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A Dialogue about being Baptized in the Holy Spirit

I recently engaged in a dialogue about baptism in the Holy Spirit via social media with a friend who is a minister in a mainline denomination. I thought it might be good to share (with minor editing).

Friend: I want to begin a longer conversation with you – so I am starting it here and will come back to it from time to time. I don’t expect instant responses to my questions. I want to talk to you about the gift of tongues. My understanding of scripture is that tongues are not a gift that all people might be expected to receive and I know you believe differently. So, I want to know . . . your testimony of be “baptized in the Spirit” and, I would assume, speaking in an unknown tongue for the first time.

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Assessing the work of Pentecostal Theological Seminary

One of my responsibilities at Pentecostal Theological Seminary is to conduct an annual assessment of our recent graduates to determine how our graduate programs are serving our constituency. I would like to share some of the results from our 2019 graduating class. The constituency of the Church of God should be very pleased with the work PTS is doing.

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The Real Crisis in Christian Education

There is a real crisis in Christian education, but it’s not the one you might think.

Christians in the USA have long been ambivalent about the education of clergy. The first colleges founded in colonial America were established primarily to educate clergy. But many colonial Americans viewed clergy education as a vestige of European elitism. During the Great Awakening the conflict raged between formally educated clergy who generally opposed the Awakening and clergy who were not formally trained who generally supported it. Jonathan Edwards, the greatest American theologian who was formally trained, resisted elitism and guided the Awakening. His book, The Religious Affections, remains a helpful guide for the formation of renewal in the Church. Don’t miss the point here – it was a formally trained theologian who resisted elitism and offered an enduring defense of renewal movements.

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Stuck in the Middle

I often feel that I’m stuck in the middle, walking down a path between two fools – those who reject knowledge and those who have made knowledge an idol – both for whom I have great affection. There is an old hit song from the 1970’s that I have adopted as my new anthem. Stealers Wheel wrote and performed Stuck in the Middle with You, a song that made Billboard’s top ten in 1973. The lyrics of the chorus include these words: “Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right; Here I am, stuck in the middle with you.”

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Church and State in the 21st Century

The Rise of Christendom

For its first three centuries, the Christian church existed as a barely tolerated, sometimes persecuted, and widely misunderstood minority religion within the Roman Empire. The Christian confession that “Jesus Christ is Lord” was deemed to be a political threat by the Roman authorities. The Roman Empire tolerated religious diversity as long as it did not conflict with the interests of the state and devotion to the Emperor.

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Celebrating Sacraments at the Pentecostal Altar

In Pentecostal Sacraments (2010, 2015) I suggested that the church’s worship should be an integration of the Spirit, the Word, and Sacraments. For liturgical worshipers, the Spirit is present in the sacraments. For reformed worshipers, the Spirit is present in the Word. Pentecostal worshipers emphasize an unmediated personal encounter with the Holy Spirit. Each worship tradition standing alone has shortcomings. Liturgical worship without the Word and the Spirit may lead to dead formalism. Reformed worship without sacraments and the Spirit may lead to sterile intellectualism. Pentecostal worship without sacraments and the Word may lead to shallow emotionalism. Since the publication of Pentecostal Sacraments, others have called for the integration of Word, Sacrament, and Spirit in Christian worship.

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