word | spirit | world | church
The charismatic gifts, whether we mean the dramatic ones like tongues, interpretation, prophecy, and healing, or the behind the scenes ones we could mistake for talent, like administration, are a vital part of church life. The British New Church movement, of which my own reformed charismatic corner is a part, has had an enormous impact… Continue reading 5 reasons we drift away from the charismatic gifts
As I write the recent revelations about Shawn Bolz—the Bethel church associated ‘Prophet’ who engaged in serial sexual misconduct and deliberately researched people so he could ‘accurately’ prophesy into their lives—are doing the rounds. I’m a charismatic, I think the gift of prophecy continues and should be eagerly sought (1 Corinthians 14). I wasn’t familiar… Continue reading Humility in Prophecy
An old Pastor of mine used to say that when someone spoke in tongues in a church meeting, it was like a spiritual hand grenade being rolled into the room. He was a military man, an ex-Para, so it sounded less odd from him than it does from me: a man who has only seen… Continue reading Spiritual Hand Grenades
I recently had the joy of having a chat with Jez Field of New Ground's Life and Leadership podcast about all things 'eucharismatic.' You can, if you so desire, listen to it here below or at your podcast venue of choice. Our conversation ranged all over the place, and there were many aspects of being… Continue reading Being Eucharismatic
Paul in 1 Corinthians 14 is keen to express to the Corinthians that worship should be orderly. Yes, you can have a flow of charismatic life with everyone bringing their prayer, tongue, Bible reading, prophecy, and the rest, but you must also have some order. At the very least you need to take it in… Continue reading Order and the Charismatic
Churches should embrace the life of God in the Spirit in all its fullness. That means both charismatic spiritual life and the sacramental life of the gathered church. ‘Eucharismatic’ is a term coined by Andrew Wilson in his excellent book Spirit and Sacrament, a portmanteau of eucharistic and charismatic. His book lays out his thesis, but… Continue reading Being Eucharismatic
Worship has three, or maybe five, dynamic directions. There is a gift and receipt dynamic to it. It looks a little bit like this: Worship goes up, it goes out, or sideways, and it goes in. What I mean by this that the primary direction of our worship is towards God, or ‘upwards.’ We worship… Continue reading Directionality in Worship
Places matter. They accrue meaning as we do meaningful things in them, but also they are better or worse for different things. I’d like to consider ‘response times,’ by which I mean the part of your Sunday meeting where people are invited to respond to preaching or prophecy and then are prayed for by someone… Continue reading The Location of Response Times
There’s a sort of language in charismatic culture that love the word ‘freedom.’ That’s great, right? Who wouldn’t like our freedom? Who would want to give up our freedom (cue William Wallace memes)? Who would want to live in… unfreedom (the opposite of freedom is ‘bondage’ but people really get the wrong idea these days)?… Continue reading Freedom isn’t a thing
Charismatics and Pentecostals have a reputation for being anti-intellectual. Although we’d love to say this was a myth, the reason it’s so often repeated is that it, unfortunately, does have some grounding in reality. We Pentecostals and Charismatics aren’t well known for being thinkers. That's the opening paragraph to Eucharisma, a new home for charismatic… Continue reading Eucharisma
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