Pentecostal/Charismatic Churches and Ecumenism: An Interview with Mel Robeck
Second, we need to educate ourselves more broadly. Most of us receive information regarding other churches from our pastors or from those periodicals or news sources that are published by our own congregations or denominations. Pentecostals and Charismatics may also read more broadly from Evangelical sources, but it is extremely rare that they move outside their comfort zones and read more broadly from more liberal Protestant, or Orthodox, or Roman Catholic sources.
I spend about three months each year in other countries. Over the past 15 years this has taught me just how important it is to see and hear the news from a variety of perspectives. As a North American, I can have a far too narrow perspective on global realities if all I do is listen to the North American sources. The same could be said if I limited myself to news originating only in Europe, or Africa. Similarly, the Church is part of the global reality, and we need to develop a global perspective on the One Church of Jesus Christ, which is “catholic” in the sense of being a universal Church.
Having such a global perspective on the Church may help to overcome our fears regarding ecumenism. Unfortunately, the apologetic that was developed to support the rise of Pentecostalism and in many cases the rise of the Charismatic and subsequent renewal movements, has been a triumphalistic apologetic, one that is “over against” the historic churches. Whether this apologetic employs the “lost and restored” motif of Joel 2, or the “latter rain” motif of Acts 2 or the multiple “wave” theory championed early by Frank Bartleman and often by C. Peter Wagner to support a form of Restorationism, it has clearly made judgments against the churches that gave them birth. When such an apologetic is linked to an uninformed eschatological perspective that simply assumes that Revelation 17 and 18 speaks specifically about existing ecumenical organizations such as the World Council of Churches or such denominations as the Roman Catholic Church as supporting the agenda of the Antichrist, the results can be devastating to the relationships that might be possible were we to trust the Lord to lead us.
Third, we could place the support of theological education higher on the agenda in our local congregations. While this action would focus more narrowly on the training of our pastors, and more broadly on the young people of our congregations, it would also contribute to the education of the majority of our people, because the sermons we hear would be different from many that are preached today. In my local congregation, people know that I know something about other churches, and about many of the ideas or actions that are reported in the local press or on their television news. They will often seek me out to talk with them about such things. What this shows is that they are interested in what is going on in the Church at large, and not simply in our local congregation.
Category: Ministry, Winter 2003
Followers
Fans
