Firstline

‘American Episcopalians speak in tongues!’
‘Curates at All Souls, Langham Place, London claim charismatic experiences.’

I still remember the headlines. The charismatic movement had broken out. It caused quite a stir.

As a young Baptist I was fascinated to read the reports and also personally hungry for more of God. I remember gathering with friends around an old-style tape recorder eagerly listening to amazing testimonies of Episcopalians from the West Coast of the USA who had stumbled into a glorious new awareness of the presence of God through being baptised in the Holy Spirit and speaking in tongues.

Supernatural phenomena usually associated exclusively with Pentecostals were being experienced in mainline and historic churches. After a while I began to hear of personal friends who were now speaking in tongues.
Soon the rising tide reached me. I was baptised in the Holy Spirit and my life took on a completely new dimension. God’s immediate presence thrilled me. I had never loved God like this before! I wanted to be with others who felt the same and spend time in a new kind of intimate and exhilarating worship full of His presence, waiting to see if He would speak to us in prophecy.

Total upheaval!
Gathering in Jesus’ name took on completely new meaning, but what were going to be the implications of this new experience for the local church? Actually, total upheaval! For me, church could never be the same. Going back to the old traditional forms would be tragic.

The new wine demanded a new wineskin. When we came together we had to make room for God’s presence in this exciting new way. Church attendance was no longer merely a duty that I had to endure. Church was great; church was glorious!

What I didn’t realise was that this was only the beginning; a domino effect was to follow.

If I had finished with church life as I had previously known it, what was to take its place? First the warmth and the informality of meeting in the home. Small, intimate house churches began to multiply, but they also began to grow and outgrow their domestic location. Halls were hired and eventually buildings were bought or built. A new way of doing church was growing and enjoying considerable numerical success, and with it came a new awareness of church. ‘What is the church?’ we began to ask. ‘How does it work? What are our expectations?’

Gradually we began to see the church is hugely important and has enormous strategic significance in working out God’s ultimate plan for world evangelisation.

While the church had been asleep, along came ‘para-church’
But sadly, while the church had been asleep and largely irrelevant, many zealous Christians, aware of our Christian responsibility to evangelise our neighbours and the world, to be relevant to our generation and business colleagues, to care for the poor and to train Christian leaders, had decided to get on with the job outside normal church life. They established so-called ‘para-church’ organisations to get the job done and invited Christians and local churches to support their ministries. Strong on motivation, they tended to be weak on Biblical endorsement for their operations.

Evangelisation began to be regarded as a para-church activity. Missionary work was for the missionary societies, training for ministry was the task of theological colleges and so on. Sadly this left the local church as a mere supplier of personnel and financial resources. The zealous were inclined to desert the local church and get involved with the para-church in order to fulfil their spiritual aspirations. After all, local church was dull, boring and inward looking. Para-church was exciting, mobile and getting on with it.

But suddenly local church was coming alive! What were her duties? What role should she play? After searching the Scriptures we found she has an absolutely vital role to fulfil. The local church should be a strategic centre for the advance of Christ’s kingdom on earth. The early apostles set out on their task of world evangelisation by planting vigorous local churches. They don’t seem to have considered forming missionary societies, evangelistic organisations or theological colleges. Church planting was strategy number one. As Roland Allen pointed out in his famous and controversial book Missionary Methods: St Paul’s or Ours? (published 1912!), ‘The first and most striking difference between Paul’s action and ours is that he founded “churches” whilst we found “Missions”.’

The local church then became a centre of evangelistic zeal and support to apostolic mission.

A holy people
The failure of the church not only led to the formation of para-church organisations but also to the emphasis of the individual and his personal walk with God. But the New Testament call to discipleship was not addressed so much to the individual as to the church community. The holiness that God desired was to have its outworking in the gathered church, which itself was to become an alternative culture standing in stark contrast to the society around it. So New Testament appeals for holiness were not aimed at personal piety as much as corporate godliness lived out among the people of God.

So, for instance, the exhortation tended not to be ‘be a kind or gentle person’ or even ‘be kind or gentle’ in the abstract, but much more specifically ‘be kind to one another, forgiving one another as Christ forgave you’.

Together in the community of the King a different lifestyle is to be worked out – a holiness impossible to be achieved alone but within reach if we help one another, encourage one another, pray for one another, confess our faults to one another, admonish one another and so on. The church is not a mystical place for isolated individuals to attend briefly on Sundays only subsequently to disappear into our fragmented lifestyles. It is a gathering of people called to an alternative lifestyle together.

Once the local church rediscovers her glorious calling, she rises to her true significance. She is a dwelling place for God’s Spirit. She is corporately the light of the world, a city set on a hill which cannot be hid.

Worship, prayer, prophecy and healing centres
As the tide of spiritual life rose, the charismatic movement brought certain distinctives with it, such as a rediscovery of heartfelt worship, which can now be observed as a global and even commercial development! Alongside that grew a renewed prayer emphasis, what some call ‘the prayer movement’, giving birth to ‘prayer centres’ and such things as ‘prayer towers’. ‘Schools of prophets’ have sprung up along with ‘healing centres’.

Those who love the local church and see its vital significance in God’s strategy will regard the local church as the key centre for such things as worship, prayer, prophecy and healing. The more local churches engage in these God-given ministries the quicker we shall return to Biblical norms and extra-curricular activity won’t be required!

Some who have embraced the charismatic movement have focused more on the gifts of the Holy Spirit referred to in 1 Corinthians and Romans 12 without giving serious attention to the context of Ephesians 4. In the latter, we find gifts which provide a strong emphasis on the building up of the body of Christ, the church, a community of mutual dependence and unity of purpose.

The ascended Christ gives to the church apostles, prophets, evangelists and pastors and teachers whose whole motivation is the equipping of the saints and maturing of the church. Internationally there is a growing awareness of the Biblical truth that apostolic foundations laid in local churches make all the difference.

Church growth observer C Peter Wagner has recorded that in virtually every region of the world new loosely structured apostolic networks constitute the fastest growing segments of Christianity and he regards this development as ‘the most radical way of doing church since the Protestant Reformation’ (Churchquake, C Peter Wagner, Regal Books).

The rediscovery of the glory and significance of the local church is fundamental to God’s ultimate purpose, to glorify His Son among the nations. This is no small matter and demands our devotion and sustained commitment.

Christ’s clearly stated agenda ‘I will build my church’ must stir our hearts and be reflected in our personal and practical involvement in local church life.

Terry Wendy

May God deliver us from a cynical or even pragmatic attitude to the church. She is not to be despised or endured or merely managed but prized and celebrated as the joy of the whole earth! Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. May our personal devotion emulate his preoccupation and may this be expressed in tangible decision-making that gives your local church first place in your life for the glory of God.

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