God Doesn't Need Todd Bentley (or me for that matter)

Author's note: I grew up in a fundamentalist charismatic church and have been in many church meetings that at least looked like the ones depicted in this video. Although I left that tradition and culture for the Anglican church, it is not without respect for the genuine spiritual heritage of divine immediacy and biblical groundedness bequeathed to me by my charismatic upbringing. [added 8:03 PM, 9/25]

I watched this documentary of the 2008 Lakeland Revival in full today while adding comments on a friend's Facebook wall (she posted the link I followed to watch it) as I watched it. Here are some of the things I said, with additions:

"I can't get a read on this guy's (the filmmaker's) perspective after watching a half hour of this. Not sure whether that's good or bad."

"He certainly hasn't crafted a screed against it. There are moments where I feel like he's highlighting the socioeconomic and psychological instability of the people drawn into this, but his apparent refusal to editoralize makes it hard to tell what he thinks about that."

"Jesus Camp had a very clear perspective, sometimes to its detriment. The fact that he and his crew participate in 'revival' moments un-ironically locates them in particular way to the events. It's possible that they're attempting to do a positive spin in a dead-pan objective style. I at least appreciate it in that I feel free to sort through my own reactions instead of having it processed for me."

"The man talking about the 'little lambs' in the last 10 minutes or so was heart-breaking. Perhaps the most infuriating thing about the fallout has been Morningstar's 'restoration' doublespeak, which is all biblically absurd.

I was in a Todd Bentley meeting once, about nine years ago, and I didn't see any healings but I did experience God's presence in a powerful way. But 'anointed' or not, God doesn't need Todd Bentley. He might show up through the man's ministry from time to time--he's merciful and he does that. But with or without him, God will be present to his church.

That is part of why Morningstar's approach to this represents such a colossal failure of church discipline. It's as though their inflexible conception of revivalist as indispensable vessel has pressured them into a willfully ignorant application of Jesus and the apostles' teaching on marriage and divorce. It's heart-breaking because I know what it's like to be an emotionally wounded teenager in need of God and the example of virtuous leaders and just how confusing it would be to think that the backbone of God's most important ministries were somehow above the need for ethics.

I couldn't help but think of so much of what is onscreen during this documentary as a reflection of the charismatic world's rejection of reason in favor of gut-level intuition. As much as I don't want to take an entirely negative stance towards what I see going on in these revival services--I don't think it's all mass-psychosis and hysteria, because I've been there and God's been there with me--throughout the doc I was made repeatedly thankful for the Anglican seminary I ended up in, despite (because of?) the charismatic world I was reared in."

--

As we've been reading Francis MacNutt's Healing in class this past week, I've been thinking on and off about the healing ministry and the spiritual gifts in the church. I want that kind of ministry to be at work in the church and, no doubt from the influence of my charismatic/pentecostal upbringing, I can't help but see resistances to that ministry as both encroaching modernism and collusion with the principalities and powers. We talked in class last week about how abuses and disappointments also fuel reticence regarding healing and how to engage that both as pastors and people struggling with our own disappointments and weak faith. It's neither easy nor fun to try and engage with these dynamics, given the fact that so many go unhealed and unaffected by the gospel, but it's part of responding to God's call to ministry.

Watching this video, I couldn't help but think about some of my recent reflections on the sacraments, particularly the Eucharist. What makes the Eucharist special is that Christ set it aside as a promised moment of encounter between God and his people, a symbolic remembrance that comes attached with a promise for the infusion of resurrection life. What's beautiful to me about it is the fact that God shows up to meet with his people in such a simple, no-fuss way--no strings attached. We prepare our hearts through corporate repentance and worship, yes, but Eucharist/communion is primarily a moment of receiving. It's not something the lay participant or the priest has power over, that either's worthiness or holiness makes valid. And by no means is it the only time God meets with his people or fills them with life! But it is a time and place set aside by God for that very thing, meaning that regardless of what has gone on in our week, regardless of how much energy we have left to give, God has promised to meet with us, Christ has promised to meet with us in the receiving of the bread and the wine.

God doesn't need the vessels or ambassadors he has chosen to work with and through, but he does work with and through them. God doesn't need the bread and the wine, but he does work in and through them. It is a small view of God to think that we need one particular minister or Christian leader so badly that we can overlook their personal sins in order to keep them on stage or at the altar. But it's often a big view of God that puts broken people like Todd Bentley in the limelight.

Too often I hear revivalists dismissed as flim-flammers, Machiavellian schemers who set out to dupe and destroy the church, with examples like Bentley offered up as exhibits A-Z. As much as I feel compelled to condemn the way this adulterer has been "restored" without repentance (which I'm not sure how that works in the case of divorce and remarriage, but it does seem like his second marriage would not be valid in God's eyes, given that he is not a widower), I don't see that as carte blanche for writing off spiritually efficacious ministry. It makes me long for it to be done rightly. It makes me long for people to be ministering in the power of the Spirit in ways that are submitted to church discipline, ethical standards and in ways that encourage instead of discourage rational engagement with the living God rather than the spasms and paroxysms of "revival". It's not God's design for us to look like crazy people being undone by unseen and unknowable powers, but to be humanity restored by divine life walking in love with Father-Son-Holy Spirit and our neighbors. I long to see the vital divine energy of revival being channeled in that way, for the power ministry of the apostles and prophets to coincide with the patient and reasonable application of the church's instruction.

Donald Miller's Tongue

What good is a phone call if you're unable to speak?

"At first, even though I could feel God writing something different, I'd play the scene the way I wanted. This never worked. It would always have been better to obey the Writer, the one who knows the better story. I'd talk poorly about somebody and immediately know I'd done it because I was insecure, and I'd know I was a weak character who was jealous and undisciplined.

So I started obeying a little. I'd feel God wanting me to hold my tongue, and I would.

It didn't feel natural at first; it felt fake, like I was being a character somebody else wanted me to be and not who I actually was; but if I held my tongue, the scene would play better, and I always felt better when it was done.

I started feeling like a better character, and when you are a better character, your story gets better too.

At first the feeling was only about holding my tongue. And when I learned to hold my tongue a bit, the Voice guided me from the defensive to the intentional. God wanted me to do things, to help people, to volunteer or write a letter or talk to my neighbor. Sometimes I'd do the thing God wanted, and the story always went well, of course; and sometimes I'd ignore it and watch television. But by this time I really came to believe the Voice was God, and God was trying to write a better story."

from A Million Miles in a Thousand Years by Donald Miller


This reminded me of a verse from the lectionary that got my attention a week or two ago:

"If any think they are religious, and do not bridle their tongues but deceive their hearts, their religion is worthless." ~ James 1:26

Seriously, I love this guy.

As a seminarian avowedly jealous of stand-up comedians for all the things they are allowed to say and I am not, this verse has a special relevance to me. I like to talk loud and freely and am usually at my happiest when I take as many filters off as possible. But I find again and again that my friends are not nearly so enamored with my verbal kaleidoscope as I am.

Seeking more intentionality in my words is, frankly, a chore. And I feel fake for doing it. But I think I'm learning that loving my neighbor means feeling fake sometimes. I like to think of myself as a natural wit worthy of reverence and--especially so--attention, but, really, I'm not. And if I want to keep on being the kind of person who speaks their mind, who makes themselves consistently vulnerable through speech, I need to be willing to recognize that not everything that comes out of my mouth and my heart is something that people want to hear about. And I need to be willing to examine the heart and mind producing these words, and to bear all of the above in day to day repentance, reconciliation and renewal with the Father.

Was Jesus Mary-ed?

I guess it's because people get confused and tend to have misplaced trust in people in labcoats (or with PHd's), but the need for the apologetic community to loudly dismiss this text fragment suggesting Jesus might have had a wife feels a little desperate to me. Even if it is a genuinely ancient text, I struggle to see how it has any bearing on the witness of the NT. At the same time, the attempts of its finders and analyzers to make something out of it seems equally desperate, and a worst a cheap ploy for publicity. Why can't we just all be comfortable with saying, "Hey, someone found an old piece of paper with something written on it. Probably doesn't mean much historically, except in that it reflects the fact that someone wrote these words on this piece of paper a long time ago." It's a little absurd to treat every scrap recovered from antiquity as a reliable transmitter of "what really happened".

If you're not sure what I'm talking about, let me google that for you.

Romney the Candid-ate

Linked above is the playlist of MotherJones videos on YouTube. The first five or so are from Mitt Romney's May 2012 address to wealthy donors in Boca Raton, FL.

I'm not going to editorialize these leaked Romney vids from the Boca Raton fundraiser. My sympathies in this election are clear. However, these newly released videos are still fascinating for at least two non-partisan reasons:

1) This is probably the most candid you will ever hear a presidential candidate speaking. Romney is presumably addressing a roomful of wealthy supporters from whom he is soliciting campaign funds, and he is talking very bluntly about his perceptions of the shape of the race, the differences between him and Obama and what his campaign needs to address in order to win the race. I promise you he won't be bragging in a news interview any time soon about how they've hired professional campaign advisers who work in elections all over the world (and neither will Obama). I'm not surprised by anything Romney says in these videos, and I wouldn't be surprised if most of my conservative friends agree with him. This stuff is probably only really off-putting to the swing-voter--those 5-10% of Americans which Romney clearly outlines as who he has to win over to take the election.

2) Which brings me to my second point, that Romney's comments here about the targeted swing votes highlight a problem endemic to the two-party system. Our politics are unnecessarily polarized and force otherwise reasonable people into defending black-and-white reductions of the incredibly complex issues facing a country as large as the United States of America. Nobody likes it, but Romney is merely pointing out the uncomfortable truth of the contemporary American presidential election: most people have made up their minds before the candidates are even picked--all that matters is those 5-10% who might vote either way.

Chrysostom on Pastoral Care

"You cannot treat men with the same authority with which a shepherd treats a sheep... It is necessary to make a man better not by force but by persuasion. We neither have authority granted us by law to restrain sinners, nor, if it were, should we know how to use it, since God gives the crown to those who are kept from evil, not by force, but by choice."

~John Chrysostom, Six Books on the Priesthood (56; II.3)

The ecclesial implications are clear, but I think we should also heed the implications for Christian engagement with politics. "God gives the crown to those who are kept from evil, not by force, but by choice" implies that Christians should be careful when they frame their political goals in terms of legislated morality. The difference between wise public policy and Christian morality is not absolute, yet neither is it non-existent. Any given day I believe we are better off persuading the culture by example and in the Spirit rather than rallying ourselves around political causes in order to shape the culture from the top down.