Pentecostal Leaders as Biblical Theologians

1
Pentecostal Leaders as Biblical Theologians

• Biblical Theology of Mission
• Dr. Byron D. Klaus
• Day 4

2
Eschatological People

• Living in the reality that we are eschatological
  peoplewe have a destiny that is played in space
  and real time.

3
The Holy Spirits work fully actualized at
Pentecost ushers in an era where

• The Spirit is the experienced, empowered
  entrance of Gods own personal presence in and
  among us, who enables us to live as a radically
  eschatological people in the present world while
  we await the consummation. The fruit and gifts
  of the spirit permeate the ethical life and
  charismatic dynamic of the communitys life to
  that end.
• Gordon FeePaul, the Spirit and the People of God

4
Holy Spirit Validation

• Affirming that the empowerment of the Holy Spirit
  is valid only as it is connected to the mission
  for which it was intended.
• Acts 16-8

5
Reason and Spirituality are not
mutually exclusive

• Affirm the rigor of reason and the dynamic of
  spirituality are not mutually exclusive.
• The Spirit that leads us into all truth is the
  same Spirit that empowers Jesus in His redemptive
  mission.
• John 167-15
• John 2019-22

6
Epistemology Rooted in Jesus Christ

• Affirm that epistemological pathways are all
  rooted in Jesus Christ.
• Affective and cognitive dimensions of human
  experience need not compete with other, but are
  created to enrich a human being for maturity.

7
Validity of mission and ministry

• Contemporary mission and ministry is only valid
  as they replicate the mission and ministry of
  Jesus Christ is
• Purpose
• Character
• Source of empowerment
• Hebrews 1

8
Role of Created Order

• Christs Kingdom rules over all created order and
  thus created order deserves to be taken
  seriously.
• Because God sent His Son to redeem all creation,
  His Church must seek to represent Him fairly in
  all facets of created order.
• Ephesians 118-21

9
WesleyA Proto-Pentecostal Case Study

• Wesley was a practical theologian with a balanced
  equation for leadership

10
World of Wesley

• A growing empire
• A revolution in the colonies
• Royalty as Gods servant
• The Church of England and England as a
  nation-state joined at the hip

11
The Shaping of Wesley

• Epworth
• OxfordLincoln College
• Holy Club (with brother Charles and George
  Whitfield)
• Georgia Missions
• Moravians
• Heart Strangely warmed at Aldersgate Street
• The vile thing

12
The Wesleyan Influence

• The Church as a community of Gods grace
• The Churchs unity is the koinonia of the Spirit
• Pursuit of maturing Christian lives sustained by
  grace is crucial

13
The Wesleyan Method

• Outside accepted boundaries, but connected to the
  center.
• The Church is a system of discipline in
  community
• Class Meetingsonce a week to inquire how our
  souls prosper (house churches, seekers welcome)
• Bands/Small Groupsto confess your faults one to
  another and pray for one another that ye may be
  healed (had received assurance of sins forgiven)
• Select Society those making progression
  inwardoutward holiness

14
Three Rules of a Select Society

• Let nothing spoken in this society be spoken
  again.
• Submit to the appointed minister.
• Bring an offering for the common stock.

15
Traveling Preachers

• Taught to manage difficulties in societies
• Face mobs
• Brave any weather
• Subsist without means
• Rise at 4 a.m. and preach at 5 a.m.
• Die without fear

16
Daily Rules

• Preach
• Study
• Travel
• Meet with bandsclassessocieties
• Exercise daily
• Eat sparingly
• Preach nowhere that could not be followed up with
  organized structures with adequate leadership

17
The Primacy of Scripture

• I allow no other rule, whether of faith or
  practice, than the Holy Scriptures.
• Scripture was the only all-sufficient source
  commonly available to people for investigating
  the nature of God and life.
• O give me that book! At any price give me the
  book of God!

18

• The personal character of humility and reliance
  on grace gave Wesley the freedom to see a dynamic
  inter-action between sources to illuminate and
  enrich biblical truths. This never succumbed to
  a thoroughly pragmatic approach that reduces
  truth to relativity.

19

• Wesley affirms Reformation treatise of sola fide
  and sola scriptura.
• However, he interprets sola as primarily rather
  than exclusively.

20

• Tis not enough to have Bibles, but we must use
  them, yea, use them daily. Our souls must have
  constant meals of that manna, which if
  well-digested, will afford them true nourishment.

21
Rule of Interpretation by John Wesley

• Literal sense is emphasized
• Importance of context
• Comparing Scripture with Scripture
• Christian experience has confirmatory and
  correctional value
• Reason is the handmaiden of faith
• Practicalityfor the plain unlettered people

22
The Authority of Tradition

• Wesleys concern for historical continuity in an
  age of distrust in Christian tradition.

23

• Old Religion
• Religionthe Bible
• Religion of the Primitive Church
• Religion of the Church of England
• Methodism

24

• Old Religion
• John 316heart religion
• Religionthe Bible
• The only sufficient authority for religious life
• Religion of the primitive church
• It would be easy to produce a cloud of witnesses
  testifying the same thing, were not this appoint
  which no one will contest who has the least
  acquaintance with Christian antiquity
• Religion of the Church of England
• Methodism

25

• If any doubt still remains, I consult those who
  are experienced in the things of God and then the
  writings whereby being dead they yet speak. And
  what I thus learn, that I teach.

26

• Tradition as authority second only to Scripture.
  To the extent that the Holy Spirit continued to
  direct decisions in the early church, Wesley
  believed tradition was an essential extension of
  the witness of the Scripture.

27
The Authority of Reason
28

• Desired a religion founded on reason and in every
  way agreeable to it. Passion and prejudice rule
  the worldit is our part with religion and reason
  joined to counteract them all we can.

29

• The image of God persisted in the human race
  after Adams fall, effaced but not obliterated.
• Human reasoning was a part of humanitys original
  constitution.
• Although the heart was prone to evil, the mind
  was free to reason and respond to God by faith.

30

• An era where the Enlightenment is in full
  sway.
• Natural theology present in the Church of England
• Navigates philosophical influences from
  Aristotles rational (scientific) sensory
  perspective to Plats intuition.
• This explains his both-and posture integrating
  the empirical with the experiential and
  mysticism.

31

• His both-and perspective draws criticism from
  all sides.
• Wesley concludes that
• No man is a partaker of Christ until he can
  clearly testify the life I now liveI live by
  faith in the Son of Godrevealed in my heart.

32
Acknowledge Tension

• Let reason do all that reason can. Employ it as
  far as it will go. But, at the same time,
  acknowledge it is utterly incapable of giving
  faith, or hope or love and consequently of
  producing real virtue or substantive happiness.
  Expect these from a higher source, even from the
  spirits of all flesh.

33
The Authority of Experience
34

• Considered by many as Wesley's greatest
  contribution to the development of Christian
  theology.
• Im not afraid that the people called Methodists
  should ever cease to existI am afraid lest they
  should only exist as a dead sect having the form
  of religion without the power.

35

• It is necessary that you have the hearing ear
  and the seeing eye, that you have a new class of
  senses opened to your soul not depending on
  organs of flesh and blood to be evidence of
  things not seen as your bodily senses are of
  visible things, to be avenues to the invisible
  world, to discern spiritual objects and to
  furnish you with ideas of what the outward eye
  has not seen, neither the ear heard.

36

• Wesley was deeply concerned about enthusiasm.
• While he acknowledged excesses, Wesley still
  believed in the supernatural, immediate gift of
  God, which He commonly gives in the use of such
  means as he hath ordained.

37
Outward Experiences

• Empirical experiences with creation were a source
  of evidence for religious experience.

38
Inward Experiences

• Knowledge derived from a personal experiential
  encounter with God is objective in the sense if
  establishing contact with a real, albeit hidden
  reality.
• Wesley believe that the reality of God and of
  Gods salvation is hidden from our natural senses
  though not from spiritual senses.

39

• Spiritual senses were created by God and
  reactivated by His grace that gives potential for
  discovering religious insights that were
  previously inconceivable.
• The personal conversion experience as well as
  assurance of salvation are two places people
  experience a direct awareness of God.

40

• The testimony of the spirit is an inward
  impression on the soul whereby the Spirit of God
  directly witnesses to my Spirit.
• Now there is properly the testimony of our own
  spirit even the testimony of our own conscience
  that God has given us to be holy of heart and
  holy in outward conversation.

41
A Heart Strangely Warmed
42

• In the evening I went very unwillingly to a
  society in Aldersgate Street, where one was
  reading Luthers preface to the Epistle to the
  Romans. About a quarter before nine, while he
  was describing the change which God works in the
  heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart
  strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ,
  Christ alone for salvation And an assurance was
  given me, that he had taken away my sins, even
  mine, and saved me from the law of sin and
  death.
• The Wesleyan Quadrilateral by Donald A. D.
  Thorsen, p. 129

43

• Experience is the appropriation of authority and
  confirms the truthfulness of Scripture, tradition
  and reason.

44
Contemporary Applications of Wesleys
Understanding of Experience
45

• Pentecostals experience the sacred in the midst
  of the profane, divine guidance for both personal
  and institutional concerns, standing in contrast
  to rational and beaureacratic methods, a
  reticulate organization that refuses to
  immortalize tradition and the past. In addition,
  it refuses to routinize the charismata.
• Margaret Poloma in The AG at the Crossroads

46

• Pentecostals insist that it is not enough for
  truthseven biblical truths, to be precipitated
  in the mind and viewed philosophically. There
  must be a submission to the truth in faith and
  reverential adoration in worship. This is
  worship of truth that is not merely imprisoned in
  the mind, but is personified transcendentally
  over the mind in the glorious person of Christ.
  This is an experiencecertified theology where an
  experience of Christ as subject and not just
  object constitute genuine experience.
• William McDonald in Perspectives on the New
  Pentecostalism

47
Can the church tolerate the separation of the
theoretical task from the concrete situation of
its own existence? Will theologians be permitted
to do their work in cool absentia while pastors
sweat out their own existence in the steamy space
of the Church in the world? When theological
thinking is practiced in abstraction from the
Church in ministry, it inevitably becomes as much
unapplied and irrelevant as pure. Ray Anderson
Theological Foundations for Ministry
48
When the theological mind of the minister is
educated primarily through experience, an adhoc
theology emerges which owes as much (or more) to
methodological and pragmatic concerns as to
dogma. The task to work out a theology for
ministry begins properly with the task of
identifying the nature of and place of ministry
itself. Ray Anderson Theological
Foundations for Ministry
49
The Achilles Heel of Pentecostals

• Pragmatism
• Leviticus 101 Strange fire
• Aarons sons Nadab Abihu took their censers,
  put fire in them and added incense and they
  offered unauthorized fire before the Lord,
  contrary to His command.
• A divine task attempted with reliance on human
  design alone.

50

• Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit,
  says the Lord Almighty (Zechariah 46).
• Might human resources
• Power human resoluteness
• Spirit divine initiative and power for Gods
  eternal purposes
• The temptation to offer our resources to the
  service of God believing that they are an
  adequate substitute for Gods eternal resource.

51

• Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will
  enter the Kingdom of heaven, but only he who does
  the will of the Father who is in heaven. Many
  will say to me on that day, Lord, Lord did we not
  prophesy in your name and in your name drive out
  demons and perform many miracles? Then I will
  tell them plainly, I never knew you. Away from
  me you evildoers!
• Matthew 721-23

52

• Success is rejected by the Lord as having no
  kingdom legitimacy.
• Human efforts dont even get a pat on the back.
• We can actually think our usage of strange
  fire/might-power/sign ministry carries with it
  Gods seal of approval. Success is viewed as
  self-authenticating.

53
So What?

• How do we counteract bifurcation?
• How do we resist pragmatism?
• How do we challenge our cultures immunity to the
  Gospel?

54
Biblical Clues

• God is at work! (John 517)
• God continues to empower His redemptive mission.
  (Acts 16-8)
• Pentecost is the guarantee that the Jesus of the
  Gospels is the Jesus who continues His ministry
  empowered by the Holy Spirit. (Acts 222-24)
• Our ministry is the continuing ministry of Christ
  working through us by the presence and power of
  the Spirit of Christ. (II Cor.520)

55

• Discernment as an act of Church Leadership is the
  minimal expectation for our 21st century church
  leader (Acts 211-21).
• Discernmentspiritual maturity to know the
  difference between works of human effort and the
  continuing ministry of Jesus empowered by the
  Spirit.

56
Discernment (cont.)

• Discernment assumes the present tense of Jesus
  redemptive ministry.
• Discernment assumes that Christs Kingdom rule
  extends over all human structures and efforts.
• Discernment strives to see the presence of
  Jesus in all ministry actions structures. (Not
  as an act of piety, but as a biblical necessity.)

57
Discerning True Ministry Requires

• A connectedness to the life of Jesus (John 15)
• An affirmation that holiness and ethics are never
  mutually exclusive (II Cor. 520)

58
Discerning True Ministry Requires

• A willingness to exegete ministry contexts with
  the same rigor we exegete biblical texts (Mt.
  721-23)
• A commitment to evaluating ministry methodology
  by whether or not it facilitates Jesus
  continuing redemptive ministry.

59
Key Considerations

• Ministry action as poiesis.
• An action that produces a result.
• The end product of the action completes the act
  regardless of what the future of the product may
  be i.e. a ministry action can be viewed as
  effective simply because it added more people or
  people were supportive (fiscally) or people were
  blessed, or it most effectively facilitated a
  programs success.

60
Key Considerations (cont.)

• Ministry action as praxis-telos (discernment of
  ultimate purpose.)
• A ministry action that includes the ultimate
  purpose of that action as part of the action.
  i.e. no ministry action, program or ministry
  structure is incidental. It either reveals the
  redemptive purpose of Jesus or it has no
  contribution to make to God eternal concerns (Mt.
  721-23).

61
Challenges Facing Ministry Effectiveness

• Pragmatism is the result of a willingness to be
  tempted like Nadab Abihu to substitute our
  stuff for Gods design.
• Pragmatism in ministry is a function of a culture
  where consumerism is accepted as normal and
  choice is a divine right.
• Dissonance between a missional heritage and a
  plateauing present reality.

62
Crucial Questions

• Will theologians be permitted to do their work in
  cool absentia while pastors sweat out their
  existence in the steamy space of the Church in
  the world?
• Does theological training end where practice
  begins?

63
Dangers

• When theological thinking is practiced in
  abstraction from the Church in ministry, it
  inevitably becomes as much unsupplied and
  irrelevant as pure.

• When the theological mind of the minister is
  being educated primarily through experience, and
  ad hoc theology emerges which owes as much (or
  more) to methodological and pragmatic concerns as
  to dogma.

64
Theology for Ministry

• The task of working out a theology for ministry
  begins properly with the task of identifying the
  nature and place of ministry itself taking the
  Bible authoritatively and the context seriously.

65
Nature of Ministry

• Ministry precedes and produces theology, not the
  reverse.
• All ministry is Gods ministry
• Every act of revelation is a ministry of
  reconciliation

66
Nature of Ministry (cont.)

• The act of God is the hermeneutical horizon for
  the being of God.
• The Incarnation signals that every ministry
  activity has theological objectivity in and of
  itself

67
Assumptions in Theological Reflection

• Making sense of this mess? How?
• Gods Word is authoritative
• It reveals Gods character and His mission
• The context must be taken seriously
• It is legitimate because it is the place that God
  revealed Himself most clearly in Jesus Christ
• That revelation has eternal intentreconciliation

68
Assumptions in Theological Reflection (cont.)

• Ministry must be an act of God to be legitimate
• All ministry is God's ministry
• It cannot be taken on a life/purpose of its own
• The mission of God comes most clear in Jesus
  Christ and its continuation is guaranteed by
  Pentecost

69
Assumptions in Theological Reflection (cont.)

• The ongoing ministry of Jesus Christ exemplifies
  Gods purposes
• That ministry (its purpose, power/pattern/charact
  er) is the standard we are co-missioned to
  participate in

70
Theology for Ministry (cont.)

• John 112
• Revealer of God and His mission
• Jesus legitimates the context with His presence
• It is worthwhile it counts.

71
Theology for Ministry

• Takes Scriptures authoritatively
• Views the context seriously
• Affirms that God is at work in ministry contexts
• Acknowledges that orthodox doctrinal
  conceptualizations do not guarantee ministry
  effectiveness or orthodoxy
• That ministry has theological objectivity in and
  of itself

72

• What has God done?
• VISION
• II Cor. 517-20
• Capacity to acknowledge the significance of
  Christ in the world
• To make sense of life
• What is my purpose?

• What is God doing?
• DISCERN
• John 517
• Acts 18 24
• The process of affirming the Christ of Scriptures
  at work in our local contexts
• Agent of Transformation
• What is the source of my power?