The Corinthians, Clement of Rome, and Intergenerational Cooperation in Today's Charismatic Movement

Clement of Rome

This past week I met with some old friends of mine who were hugely influential in the early part of my time in the North American charismatic movement and whose friendship I still cherish. As we chatted over lunch, they mentioned to me that many of my critiques of the contemporary North American charismatic movement were helpful. But they also got me thinking about the idea of being solution-focused. It's not too hard to point out problems, even though that is part of the healing and growth process. But ultimately, if we have decided not to throw the baby out with the bathwater and remain charismatic Christians, we need to get to the constructive part of the task rather than just endless critique. I already appreciated this fact and was already trying to be solution-focused, but this conversation brough this into sharper focus for me.

So, in this blog post, I am going to begin to ponder: what are some of the steps we might want to take towards building the kind of charismatic churches that we want to be a part of? I think an initial step, for me at least, might be focusing on what we could call 'the good apples'. Yes, in the last two or so years we have seen many high-profile charismatic leaders being exposed for what they are: evil and abusive false shepherds. But it is also true that all over the world there are thousands of leaders in the charismatic movement who are thoroughly trustworthy and Christlike and who have been serving faithfully in ministry for longer than I have been alive! As we try and remould and reshape the charismatic movement together, we do not need to reinvent the wheel. Our older leaders were there when these movement started, and a huge number of them are trustworthy and godly people, even if we younger folks don't see eye to eye with them on everything.

In my previous blog post I talked about how the Corinthian church, to whom Paul wrote 1 and 2 Corinthians were Paul's 'problem church'. We would assume that after they received Paul's two divinely inspired letters, they must have got their act together, right? Far from it. There has survived a letter from Clement of Rome that dates from the late 1st century (so not all that much later than Paul's letters) which was sent to the Corinthian church, and they were still messing things up! The younger people in the Corinthian church were attempting to depose the older leaders and do things their own way. Because, obviously, young people know best. But Clement rebuked them for this. I think a good place for us to start in being solution-focused in our approach to the contemporary North American charismatic movement is to recognize that although problems abound, we are also not short of older, godly men and woman who have already been doing this for decades. I don't want to be one of those younger Corinthian leaders at the end of the 1st century!

Thanks again to everyone who reads my blog posts, I greatly appreciate your time. If you have made it this far, here is a suggestion for you all which I am going to follow also - why don't you reach out, via phone or text or email, to an older church leader whose ministry has really blessed you and let them know that you are thankful for them. Endless critique isn't going to get us very far, we need to work together. 1 Peter 5:5 (NIV) 'In the same way, you who are younger, submit yourselves to your elders. All of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, because, “God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble.”'