their lives. I also know charismatics who go to church, belt out a couple of paragraphs in tongues, and go home — but don’t pray with authority, don’t seek to hear from God, and don’t seek to minister to others in any supernatural way. By the same token, I know rock-ribbed cessationists who believe God speaks in dreams, pray for miracles, and trust Him to supernaturally order their affairs and relationships.

We drew the political line between those who practice all the biblically attested spiritual gifts today, and those who do not. However, the far more important issue is whether, on either side of that line, a person will seek to resolve his problems through doctrine alone, or whether in his daily practice he will also expect God to intervene supernaturally.

I’m open to suggestions for naming these positions, but for our present purposes, I’d like to call them doctrinalism and supernaturalism, respectively.

Two points of clarification. First, I’m talking about habits of practice, not talking points. I know lots of people who on paper, and when pressed will admit that it’s possible God would intervene miraculously today, but in practice, from day to day, they rely on doctrine alone, and they teach their followers to rely on doctrine alone. These people are doctrinalists, no matter what they say.
Second, I am not setting up an either-or situation here. It’s not either doctrine or supernatural intervention. I am talking about people who rely on doctrine alone versus those who look to doctrine, but also seek for God to intervene supernaturally in the present.

Again, I am not saying the cessationism question is unimportant. Not at all. I think the stakes are very high in that conversation. In the interests of full disclosure, let me just go ahead and spill the beans: I believe that most cessationists and most charismatics have one critical thing in common: an allergy to biblical discernment. I believe that the Church will not grow into health and maturity unless she employs all the biblically attested gifts (cessationists, I’m lookin’ at you), and she employs them with testing and discernment, as Scripture requires (charismatics, I’m lookin’ at you too), and all of that in the context of loving God enough to take His Word seriously and be visibly united with His people. So yeah, I think it’s an incredibly important issue.

However, supernaturalism/doctrinalism is a much more important issue. The question of whether God will intervene through the gift of healing is important, but the question of whether God will intervene at all is obviously an even more important question.

I would contend that in most ministry venues, supernaturalists — charismatic or not — are natural allies. Doctrinal statements can create a barrier where no biblically founded barrier exists, of course, but those who look for and appreciate God’s intervention can work together, if they’re allowed to — or if they simply choose to move forward no matter what their more sectarian brethren might prefer.

And then later, over a bottle of wine, they can argue over whether the miraculous healing they just prayed for, and received, was the result of the gift of healing, or whether it was simply an answer to prayer.

5 Comments | Ecclesiology, Functioning Supernaturalism, Meditations, Person/Proposition | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols

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