Last night, our senior pastor started a series at New Community called something like, "Building an Acts 2 Church." He kicked off the series by basically talking about how church growth is not ultimately about strategy, but about the Holy Spirit showing up (take that, you people who think megachurches are just about strategy & marketing!)
Anyway, Cal gave his "manifesto" about balancing between "charisphobia" (the fear of anything the slightest bit charismatic) and "charismania" (the indiscriminate wholesale adoption of the next wave). Here are his three things he had to repent of (my paraphrase, not necessarily his exact words):
- Repent of being fearful about the baptism of the Spirit
- Repent of being passively open about giftings of the Spirit, but not actively pursuing power in the Spirit
- Repent of the fear of being accused of going off the "so-called deep end"
- Repent of the fear that I'll have to explain why the Spirit doesn't always heal, doesn't always show up, etc.
Very stimulating to a graduate of Cedarville College where they made us read mean-spirited thomes like Charismatic Chaos. (I won't even put a link to this book!)
3 comments:
Megan and I will be home on the 23rd for Thanksgiving. We plan on coming to new community that night. I can't wait to come back and see everyone and be at Northwoods again!
hey, thanks for posting this. it's good for people who can't make it to wed. night services. too bad there isn't a blog posted about new community EVERY weekend... ahem ahem.
i remember in "God and the Church", when we reviewed "that book", many students were angry about the mean spirit of it, our prof was quite taken back by the response, he ended the discussion and moved on. we never came back to the book...
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