The Renewal Movement Needs to be Renewed

I have been a part of the charismatic movement since before I was born. A rather outlandish claim. What I mean is that my parents travelled from cold, rainy Scotland to the Anaheim Vineyard in California in the late 1980s and then came back to Scotland, never to be the same again. A few years later, I was born. A few years after that the 'Toronto Blessing' erupted in 1994 near Toronto Pearson International Airport. On my 18th birthday I flew from my hometown of Aberdeen in Scotland to Toronto to attend Catch The Fire (the new name of the church where the Toronto Blessing had happened). What was supposed to be a gap year turned into a God-adventure that turned my life upside down and launched me into youth ministry in the charismatic movement. As you can probably tell, I have much to be thankful for with regard to how God has blessed me through the charismatic movement. God is using the charismatic movement to transform many lives all over the world by the power of the Spirit. I firmly believe that the charismatic movement has been given much by God that is essential to the mission of the global Church and its witness in the world in the 21st century. That said, I think the movement, like all movements, has weaknesses. Here is my vision, and the motivation behind this blog: How much more transformative could the movement be if we managed to overcome two of what I see as our greatest weaknesses: our tendencies toward anti-intellectualism (a general distrust of higher learning) and anti-traditionalism (a general distrust of the two-thousand-year-old tradition of the Church)?

My parents came from a generation of Christians who were hungry for more of God, more than sound doctrine and carefully composed sermons which oftentimes fed the mind but left the heart and spirit seemingly unmoved. As a result, when the Vineyard movement first burst onto the scene in the late 1970s in California, and when what become known as the Toronto Blessing brought seemingly the whole world to Toronto, they were hungry for more. Many similar people flocked to these and other places. Literally millions of people, many of whom were burnt out pastors/Christian leaders, found new spiritual life and utter transformation in these great, recent moves of God. It felt for many as if God had broken off the shackles of a head-only, traditionalistic Christianity that was in many ways staid, dry, and lifeless. John Wimber's famous remark as a new Christian 'When do we do the stuff?', by which he meant, 'When do we actually do the miraculous works of Jesus done by Christ's followers in the New Testament?' resonated with millions of people around the globe. This newly transformed collective of Christians, after their initial dramatic experiences of the Holy Spirit in these and other places, then either went back to their denominational churches or started new, independent churches/movements and continued their Christian lives with new vigor.

Many of the people initially touched by God in the charismatic movement from its genesis in the 1960s to its other expressions in later decades were pastors and leaders who had already been discipled in, even if not formally trained in, a Christian environment that valued thoughtful engagement with many things, two of which were: 1. Academic Christian biblical interpretation and theology and 2. The historic, collective tradition of the Christian Church. As mentioned above, they had already appreciated these things, but had found that, aside from the actively-embraced, powerful working of the Holy Spirit, they oftentimes resulted in a theologically orthodox but spiritually lifeless Christianity. So, they wanted more of the Spirit. But I have a theory about what may have happened next, which admittedly is based on my own personal experience and observation and is therefore anecdotal and subjective: As succeeding generations of Christians who had encountered the Spirit in the various expressions of the charismatic movement from the 1960s through to the 1990s later attempted to disciple the next generation, some of them (far from all of them) did not intentionally pass on the thoughtful engagement with scripture, theology and tradition in which they themselves had been discipled. They either continued with these things implicitly assumed, or left them behind altogether in favour of a purely Spirit-filled Christianity.

The result of this is that succeeding generations of charismatic Christians have been offered a Spirit-filled Christianity replete with dramatic, emotional and energizing encounters with God, but, at the very same time, they have not consistently been intentionally discipled in thoughtful, deep engagement with Christian scripture, theology and tradition. The original situation has now been reversed. My theory is that we now have a generation of young charismatics who are tired of what sometimes manifests itself as an emotionalistic, experience-seeking Christianity that is devoid of theological or intellectual substance. We have now experienced enough life wherein we have seen people not healed, not delivered and prominent leaders let us down. We are now hungering for more of the very thing that some of our parent's generation had: A robust, thoughtful, wise, discerning, intelligent Christianity which has roots that go back two thousand years. Something that can hold up in the face of the challenges of the 21st century world, something that can feed our souls for the rest of our lives.

To conclude: The charismatic movement is a good gift from God to the global Church. It is, however, in my view, being hindered by a lack of intentional, deep and sustained engagement with academic biblical studies/theology and the Christian tradition. The renewal movement needs to be renewed. How can we go about this task? I would suggest by 1. The collective development within the charismatic movement of a Spirit-empowered life of the mind, orientated especially toward scripture and theology and 2. A recovery of the Christian tradition as a positive resource for the church today.

That is the purpose of this blog: My musings as to how we might together try to renew the renewal movement in these ways, not as outside critics, but as charismatics longing for more. I think I speak for many of the younger generation of charismatics when I say that we are genuinely thankful for all the ways in which previous generations have stewarded and taken flack for the move of the Holy Spirit in the Church in our times. At the same time, I at least feel that changes need to be made. We need to maintain our strengths and shore up our weaknesses.

In this blog I will combine reflections on scripture, theology, church tradition and Christian spirituality, hoping to post around once a week. The posts will not be overly long, polished or technical. At some point I also hope to start up an email list for those that are interested in receiving a weekly bite sized chunk of theological and spiritual nourishment. Please let me know what you think of my content in the comments section or via email, I am open to feedback. Feel free to disagree with me, but please let's all remain respectful at all times, even when our opinions differ. Thanks for being here!