I don’t see any reason for tension between head and heart in Pentecostal spirituality, and every reason why life in the Spirit should be radically integrated. In her great book Pentecostal Formation: A Pedagogy Among the Oppressed, Dr. Cheryl Johns uses the Hebrew word yada as the basis for the Pentecostal understanding of “knowing” God. Yada is a “knowing more by the heart than by the mind, a knowing that arises not by standing back from in order to look at, but by active and intentional engagement in lived experience.” Significantly, yada was used as a euphemism for love making and the past participle of yada used for a good friend or confidant. This is not just a Pentecostal understanding of what it is to know God, but a biblical one. It is not truly possible to love God without loving Him with “all your mind” and “all your heart.”

At Renovatus, we have a document we really live by called the Renovatus manifesto. It doesn’t replace the apostles’ creed as a doctrinal statement (which we confess every week), but it is very much what we believe is particular to our call as a community. One of those statements is “We will practice the liturgy and the primal shout: We will incite worship that engages both intellect and emotion, believing that the head and heart are to be integrated and not divorced.” I think embracing diverse aspects of liturgy and the shout ensures that both head and heart are nurtured.

We have another statement that says: “We will reach out without dumbing down (I borrowed that phrase brazenly from Marva Dawn): We will challenge you to think hard about God, Church and culture. We will not treat you like a consumer, but as a co-conspirator in the re-imagining of the world.” I once saw a bumper-sticker that said “If you won’t pray at my school, I won’t think at your church.” In our Pentecostal church, you won’t last long if you aren’t willing to think, because we take the business of being the church very seriously—and that requires deep, sustained reflection. Caesars and empires do everything than can to keep people from thinking, and in our culture I see challenging people to think deeply about their faith to be an act of resistance. At Renovatus, we attempt to model an integration of head and heart, belief and action.

From James: I know Pentecostals who are dogmatic about God speaking to them. The thing is, God appears to tell different people different things, so I wonder if God actually is speaking to them. What are your thoughts on God speaking to people? How can one avoid abuses that come from that claim?

Here’s the truthful answer: on one hand, the idea that God speaks dynamically through Christian community has been the thing that I’ve most cherished about my Pentecostal tradition. Some of the most powerful, life-altering moments of my life have come through the gift of brothers and sisters speaking to me on God’s behalf. The idea that anyone in the Church can be a vessel for divine speech is especially beautiful to me.

It is also extremely dangerous. And alternately, some of my worst experiences within Pentecostal tradition have been through people running amuck giving out “words.” We have had to step into situations pastorally on a couple of occasions where we felt like individuals within our community gave words that were manipulative or misleading. I have had a number of personal “prophecies” delivered over me that could have been faith shattering. My wife and I have been married for over 12 years without children (another story for another time). I have literally lost count of the people who have spoken over us that we would have a baby within some kind of a specific time frame. That’s a sore spot for me.

But here is what it comes down to: you cannot create space for the real without creating space for the immature and even the fake. I think it’s fascinating that in the context of lengthy instructions on how to ensure that tongues and interpretations operate in an orderly way in I Corinthians 12-14, Paul comes back around to say “Forbid not to speak in tongues.” Because the most natural response to abuse of a gift is not to use the gift at all. And for as deeply Pentecostal as I am, as a pastor now I completely understand this instinct. There are moments in the heat of that kind of pastoral correction where you would just as soon (where I would just as soon!) shut the whole enterprise down. But ultimately, you have to ask yourself the question: is it worth shutting down the authentic voice of God in an attempt to root out the fake? I think the risks of that are far greater.

So like many Pentecostals, I do share a strong belief that we can hear God speak to us. But I also believe there are some necessary safeguards. We have an elder couple in our church, Jim and Mims Driscoll, who teach a class for us on “Receiving and Giving Revelation.” They have had a lot of experience counseling/training/rehabilitating misguided “prophetic” people. One of the things I love most about their approach is that they stress, over and over again, that the primary function of speaking God’s heart in Christian community is to share His love. While it is possible that a corrective or instructive word could be given, this will not usually be the case. Usually, when God speaks to His bride, He speaks with tenderness. Prophecy or words of knowledge in the Church should be a direct extension of the love of God. The Driscolls counsel people that words should not generally be given in private—but normally with 2 or 3 others present so there is some accountability. This simple practice circumvents a world of problems.

For my part, I have become quite suspicious of the kind of “word” where somebody gives instruction to go and sell your house or get a different job or go on the mission field or make some radical life change. If such a word confirmed something an individual already sensed God saying to them, that would be one thing. But I am not likely to change course completely on something just because of an alleged prophetic utterance. I’ve seen that go wrong too many times. Because I do believe so strongly that each of us has the capacity to hear and discern the voice of God, I just don’t think that much weight is typically going to land entirely on another person.

From Marty: A friend of mine grew up in a Pentecostal church and told me the story of the pressure to speak in tongues. Apparently in that church he couldn't be fully accepted until he had the Spirit and was able to demonstrate that verbally. So as a kid, he would go home and practice when no one was listening. He was successful at some point and everyone was happy. Now as an adult and part of a different tradition, he still has that skill and is quite convincing, but it is a skill he developed an not something else. My guess is that my friend's childhood impression is not quite where the tradition is at. So what does it mean to "speak in tongues"?

I sighed when I read this, as stories like these are still painful for me to hear (even though I know plenty of them). The doctrine of Spirit baptism with accompanying speaking in tongues has been the lynch pin of the Pentecostal movement, and I never want to minimize that. But all too often, tongues are treated as some sort of merit badge, and that is unfortunate. I think many people who sincerely want to operate within that gift are unable to, precisely because too much pressure is put on the experience. Instead of “you may kiss the bride,” it can feel like a chore or something to check off on some sort of list. As Jack Hayford stated so well years ago, there is a fundamental beauty to spiritual language that is often lost when people put too much pressure and/or hype around the experience.

Like most Pentecostals, I believe that speaking in tongues is first and foremost a prayer language, a language of adoration and worship and intercession, between us and God. In the context of public worship, a tongue that is given in the assembly (not in a corporate time of prayer or worship) should be interpreted by someone with that gift for the edification of the church. If there is no interpreter, Paul says the person should “speak quietly to God.” While I strongly believe in the interpretation of tongues, and even in the capacity of someone to speak in a foreign natural tongue they have not been taught (a la Acts 2), that experience is far less common than that of tongues as a prayer language.

From Sara: Many experiences I have had with members of Pentecostal churches and their leadership believe and teach that the Catholic church (and other liturgical Protestant denominations) are not Christian churches. What is your view? If you agree, where are you getting your information from? If you disagree, how are you challenging this stereotype?

I absolutely consider Catholic and mainline Protestant churches to be Christian churches. As I mentioned earlier, at Renovatus we recite the Apostles’ Creed weekly, so it is ever before us that we are part of “the holy catholic church.” (Though I end up having to explain in the South frequently that we mean “one universal Church comprised of all who call Jesus Lord,” which of course includes Catholics but does not refer to the Roman Catholic Church explicitly.)

Now to be truthful, in the churches where I grew up, traveling prophecy preachers and teachers taught us that the Catholic church was the whore of Babylon and that the Pope would be the antichrist! As I got older, I rejected not only that notion but the entire dispensational eschatology on which those ideas are based (I will save my rant for later on why dispensational in any form should have no place in Pentecostal churches).

In terms of challenging the stereotype, I can tell you that my primary focus with my ThM at Duke was in Catholic Moral Theology. I published a piece in the Journal of Pentecostal Theology a few years ago called “Spirit, Apocalypse and Ethics: Reading Catholic Moral Theology as a Pentecostal.” I don’t know exactly where this fits in with my current day job and writing obligations, but I would love to do a PhD at some point that articulates a constructive Pentecostal approach to ethics in dialogue with Catholic moral theology, as I think there are significant connections. While Pentecostals have significant differences from Catholicism, we do have our own quirky catholicity mediated through our Wesleyan roots. While John Wesley was not Catholic, the Methodist/holiness movement that later gave rise to Pentecostalism certainly had tendencies more in line with Catholicism than the magisterial reformers, and I’d like to explore those further.

From Charity: I went to a pentecostal church as a teenager and two things I noticed was that prophesy and casting out demons were big to-do's. I was always afraid of having a demon, and afraid someone was going to prophesy something bad about me. Now, I realize not all pentecostal churches are the same, just as no two churches are the same, but I wonder what you believe is appropriate for keeping order within the church. I understand the importance of letting the Holy Spirit work, but when does this become a dangerous thing that could allow people not really under the influence of the spirit to hurt and manipulate others?

Anything that is powerful is dangerous, and power that legitimately comes from God is especially volatile. Both testaments are full of examples of people who have legitimate gifts but misuse the power. Combustible things are always going to happen when you mix genuine spiritual authority with broken human vessels, so structure and order are absolutely critical. As I referenced earlier, we have a number of safeguards for these practices at our church.

I do believe that there is a force of evil in the world that is greater than the sum of its parts, and that in the normal course of life in the kingdom, real resistance will be encountered. So I do believe there are times and places where demonic influences must be confronted. But I am also highly suspicious at this point of the over preoccupation with spiritual warfare that has become common in many Pentecostal/Charismatic churches. I find a lot of the “demon-busters” rhetoric to be overblown and in some cases destructive. On a pastoral level, I’ve had to deal with individuals within our community who have kind of jumped the shark with all of that. I like to remind people that, first and foremost, submission to God IS resistance to the evil one. Most of the time that will be enough.

I also lived in dread that certain evangelists would “call me out”—um, especially when I was going through puberty! At this point in my life, I am so convinced of the tenderness of the Father’s heart that in those times when a public “word” is given from a person who understands the function of these gifts in the body of Christ, edification will be the aim.

From Matthew: Thanks for coming Jonathan! Let's assume that I was to come to your church with no knowledge of Pentecostal church tradition. I know I want to follow Christ, and I have heard great things about your church--what books do you recommend I read? What passage of Scripture do you recommend I dwell on? What conversation do you give to introduce me to Pentecostal faith?

I know I referenced it already, but Steven J. Land’s Pentecostal Spirituality: A Passion for the Kingdomreally is the definitive work for me on the nature and character of Pentecostalism, and certainly the resource that has most shaped me. The more recent Signs and Wonders: Why Pentecostalism is the World’s Fastest Growing Faith by Paul Alexander is a more accessible introduction. Rather that recommending particular “Pentecostal texts,” I would suggest a close reading of the Book of Acts on the whole. Acts frames the work of the Spirit in the broader context of Christian mission in precisely the same way Pentecostals do today. Thus there is not a sense of Pentecostal experiences as isolated or disconnected events, but deeply connected to the broader story of the kingdom of God advancing in the world.

From James: I'd like for you to interact with the issue of healing. If God heals today, why are there so many people who are sick? Do you believe it's due to lack of faith?

There is no way I can do justice to this issue here, but this is my short take: as it was in the ministry of the incarnate Son of God, healing serves as a sign of the wholeness yet to come when “the knowledge of the glory of the Lord covers the earth as the waters cover the sea.” Sickness and disease is a reality of a fallen world, but never part of God’s intention for the creation.

I do not by any means think that people are generally not healed because of a lack of faith. I see the “word of faith” notion in some Charismatic circles (that all who have adequate faith will be healed and all who are not healed have inadequate faith) to be a destructive caricature of the doctrine of divine healing. In these systems, God is no longer the object of faith—faith is the object of faith. That’s a disastrous move.

I have seen many people healed, I have seen many people pray and fast and seek God and not be healed. Ultimately, the question of why some are healed and others are not is beyond my pay grade. There is great mystery to this, and I cannot attempt to resolve the tension prematurely.

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