Month: October 2006

An Intriguing Survey of Pentecostals & Charismatics

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Last week, The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life released an intriguing ten-nation survey of Pentecostals and charismatics. Though I don’t like those labels (as I believe that the spiritual distinctive of those two groups, their belief in the continuation of the charismata, should be normative in all of Christendom), I think what the survey tells us about Pentecostals and charismatics worldwide is fascinating.

Rather than try to encapsulate everything in a post, I’ll just send you to the best links:

  1. The survey summary
  2. The complete 233-page survey in PDF format 

A sampling of survey results:

  • 78% of all Protestants in Brazil self-identify as Pentecostal or charismatic, while 73% of Kenyans do. As wholes, both South America and Africa are hotbeds of growth by both groups.
  • From a low of 56% in South Korea to a high of 87% in Kenya, people within Pentecostal and charismatic churches report witnessing or personally experiencing divine healing.
  • Of all Protestant groups, Pentecostals and charismatics show the highest percentages of belief in the inerrancy and literal interpretation of the Scriptures.
  • American Pentecostals believe that the government of the United States should take steps to make this country a Christian nation by almost 52%, far higher than the 22% of other Christian groups.

I hope to wade through the entire 233-page report some day, but the summaries alone are mesmerizing.

Readers, what are your thoughts?

The Small Group Boondoggle

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It’s hard to get away from the emphasis in some Christian circles on small groups. Just today, I was reading Brad Hightower’s excellent blog 21st Century Reformation and his post “Are the Popular Methods of Doing Church Working?” It’s a good question and good people are trying to answer it. Many of them are saying small groups are the answer, as does Brad. The bleeding edge of ecclesiology today runs red with the hope that house churches will be the salvation of the American Church.

I dunno.

We tend to forget that small groups in the church are not new. I’ve been in small groups since the 1970s. The modern roots of the small group movement predate even that time. Small group guysPsychologists of the 1950s had discussed the need for small encounter groups, but that idea didn’t express itself until the 1960s and the experimental groups of Big Sur. (The less said about them the better.)

In another attempt by Christians to co-opt what was going on in psychology circles, we started seeing a redemption of pop-psych methods by certain churches, parachurch organizations, and nationally-known Christian leaders. Who could impeach the argument that Jesus gathered twelve men around Himself? (True, yes, but that idea hadn’t been re-examined until pushed into the limelight by 1950s behavioral science.)

Since the 1960s, folks have been trumpeting the salvation of the Western Church through small groups. All I ask is this:

We’ve had 40+ years of small groups in churches, but are we any better for it?

I certainly would not say that the Christian Church in America is more devout, more mission-minded, more prayerful, or more effective for Christ now than before the small group push started. If that’s true—and I’m sure most of you reading this will agree we’re not better off—how then can we insist that small groups will somehow turn the tide in the future if they’ve failed to do so thus far?

Part of the reason I believe that small groups have resoundingly failed to deliver on their promise is that no one seems to look at them from the right perspective. We never view small groups as aiding the church as a collective body. Our model is more based on the idea that we’re helping individuals plug-in on a more granular level.

But that’s the typical Evangelical obsession with the individual. Meet the individual’s need on a very intimate level and you’ll build a wildly effective church from that core. Forty years later, that failed mentality still prevails.

We’ve got to stop viewing the world through the lens of the individual and start thinking more about the corporate Body of Christ. If small groups are not translating into a better church filled with better people, then perhaps we need to start thinking about making our entire church a small group, the whole assembled mass of people. Rather than fragmenting our assembled community into small groups, perhaps we can find ways to translate what small groups do well to an entire church.

For instance, we belong to two small groups that start their meetings with a shared meal. What if we decided that our churches would meet every week for a shared sit-down meal and serve communion at the same time? What if we made our Sunday messages open for whole church comment just like the discussions we have in small groups? What if…?

Obviously, megachurches will have some troubles with these things. But then maybe a 500-person church that acts like a small group is the better model than a 5,000 person church cookie-cuttered into 500 small groups.

All I know is that the small group model that was supposed to better our churches hasn’t. If the model’s broken, then we either fix it or dump it. Or we find a third way that considers the whole church a small group. Whatever the answer, pouring more energy into our current practice of small groups isn’t going to get us anywhere.

For more on the problem of small groups, see this previous post:  That Nutty Small Group Dialectic

Rivers of Living Water

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Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, 'Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.'"
—John 7:38 ESV

It's funny how synchronicity strikes at the most opportune times. I'd planned on writing about rivers of living water today, but never had any indication I'd experience it so personally.

During my hiatus, I lined up about a half dozen good topics to discuss when I got back to blogging. The first was the post on labels, the second being about John 7:38.

My son and I read that passage together during our mutual quiet time. We've set apart a few minutes in the morning to read the Bible together and pray for the day. No one sweats great drops of blood or tears down demonic strongholds; it's just a dad and son spending time before God.

While reading through Chapter 7 of John, I read v38 to my son and God hit me between the eyes.  I stopped at the end of the verse and let it sink in. I've heard the passage hundred of times in my life, but on reading it this time I started thinking. And I've not stopped.

Last night, my wife and I attended my 25th high school reunion. I'd originally not planned to go. My 10th had been a blast, I was out of town for the 15th, and was sick as a dog for my 20th (one I was dying to attend.) But for some reason I'd gotten in my head that the 20th had been a huge one and the 25th promised to be lightly attended. I'd not heard from any of the group I'd hung with concerning the reunion, so that only reinforced my assumption.

I'm one of those people who looks back on high school fondly. Though I was by no means a jock, I was popular, with high school being a sort of "glory days" time for me. My drumming opened up doors into sub-groups within the school, and I was fortunate in that I crossed into groups that ordinarily didn't converge. The jocks, band geeks, honor society, and stoner groups knew me and I knew them.

Some personal confession now: I've been down in recent months. A lot of dreams have died in the last year or so and uncertainty is our daily bread. Financial insecurity lurks in every electrical, water, and mortgage bill. (Just paying for the reunion and a babysitter gave me pause, one of the reasons I'd elected not to go to the reunion.) The sheer speed of life has left me drained, longing for some simpler time when I didn't stand in the middle of a room, thoughts surging, unable to figure out what I'm supposed to do next. The idea of attending my reunion discouraged me more.  

At night, when the house is quiet and shadows fill the crevices of my office, I wonder how I got off track. That whip-smart young man of 1981 witnessed a lot of promise go out the window for no other reason than being in the wrong place at the wrong time doing the wrong thing. I'd sucked from the stream all through high school, but now those waters appeared dried up and so very long ago.

No one wants to be the "What ever happened to…" person people talk about at reunions. I didn't want to think that  people would join me in wondering how I'd missed the obvious glory road ahead of me.

But the Best Man from our wedding colluded with the girl I'd dated my senior year, and together they got me to change my mind, so my wife and I went. The evening was great fun. I connected with a lot of old friends. Finding out that people were doing well raised my spirits.

Toward the end of the evening, a classmate who'd grown up in my subdivision walked over. I'd been having trouble recognizing a few people all evening, and I didn't immediately put her face with a name. A stream in the desertThe second I saw her name tag, I did a mental brain slap (Duh! How did I not know right away?) and we started talking.

Donna told me right then that she'd been reading my bio in the reunion update. Her comment: "How wonderful your life has turned out for you, Dan. We always knew you would be someone important, a doctor, or someone who helps others. I'm so happy for you." Donna then pulled over another classmate, who agreed with what Donna had said.

I thought about my bio and wondered what Donna had read that I'd missed. I'd written the bio and it sure didn't sound as wonderful to me as it did Donna. But when she told me that she'd become a Christian since leaving high school and was now teaching Sunday School, it all made sense. 

You see, out of Donna came rivers of living water. God put Donna there with a healing word at a healing time. She spoke into the desert, and from that stream came life.

There was nothing fake about what Donna shared. She spoke with the love of Christ and meant what she said. She can't possibly know what a blessing her words were. They may not sound like anything extraordinary, but I needed to hear them. Later that night, driving the babysitter to her place, I spent the return trip home in tears, thanking God for all He's given me.

Are we speaking words of blessing into other people's lives? Are rivers of living water perpetually flowing out from us into the lives of people who are thirsty? 

How easy it should be for us to dispense grace! Yet for some of us, judgment and correctness fall off our lips faster than the Holy Spirit's life. How sad that we live in a culture longing for a drink of the Eternal, yet we turn on each other so quickly and without care for the death we inflict with our words and attitudes.

What does it mean for us who have the Wellspring of Life, the Zoe life of Jesus, living in us? How are our days different because we can offer drink to the thirsty that never fails to refresh?

Right now, people around us are dying for a drink of what we have welling up inside. In what ways would their lives be different if we broke down our internal dam that held back Living Water? What words of life can we speak into the dry desert that is a hurting person's daily existence? How can we be known as an oasis for the parched, whether they be lost or found?

I've met a few people in my life—only a few—who live each day as oases.  That's the kind of person I long to be. Maybe if we did a better job allowing more of Christ's living water to stream out of us, we'd mutually help each other to become the oases that Christ longs for us to be.

Be blessed. And be a blessing to others.