Coming Out of the Hangar: Confessions of an Evangelical Deist

Never seen a miracle? Still believe in them?

Waiting for the Breakthrough

I have never seen a miracle. Not one I recognized. I have prayed for folks who were sick—sick with cancer, disease, or some disability. No one was supernaturally healed when I prayed. I have heard first-hand accounts of people suffering from demonic oppression. That is not something I have ever seen. I have Christian friends who say they hear audible messages from the Lord; others who receive distinct impressions about how to minister or what to say in a specific situation. This has never happened to me. I have wrestled with destructive patterns and habits of sin in my life, have asked the Holy Spirit for supernatural resources to give me victory over those habits. And yet, typically, the severity of the temptation and the strength available to me seemed unchanged. When I experienced victory, I do not know if it was anything more than will-power and discipline.

Why is my Christian experience so devoid of supernatural reality? Why this raging disjunction between the faith I profess and the faith I practice?

Maybe this is your story too. You have wondered, Is this all there is to Christian faith—an experience of God that does not venture beyond my own subjective thoughts and feelings? Where is the power that was available to Jesus and the early church, the power of the Spirit which Paul commended to his Christian congregations, and which some Christians today continue to testify to? Is something wrong with me? Is my Christian faith subnormal?

Those are the questions I want to tackle here—as an evangelical Christian and as a Presbyterian pastor.

I said, I am an evangelical Christian. I believe the Bible is God’s Word, that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the Savior God sent for the salvation of the world, that Jesus died on the Cross for our sins and rose bodily from the dead, and that people must repent and put their faith in him in order to receive and experience God’s forgiveness and eternal life.

I believe that God is alive, that he created the world and is intimately involved in it today. I believe in supernatural reality. I believe in the miraculous ministry of Jesus and of the apostolic church, and I further believe that God continues to minister powerfully and miraculously in the world today through the church and in the name of Jesus.

I have heard and read personal testimonies of healing and deliverance, of supernatural encounters with God and manifestations of his Spirit. Some of these were perhaps psychosomatic healings or psychologically-induced experiences. But many of them ring true and most of them I believe. They are often similar to biblical accounts. Why should I believe the Bible but disbelieve similar stories told by reasonable, sober Christians? When these stories came from the mission field in Africa and Latin America, evangelicals had far less trouble with them than more recently when they came from Christian neighbors in the same suburban tract. Suddenly it is spooky and disturbing.

So far, God has always done these things when I was out of the room. But when I hear about them now, I rejoice over the power of God manifest in other people’s lives and say cheerfully to God, “Maybe next time, Lord, I’ll be there.”

I said, I am a Presbyterian pastor. I belong to a denomination which many Bible-believing Christians think has become doctrinally apostate and spiritually dead. The same could be said of other “mainline churches”—Methodist, United Church of Christ, Lutheran, Episcopal, and American Baptist. I have to admit that many of the official pronouncements and preoccupations of my denomination appall me. But there is still much life and faith in Presbyterian congregations I know. I love my church’s godly heritage and tradition. And while it is sufficiently faithful to its biblical and spiritual roots and sufficiently open to new things God is doing (and new forms in which to express it), it wins my allegiance. All denominational allegiances are provisional. I belong to Christ first and to a Presbyterian church somewhere after that.

Both the mainline denominations and evangelicals have had difficulty with healing and other supernatural ministry—sometimes for different reasons. Let me try to explain those difficulties.

If they knew what a deist was, many Presbyterians would check that box. For them God has wound the universe up like a great clock and it is more or less ticking away on its own. Miracles do not happen, or if they do, they are confined to a special historical or religious situation (such as, the life of Jesus). God intersects people’s lives only in a spiritual, subjective dimension (in their “heart,” in their “soul”, etc.). I do not pretend to defend this position; it is unbiblical and unchristian. But you find it all over the American church scene, especially in mainline churches like mine, espoused by pastors and laypeople alike. You can understand their difficulty with the notion of supernatural ministry.

There are also Bible-believing Presbyterians, like those I hang out with, who are supernaturalists in principle, but often unconscious deists in practice. In worship we sing about God and talk about God, but often the style of worship actually distances us from God and prevents us from experiencing his presence and power.

Evangelicals believe in miracles but do not generally experience them. We pray for all manner of divine intervention and wholeness, but do not expect much response. We expect the clock to keep ticking pretty much like it always has. We affirm the reality of the supernatural, but have little first-hand contact.

Pastors are no exception. If they go to orthodox Princeton Seminary (as I did) or Bible-believing Dallas Seminary or evangelical Fuller Seminary, they receive little or no training in Spirit-empowered ministry and submit to a curriculum that is far more academic than spiritual. We are trained to know about God but not to know God or to do the work of God.

Among evangelical and mainline pastors and church leaders, there is a fear and distrust of supernatural ministry, an underlying disbelief and a tremendous professional insecurity about it. If you are a pastor and healing, deliverance, and supernatural gifts are not part of your Christian experience, you seem to be stuck with an awkward choice: either those experiences are sub-Christian (phony or self-induced) or you are sub-Christian. You see the dilemma.

My own experience of the reality of God has been largely subjective. It has been confined mainly to God’s power to change people’s hearts and create faith, to console and exhilarate me when I read the Bible and reflect upon the love of Christ, to point me and tug me in the direction of righteousness, and to move me to hope in the coming kingdom of God when Christ returns in glory. There is much spiritual reality and consolation in all of that, and yet for me it is not enough. It is virtually all psychological. I believe in a livelier, more active and robust reality of God in the world. I believe these things not because my intuition or experience insists upon them, but because I read the Bible, and this kind of lively, powerful reality of God is what the Bible teaches me and shows me. My conscience is captive to this Word.

I wish to be as honest and forthright as possible about this peculiar disjunction between my deepest religious convictions and my personal spiritual experience. How do I cope with it? What am I doing about it?

I feel the same prickling uneasiness and frustration about it that I felt when I was a boy wrestling with a difficult mathematical concept and not “getting it”—or trying repeatedly to master some athletic skill or finesse and being repeatedly thwarted. In both of those instances there was a breakthrough moment where the mathematics suddenly made sense and where the skill to hit a ball right was finally “there.” The math may have taken a couple of days to coalesce; the ball skills took ten years. I experienced both breakthroughs as gifts. I had to want them, had to seek them, but in the end they had to be given. I could not make them happen.

Christian life has many breakthrough moments—moments of grace and visitation, of insight and consolation. I am still waiting for this breakthrough in my ministry—courting it, seeking it. And, I confess, I am still retreating from it, hiding, dreading it. My Presbyterian congregation is pretty lively and evangelical, but they would be happy if I stayed away from all this “power ministry” stuff and never brought it up. So would the other pastors on staff. There are whole months I let it rest, but afterwards the restlessness comes again.

If you are going to seek this kind of ministry from the Lord, these are the tensions you will have to contend with.

A Form of Godliness, But No Power—2 Timothy 3:5

How did we get to this place? What accounts for this peculiar schizophrenia where we profess a supernatural faith, but we practice a faith that is really powerless and faithless? I see two reasons.

First, we evangelicals have unconsciously imbibed the anti-supernatural and rationalistic assumptions of the culture surrounding us.

Second, the faith of the church’s own community (especially our leadership) has been corrupted by religious pride, a powerful spirit of unbelief, a fear of the supernatural, and an unwillingness to be open to the movement and work of the Holy Spirit.

As severe as that indictment sounds, it probably describes the western church in most times and places since at least the fourth century when persecution ceased and Christianity gained political ascendancy. A church that is faithful in both proclamation and demonstration is the historic exception. Even the apostles during their years of preparation, living with the Lord and witnessing his wonders first hand, fell regularly into unbelief. They did not believe God would be there for them or minister through them.

The evangelical church can no longer read the Lord’s words—“Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?” (Mark 4:40)—with any smug condescension. We are as timid and powerless as they. Ours too is the “unbelieving generation” (Mark 9:19). How long shall the Lord put up with us before he entrusts his kingdom-ministry and the lively presence of his Spirit to others in his church who will faithfully watch and learn from him?

It may be too late already. The growth of the North American and European churches went into free fall years ago. Between them they are hemorrhaging members to other religions and no religion, roughly 2 million a year in Europe, a million a year in the U.S. (Those are net losses after new conversions are counted).¹

Meantime, the Spirit is moving in power in the churches of Africa, South Asia, and Latin America. In Brazil alone 10,000 new Christians are baptized every day. In Africa the church of Jesus Christ grew by 6 million members last year [1992] and by 35 million in China and Southeast Asia where conversion is often dramatic and costly. In these places the church is not only taking discipleship seriously, but is ministering confidently in the Spirit. The power of the gospel over rival religions and ideologies is dramatically evident in ministries of healing and deliverance. Sick people are cured by the power of God and demonic powers are broken. This sort of thing not only gets people’s attention but wins their heart-allegiance.

Anyone aware of the decline of the Christian religion in the West in the face of its astonishing growth in the Third World must wonder about its vitality there and its paralysis and exhaustion here. Are Third-World people simply more naive and susceptible to faith than more sophisticated and skeptical westerners? That’s certainly one way to see it. Meanwhile the economic and cultural underclasses of the world are pouring into the kingdom of God while the Christians in the West play church, rearrange deckchairs, and offer no compelling witness to the reality and power of their faith.

Ironically, the evangelical church while combating the deistic and rationalistic heritage of the Enlightenment, has largely succumbed to a rationalistic spirit in its evangelism and ministry. While rejecting the undue emphasis on subjectivity and religious feelings of 19th-century liberalism and more recent religious existentialism, the evangelical church champions a gospel ministry whose manifestation is almost wholly subjective and psychological. While rightly repudiating the nature-grace dualism of medieval scholasticism and the nature-freedom dualism of the Enlightenment, evangelicals have preached a largely “upper-story” salvation: “Christ came into my heart and gave meaning to my life.” There is no practical difference between this gospel and the feel-good, self-help therapies so prevalent in the culture around us. In some cases, the occult and new-age religions offer more tangible power.

In the ministry of Jesus and the apostolic church, by contrast, the proclamation of the gospel was typically accompanied by extraordinary demonstrations of God’s power:

1. Healing the sick and casting out demons (see appendix 1 in this book, “Power Evangelism and the New Testament Evidence;” Matt. 4:23; 9:35,36; 10:1,7-8; Matt. 11:5; 12:15, 18; 15:30; 19:2 [cf. Mark 10:1]; 21:14 [cf. Luke 21:37]; Mark 1: 38-39; 2:2, 11; 3:14-15; Mark 6:12-13; 10:1 [cf. Matt. 19:2]; Luke 4:18; 5:17, 24; 6:6-11,17-18; 7:22; 9:1,2; 10:9,13; 13:10-13,22, 32; 14:4,7ff.; 21:37 [cf. Matt. 21:14]; 16:15-18,20; John 3:2; 7:14,15,21-23,31,38; 10:25,32,38; 12:37,49; 14:10,12; Acts 1:1; 2:22; 3:6,12; 4:29,30; 5:12-16,20,21,28,42; 6:8,10; 8:4-7,12; 9:17,18 [cf. 22:13],34,35; 10:38; 14:3,8-10,15ff.; 15:12,36; 18:5,11 [cf. 2 Cor. 12:12; 1 Cor. 2:4,5]; 19:8-12; Rom. 15:18,19; 1 Cor. 2:4,5; 11:1; 12:1-11,28-31; 14:22-25; 2 Cor. 12:12; Gal. 3:5; Phil. 4:9; 1 Thes. 1:5,6; Heb. 2:3,4; 6:1,2; Jas. 5:13-16).
2. Speaking words of supernatural insight and knowledge (Matt. 9:4; Mark 2:8; Luke 5:22; 6:8; 7:39-40,47; 9:47; John 1:48,50; 4:17,18; Acts 5:3; 9:11,12; 10:3-6,19; 11:28; 22:17,18; 23:11; 27:24,25; 1 Cor. 14:24,25).
3. Teleporting a person across great distances (John 6:21b; Acts 8:39,40; 2 Cor. 12:1-5).
4. Seeing visions (John 1:48-50; Acts 7:55; 9:10-12; 10:3,11-13; 11:5; 16:9,10; 18:9; 22:17,18; 26:19; 2 Cor. 12:1-5; Rev. 1:9ff.).
5. Experiencing extraordinary rescue, protection, and provision (Luke 4:30; Acts 12:3-17; 16:25-26; 23:12-33; 27:13-44; Acts 28:3-6).
6. Witnessing God answer intercessory prayer in powerful and unambiguous ways (Acts 4:29-31; and Acts 5:12-16; 12: 3-17).

When we speak of the work of Christ, the church focuses—rightly—on the Cross and resurrection. In doing so, the life and ministry of Jesus leading up to Calvary are often overlooked or ignored. Here Jesus modeled for three years the work he expected his disciples to carry on: the proclamation and demonstration by the power of the Holy Spirit that the kingdom of God has come in Jesus Christ (Matt. 10:1,7-8; Matt. 28:20a; Mark 6:7,12-13; Luke 9:1-2; 10:1,9; Acts 1:3; 8:5-7,12; 14:3,22; 19:8-11; 28:31). The rule of God is being re-established and extended in the midst of a rebel world. By the power of Christ’s death and resurrection God is making creation new and is making a new humanity. That’s the gospel—the “good news of the Kingdom of God” (Acts 8:12). God’s kingdom come…and still coming.

For the most part, the evangelical church preaches, teaches, and practices a gospel that is only half the gospel. It is all proclamation and little or no power (see 1 Thes. 1:5 “our gospel came to you not simply with words but also with power”). The gospel enacted through signs and wonders has been amputated. We are left with a gospel that hobbles on one foot.

Why are Europeans and North Americans so reluctant to embrace a one-legged gospel? That is not hard to figure out. Men and women long for wholeness. They want to believe in something that has real—not imagined—power to heal their deepest hurt and brokenness. They want more than mind games and good feelings. They experience themselves—rightly—as body-and-soul beings, and they long for power that gives wholeness to their bodies and souls—a salvation that offers hope to them and the whole creation.

That hope and wholeness is the whole gospel of Jesus Christ. The salvation of creation—what Paul described as the liberation and glory of the sons and daughters of God in a world set free forever from its slavery to sin and corruption (Rom. 8:18-39)—that salvation awaits a fullness which will come on the day of Christ, when Jesus returns in glory. But a real concrete measure of salvation has already broken upon the world when the Son of God became human, lived among us and conquered sin and Satan, died and conquered death. The church, as the body of Christ in the world, living in the power of the Holy Spirit, can expect substantial signs, even now in this in-between time, of the reality, presence, and power of God’s kingdom (Rom. 14:17; 1 Cor. 4:20; 12:1-14:40; Gal. 3:5; 1 Thes. 1:5,6; 1 Thes. 5:19,20; Heb. 6:5; Jas. 5:14-16). The Lord Jesus inaugurated that kingdom, and entrusted his kingdom-ministry of preaching and power to his church (Matt. 10:1,7-8; 28:20a; Mark 6:7,12-13; Luke 9:1,2; 10:1,9; Acts 1:8; 8:5-7,12; 14:3,22; 19:8-11; Rom. 15:18,19; 1 Cor. 11:1; 12:8-10; 14:24,25; Phil. 4:9; 1 Thes. 1:5,6; on this point, see Don Williams’ chapter “Following Christ’s Example: A Biblical View of Discipleship” [reprinted in the Summer 2007 issue of The Pneuma Review] and appendix 2 and 3 in this book).

So where is the power?

Paul spoke prophetically of a future church retreating from the full truth of the gospel, “holding to a form of godliness, while denying its power” (2 Tim. 3:5). Was the Lord showing him a glimpse of the evangelical church at the beginning the 21st century?

It is a testimony to God’s powerful grace that even a one-legged myopic church, such as it is, can still do ministry, can still sow the Word and gather to harvest. The Holy Spirit graciously comes alongside this hobbling church and blesses its work. I am a Christian today because of this faithful ministry, and so perhaps are you. And yet the ministry of the evangelical church also fitted me with a pair of distorted spectacles which kept me from reading and seeing what was plainly in God’s Word about life in the Spirit.

Recovering the Whole Gospel

In the last two decades there has been a gradual recovery in evangelical theology of the wholeness of the gospel. God is Lord of all of creation. Discipleship means being a faithful steward of creation and responsive to the cry of the poor and oppressed as much as being a faithful evangelist. Christ’s lordship extends over my vocation and recreation as well as over my worship, Bible study, and personal morality.

This recovery of “gospel wholeness” has yet to reshape our evangelism. Our gospel message is still subjective and individual in its appeal. We are still trying to save souls while ignoring the claim of God upon a person’s entire life and the rule of God over the entire creation. It appeals to a person who feels guilty or spiritually empty or religiously incomplete. When I trust Christ as my Savior, I experience forgiveness, spiritual fulfillment, something to live for besides myself and my temporal values. Do you see how spiritualized this salvation-package is? There is nothing concrete about it. It speaks only to my soul and my religious feelings.

How far this is from the ministry of Jesus and the apostles can be seen by looking at almost any ministry story in the Gospels or Acts. Peter to the lame man at the Beautiful Gate: “Silver or gold I do not have, but what I have I give you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk.” (Acts 3:6) Or this incident from Acts: “When the crowds heard Philip and saw the miraculous signs he did, they all paid close attention to what he said. With shrieks, evil spirits came out of many, and many paralytics and cripples were healed. So there was great joy in that city.” (Acts 8:6-8)

When Jesus sent out the Twelve and afterwards the Seventy, it was not to “save souls,” but to “preach the kingdom of God and heal the sick” (Luke 9:2; cf. Matt. 10:7-8; Mark 6:12-13; Luke 10:9)—to demonstrate the power of God to reclaim and heal his kingdom. When the risen Christ gave his disciples their final ministry instructions prior to his ascension, he taught them “things concerning the kingdom of God.” (Acts 1:3, NASB) The apostle Paul described his ministry as “going about preaching the kingdom” (Acts 20:25) and the book of Acts closes with a picture of the church faithful to the evangelistic commission of Jesus (Acts 1:8), moving in the power of the Holy Spirit, despite religious and political opposition and persecution, “preaching the kingdom of God and teaching concerning the Lord Jesus Christ boldly and without hindrance” (Acts 28:31).

Where is the kingdom of God and this bold reliance on the power of the Holy Spirit in our evangelism today? An alertness and sensitivity to the prompting of the Holy Spirit and a readiness to move in supernatural ministry is so foreign to the evangelical church, we are fearful and suspicious of anyone expressing such an idea or wishing to demonstrate such a ministry. The power dimension of the gospel, which is consistently present in New Testament ministry, is lacking in evangelical churches (I think) for at least two reasons—one practical, one theological. In practice, the power is missing in evangelical ministry. We do not expect it; we believe it as biblical truth but not as existential truth. God worked wonders through the apostles; God works supernaturally on the mission field and in extraordinary local situations; but God will not do it in my church or my ministry. And so, a powerful spirit of unbelief has captured our churches.

And then, to rationalize the otherwise embarrassing absence of supernatural ministry, some parts of the evangelical church have constructed an elaborate and ingenious (though hardly biblical) theology explaining why the miraculous works and gifts of the Holy Spirit have ceased in our day. This is an instance of the church letting its experience, not Scripture, dictate its theology.

Many in the Church say, “We don’t experience the supernatural in our ministry. And yet, we are mature Christians. We have the Spirit of God. We conclude therefore that our ministry is normative and that God’s normal mode of operation is a non-miraculous, subjective mode that works mainly through the preaching and teaching of Scripture.”

In numerous unspoken ways, the church promotes a deistic, rationalistic model of ministry. The exercise of gifts clearly commended in Scripture, such as healing, words of knowledge, prophecy, working of miracles, speaking in and interpreting tongues, are discouraged, forbidden, and even demonized by these cessationist churches.

The problem with such a theology is that a straightforward reading of Scripture leads overwhelmingly to the opposite conclusion. In addition, cessationism leaks in too many places to be a useful or coherent theology. It admits to many exceptions, most notably the power of intercessory prayer. If we believe God will intervene to supernaturally heal, rescue, give direction, or provide sustenance, we are essentially saying that the supernatural gifts of the Spirit, exercised through prayer, really have not ceased. And then we become quite arbitrary if we declare some supernatural gifts (notably tongues and prophecy) have ceased but not others. What’s more, there are just too many credible testimonies of Spirit-empowered supernatural ministry to discount or deny it any longer (see references cited in Dr. David Lewis’s chapter, “A Social Anthropologist’s Analysis of Contemporary Healing”).

Coming Out of the Hangar: What Changed My Mind

I love the Christian life. I know there is more to it. It’s a great banquet, and perhaps I have hung out too long at the salad bar. I love salads, and the Christian life even as an appetizer has been great. I have experienced it as intellectually exhilarating and have found much joy and triumph in trying to live a life faithful to Jesus Christ and his Word. Still, there are some very interesting things that people are eating at this table, and they look more like entrees. I believe the Lord is offering me something heartier and more substantial.               In the last few years God has been expanding my spiritual horizons in a way I never anticipated. I feel as though in the early stages of my faith, the Lord had set me free to play in an enormous airplane hangar. An airplane hangar is high and wide—with more room to run and whoop and jump than a kid would need and lots of stuff—airplanes, machinery, tools, ladders, catwalks—to delight and intrigue me. Learning about the supernatural ministry of the Holy Spirit—learning from Scripture and from first-hand accounts—was like one day finding the door of the airplane hangar rolled open. Up to then, I thought that wonderful hangar was the whole spiritual universe. And then I step to the doorway and look out and look up. And there stretching as far up and wide as I can see is the real playground the Spirit God had intended for me.

I am going to go out there.

I know a score of pastors and many more lay people who are undergoing this same transformation I am. Many of them are diving into the bracing spiritual waters much more boldly than I and with more dramatic results. It does not seem as difficult for lay people; they do not have to pretend they have already “arrived” and have all the answers to truth and life.

Recently I attended a conference on spiritual warfare hosted by the Vineyard Christian Fellowship in Anaheim, California. I resisted wearing a false nose and wig. In God’s great humor, I ran into half a dozen Presbyterian laypeople I knew, as well as several friends in pastoral ministry who were all unlikely attendees—from the Presbyterian, Conservative Baptist, Southern Baptist, United Church of Christ, and Covenant churches.

The evangelical church is opening up to the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit.

Two things changed my mind. First, Scripture. The charismatic church is often accused of elevating experience above Scripture as guide for doctrine and life. For me, Scripture pointed me in the direction of power ministry before any personal experience of the Spirit confirmed it. I believe it because the Bible teaches it. And I will pray for this anointing; I will wait for the Lord to bestow it; I will seek it from he Lord’s hand—in obedience to the Word. God will give it in his time.

The second reason I changed my mind on this issue was because of the powerlessness I experienced in my own spiritual life and ministry. In wrestling with recurring habits of anger and purity, I felt my spiritual resources—even when I called upon the Holy Spirit—to be inadequate. In sharing my faith, I was often frustrated by the lame sparring between my “truth system” and the other guy’s. I was discouraged by a relatively ineffective ministry of intercessory prayer. I long for a stronger, surer, exhilarating sense of God’s presence—to look into God’s face, catch God’s eye.

What I was desiring—and desire now—is more of a supernatural manifestation of God’s reality—to break the grip of false religion and ideology and open a person to the power and truth of the gospel; to deliver us from the bondage of sinful habits and addictions; to show the church (and the unchurched) what the gospel means, what the forgiveness of sins is like, by healing those who are sick (see, for example, Matt. 9:6; Mark 2:10,11; Luke 5:24; Jas. 5:15,16).

There are many in my church and denomination who are watching tentatively with the same longings and fears. They want very much to plunge into the water, although just to stick their toes in it right now is a terrifying prospect. My colleagues in ministry are cautious for the most part, but supportive. Most Presbyterian pastors in the region stayed away from a recent Presbytery-hosted conference on the Holy Spirit, where Don Williams spoke, a pastor formerly on staff at Hollywood Presbyterian Church, now with the Vineyard in La Jolla near San Diego (Don also contributed a chapter on biblical discipleship to this book). That was probably too threatening for most of them. Yet I am sure if the Holy Spirit were to fall mightily upon me tomorrow, most of them would want to know about it in more than an idly curious way. The very fact that the conference even happened is evidence of a new openness in my church.

Catching It

There is no institutional training center in the evangelical community for this kind of ministry. It is not in the standard curriculum anywhere (except for Fuller Seminary where Profs. C. P. Wagner and C. H. Kraft teach courses on power ministry and prayer). You have to take risks and venture outside to learn about it. There is a sociology of the Spirit: the people who do this kind of ministry are not uniformly distributed throughout the church of Jesus Christ. They are concentrated in scattered pockets, like-minded communities where people practice and encourage this ministry. You have to find them and hang out with them. Your initial encounters may be both hilarious and petrifying.

They do not teach you anything about this at most seminaries. At Princeton they did not teach me anything about prayer either, and it has taken me nearly three years to recover my reverence for Scripture. The deistic spirit which informs nearly all seminary training (including evangelical seminaries such as Fuller, Dallas, Trinity) succeeds in inoculating most graduating pastors, even evangelical pastors, against any Spirit-anointed, supernatural ministry unless God somehow undoes it or endues it.

Let me make a few modest suggestions, however, to evangelical and mainline Christians like me who are open to the kind of ministry of the Spirit that I have described here and want to know how to “catch” it, learn it, grow in it.

Study the Scriptures. The principal teacher on this subject is the Word of God. Do your own Bible study on the kingdom of God, particularly as it relates to the ministry of Jesus and the ministry he taught and commissioned the church to do. Read Luke-Acts and pay attention to the consistent connection between proclamation and miraculous signs. Watch the role that the Holy Spirit plays as the agent of power, not just in the apostles’ ministry but in Jesus’ ministry.

Try to read Scripture with a second naiveté, divesting yourself of theological presumptions that may distort your interpretation of the Word. Presumptions such as the apostolic age was an exceptional period of miraculous activity; the operation of the Spirit in the first century is different from the operation of the Spirit in our age; the miracles of Jesus were the result of his divinity rather than the work of the Holy Spirit through him (Matt. 12:28; shows Jesus’ own view on the matter; also suggested by Luke 4:1, 14-18; Acts 2:22; 10:38; etc.).

Do some homework. Read a good theology of kingdom ministry. There are some excellent works of biblical theology that organize the scriptural material into a coherent whole. I suggest a seminal evangelical work like Jesus and the Kingdom or A Theology of the New Testament, both by G.E. Ladd. The seminal works of European scholars like Alan Richardson² and H. van der Loos³ would also be helpful.

In addition, it’s important to read the principal works of third wave theologians so that we understand their position, not a caricature of it. These works include:

• Power Evangelism (Harper & Row) and Power Healing (Harper & Row) by John Wimber and Kevin Springer.⁴
• Signs, Wonders, and the Kingdom of God (Servant) by Don Williams. An excellent primer, this is probably the best work of biblical theology on the kingdom of God from a third wave perspective. Williams, now a Vineyard pastor in La Jolla near San Diego, is a respected scholar, popular teacher, and the former college pastor at one of the largest Presbyterian churches in southern California.
• When the Spirit Comes With Power (InterVarsity Press) by John White. White’s work is especially interesting because his credentials as an evangelical are impeccable,⁵ and he writes from the perspective of a veteran missionary and professional psychiatrist.
• Christianity With Power (Servant) by Charles Kraft. Kraft is an anthropologist and former missionary on the faculty of Fuller School of World Mission. His book is addressed to evangelicals like himself.

Go out and investigate. Make contact with churches and attend conferences that teach, model, and advocate this kind of ministry. There is no way you can conduct an honest investigation without on-site study. Nicodemus was a Bible teacher who nevertheless went personally to check Jesus out (John 3:1). And so did Nathanael, despite his reservations; he became an apostle (John 1:45-50).

It’s an academic fallacy that we can sit in our study and learn everything God wants us to know. The Spirit of God is on the move in the world. We need to exercise an active, professional humility and go to those places where we hear the Spirit is moving (such as the mission frontiers of Brazil and Argentina or the Vineyard fellowship or some other church just across town). Like obedient sons and daughters, we watch what the Father is doing, try to discern his purpose, and cooperate in his work (John 5:19-20; John 14:10-13).

Take a Sunday off and visit a church with a reputation both for integrity and for Spirit-empowered ministry. (Many of these churches also have Sunday evening and midweek worship and teaching.) In addition, look around your own denomination for respected advocates of this ministry. Call them up and start networking with them. Do not be afraid to express your own reservations and fears and to ask them for counsel and prayer.

Conferences and weekend seminars are some of the best ways to be exposed to first-rate teaching and witness actual ministry. Over the next two years, set a goal of attending two or three of these. Besides the general sessions, sit in on workshops or seminars with topics like prayer for physical healing, inner healing (which refers mainly to the healing of emotions and memories), and spiritual warfare (which corresponds to the biblical ministry of “casting out demons”).

Charismatic churches and conferences will inevitably test your comfort level. To attend them you will have to overcome a hundred or more excuses your mind will cast up. “Not this time.” “Schedule’s full.” “Those guys are weird.” “I really need to relax and unwind this weekend.” “There’s no way I could explain this to my congregation.” “What if I ran into somebody who recognized me?” “What if I start speaking in tongues?”

Let’s also appreciate that the charismatic and third wave churches are no more monolithic than evangelical and mainline churches.⁶ There are lots of differences among them. There are good and awful churches, good and bad teachers, Sundays that are great and not-so-great. There is a wide range of biblical integrity among these churches and a wide range of “charismatic” styles. Some are “comfortably evangelical”; others are pretty wild. Remember, God’s call to ministry is not always to the intellectually astute or to the graceful, witty, or dignified. Do we believe that even today the Lord may choose the foolish and weak things as instruments of his wisdom and power (1 Cor. 1:26-29)?

Do biblical ministry. That simply means, “Watch what Jesus and his disciples do, and do the same.” A disciple, says Jesus, does not try to break new ground. If he can just imitate his Teacher, he has passed the course (Matt 10:24,25).

Much of our own habit and style of ministry is simply doing what we have seen other professional ministers do. In my pastoral circles, we have mainly conditioned ourselves and our congregations to “safe ministry.” We fence our worship and prayer in such a way as to prevent any intrusion of the supernatural or miraculous. We clump all the sick together and ask God to heal them—or else to give them grace to stay sick and be content. Can you hear Jesus praying like that?

The issue for me is this: Is the ministry of Jesus to be the ministry of the church? I do not think anything could be clearer. And what was Jesus’ ministry? He preached the kingdom of God. And he demonstrated the concrete reality of that kingdom by healing the sick, cleansing lepers, and casting out demons.

I am suggesting that—no matter how weird and scary it feels to us—we try to do what Jesus did. We begin to pray specifically and expectantly for people to be healed and delivered. Healed from physical and emotional brokenness and disease. Delivered from the bondage of guilt, destructive habits, and demonic oppression. These are spiritual works, which require a Christian to be attentive and yielded to the Holy Spirit.

We begin to do these works out of obedience and faith, before we see any results. It may be months or even years before there is a breakthrough in our own powerful unbelief. We begin to do these works before we understand fully what we are doing or have mastered any spiritual technique. Answering prayer is God’s job; our job is to pray (Jas. 4:2b). I do not pray because God has promised to do miracles through me; I pray because God says in his Word, Pray! This year as an act of faith I told the Lord I would pray whenever someone expressed a need. Now I ask, “Can I pray for you about that?” And right there, we pray. I still have much to learn about prayer, but there’s no way to grow in prayer without doing it.

Maturity comes with practice; I doubt if mastery ever comes, because there is no standardized technique.⁷ Every ministry situation is unique and personal. God’s originality and newness is never exhausted.

“But I don’t know how to do this. I don’t know what I’m doing.” Have you ever seen a child imitate their mother or father? It is often comical. They do not know what they are doing either. They just want to be like Daddy or Mommy. They want to do what they do. There is a bold fearlessness about a child’s ventures. I am a child in ministry, but I am going to try to pray like Jesus prayed. I am going to watch Jesus and do what he did.

I urge you in your day-to-day ministry, do not pass up any opportunity to pray for someone who expresses a need to you. Pray for healing, for provision, for a job. Pray for a blessing, for a fruit or gift of the Spirit. We do not do miracles; God does them, as we pray in faithfulness and obedience.

Seek the Lord. While much of our discussion here has been about more effective and faithful ministry, the real goal is God. Knowing God in a more intimate way, experiencing a more immediate sense of his presence. For evangelicals, this means a reorientation in the way we typically worship, pray, and do Bible study. We need to consciously, intentionally make room in all our habits of grace for meeting God.

What do we need to do to hear God address us more directly and personally? We may need to be quiet in prayer and listen. We may need periodically to stop studying the Bible and start listening to it. We may need to worship in a way that we regularly hear God say to us, “I love you”—and allow ourselves to be moved by it. And to say back to God—I mean, really say it, “Lord, you are indeed the compassionate and gracious God. Full of love. And I bless you. I praise you. You are my God. You are my glory. Your mercy and goodness overwhelm me. You are worth everything to me. Lord, I love you.”

This may involve a major shift in our worship from participating as narrator or spectator, to having a genuine heart-to-heart encounter. Less talking about God and hearing about God, more hearing God and seeing God and meeting God.

As a practical step, I suggest listening to contemporary praise music, especially recordings of live worship and music that addresses God directly in praise and love. To sing these songs in a spirit of worship often facilitates a powerful and intimate encounter with the Spirit of God.⁸ The evangelical may object that this is simply giving rein to our emotions, that it’s not a spiritual encounter at all. But emotions are an integral part of our humanity and an important piece of equipment, like our intellect, which God has given us to relate and respond to him: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength” (Mark 12:30). The Psalms are full of expressions of emotional and spiritual exhilaration. It’s time evangelicals learned to engage their emotions, and no time seems more appropriate than in worship.

In all of this, we are not seeking an experience of God so much as we are seeking God himself. Seek him in prayer and worship with the same persistence and boldness as the psalmist: “To you, O my heart, he said, ‘Seek my face.’ Your face, Lord, I will seek.” (Ps. 27:8; see also Pss. 24:6; 27:4; 63:2; 67:1; 42:1-2; 84:7; 105:4).

Pray boldly for the fullness of God’s Spirit. Boldly, because it’s God’s will. “That you may be filled up to all the fullness of God” is Paul’s prayer (Eph. 3:19). Ask God to reveal to you, in you, and through you the reality and power of the Holy Spirit. “If you, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” (Luke 11:13)

You are seeking from the Lord’s hand the same experience as the apostolic church, and you are seeking it as a faithful and obedient response to the word of Jesus who commissioned all his disciples to do this ministry (Luke 9:1-2; Luke 10:1-24; Mark 16:17-20; Acts 1:8). Do not be ashamed to ask for this. The apostles asked boldly not only for the courage to proclaim the gospel but for power to confirm the preaching by healing and wonders performed in Jesus’ name (Acts 4:29-30; see also 1 Cor. 2:4-5).

Keep praying for God’s fullness. In my own experience, the Lord has filled me in steps, perhaps in response to my own timidity and tenuity. “Lord, fill me,” I’ll pray, and in my heart I’ll say, “but not too full.” Pray continually that God will break through the stubborn spirit of unbelief and fear that grips us and that continually urges us to retreat from God and any higher spiritual ground.

Bring your church along gently. Your church and lay leaders need to know your faith has a growing edge too. Bring them along gently. You know best how different people are going to respond to your explorations and experiments. Find people, especially those in leadership, you can honestly share with about what you are learning and how you are growing.

Encourage some of your lay leaders to read a book or attend a conference and then report back to you. What did they learn? What new experiences did they have? How did they respond? Your own lay leaders may be used by God to prepare the way for this new orientation in ministry. Lay people are often more open to the Holy Spirit’s doing something new than the pastor is. And congregations can tolerate newer views from lay people than from their pastor. When you deputize people to go off and learn something from God, you are empowering them for ministry. They will often return to teach, challenge, and stretch your congregation—and you.

PR 

Notes

¹ These and the following statistics are reported in David Watson, Called and Committed: World-Changing Discipleship (Harold Shaw, 1982), p. 2. They are based on a survey conducted by Center for Study of World Evangelization in 1979.

² A. Richardson, The Miracle-Stories of the Gospels, London: SCM Press, 1941.

³ H. van der Loos, The Miracles of Jesus (Supplements to Novum Testamentum, vol. 8), Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1965.

⁴ An excellent 30-page summary of John Wimber’s theology, blending personal testimony and Bible study, is his chapter, “Power Evangelism: Definitions and Directions,” in Wrestling with Dark Angels (Ventura: Regal, 1990), edited by C. Peter Wagner and F. Douglas Pennoyer.

⁵ White has been published by InterVarsity Press for years.

⁶ In our community, there are two Presbyterian churches—one that’s more contemporary in style, one that’s more formal. Can they both be Presbyterian? Yes.

⁷ There is no standardized technique, but there are good models. There is nothing like hearing and observing a good prayer warrior. Attending workshops on prayer where I could observe effective models of intercessory prayer (especially for healing and deliverance) have been especially beneficial to me.

⁸ A more ideal arrangement would be to attend a worship service with a first-rate praise team, where 30-40 minutes of the service is dedicated to singing love and praise songs to God and where there’s room for some free expression, such as standing, kneeling, lifting your hands up, clapping, and so on.

Note from the Editors
Those familiar with The Kingdom & the Power may wonder why the chapters by Roger Barrier, “A Pastor’s View of Praying for the Sick and Overcoming the Evil One in the Power of the Spirit” and Lloyd D. Fretz, “Healing and Deliverance—Because of the Cross: Seeing the Power of the Gospel at Work through Prayer for Healing and Deliverance” have not been reprinted in The Pneuma Review. The subjects of these chapters remain controversial for many readers of The Pneuma Review, and the editorial committee did not feel it appropriate to engage this subject without offering multiple perspectives. The editorial committee hopes to address these topics in the future.

Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the NIV®.

This chapter is from Gary S. Greig and Kevin N. Springer, eds., The Kingdom and the Power: Are Healing and the Spiritual Gifts Used by Jesus and the Early Church Meant for the Church Today? A Biblical Look at How to Bring the Gospel to the World with Power (Ventura, CA: Regal Books, 1993). Used with permission.