The book being discussed is: Church Refugees: Sociologists Reveal Why People Are DONE With Church But Not Their Faith by Josh Packard and Ashleigh Hope.
 

Roger Olson’s challenge to Western Christianity about the power of God is a bold and biblical one. Questioning the status quo of our current version of traditional Christianity, he rightly believes that it has, “absorbed the worldview of modernity by relegating the supernatural, miracles, scientifically unexplainable interventions of God, to the past (‘Bible times’) and elsewhere (‘the mission fields’).”^[1]

Roger Olson

Several years ago, Olson sounded a similar alarm: “It seems to me that belief in ‘the supernatural’ is an essential part of traditional, classical Christianity (and I mean that normatively and not only historically). That is to say, denying the reality of the supernatural is tantamount to giving up Christianity. However, of course, many people who believe they are Christians deny the supernatural.”^[2] Olson began a recent article with the same alarm: “My claim is that most contemporary American evangelical Christians only pay lip service to the supernatural whereas the Bible is saturated with it.”

The perplexity of this is shared by many who consider themselves Pentecostals and Charismatics. It is a strange thing indeed for one who claims to be a Jesus-follower to simultaneously deny that the same power we see Jesus and His followers exercising in our day is now obsolete two thousand years later. Ironic is not a powerful enough word to describe a mindset which claims to abide by the worldview of the Bible while concurrently embracing an anti-supernatural, Enlightenment sentiment regarding the existence of the miraculous today.

Thankfully, while this may be common among various versions and flavors of Christianity, it does not seem to be so common among the vast majority of Americans. According to A survey conducted by the Pew Forum on Religion five years ago (2010), nearly 80% of Americans believe in miracles.^[3] Three years later (2013), that number was down to 72% per the Harris Poll.^[4] Five years later (2015), the Today Show’s recent survey among 1,500 people revealed that 76% of those polled believed that prayer could heal, revealing a sustained depth of belief in the miraculous and our connection to it.^[5] This touches on the bullseye of Olson’s post.

Many Pentecostals and Charismatics today would have a theological splinter in their soul if at least the idea of miraculous healing, if not the offer to pray for it, didn’t follow a person’s verbalization of their pain, suffering, or illness. Yet strangely, Olson’s experience reveals that too many of those who claim to follow Jesus, “avoid asking God to heal them…avoid any mention of demons or demonic possession and strictly shun exorcism as primitive and superstitious…look down on churches that anoint the sick with oil and pray for their physical healing…suspect they are ‘cultic’ and probably encourage ill people not to seek medical treatment…make fun of evangelists who claim to have prayed for God to re-route hurricanes but never ourselves pray for God to save people from natural disasters…have gradually adopted the idea that ‘Prayer doesn’t change things; it changes me’ and…regard petitionary prayer as something for children.” How horrific. That was my own behavior prior to 2004, and is an accurate description of the treatment I’ve received from others in the camp I left.

I share a similar story of healing along with Olson. I’ve had pretty severe allergies during the Spring ever since I can remember. Last year I felt filled with the faith to just go and ask a friend to lay hands on me and ask God to heal me. My friend did. So did God. I did not suffer with allergies for the remainder of the season last year, and have not suffered one day this year. And to my surprise, a lifelong allergy to milk has also been healed and I have enjoyed ice cream multiple times now with seemingly no effects. While I have not been to a doctor to verify this, my assumption is that if I no longer have the allergic reactions I used to have all my life, then something happened to me. And I also assume that if I can trace it all back to that single point in time when someone prayed for me, then the connection is legitimate. I asked. I had faith that God would do it. My friend believed. Two of us agreed on a matter touching the kingdom. And God granted it. No problems immediately thereafter.

I felt a strange sensation last week, however, when talking to my dad about this. He asked me how I was holding up this Spring so far. I began to describe for him that I no longer seemed to struggle, and suddenly acquiesced. The force and joy with which I would have normally talked about it suddenly began to subside. That surprised me. My father is a cessationist to this day, and pastored as such for thirty years in the Southern Baptist Convention. Knowing his position seemed to create in me a bizarre sense of obligation toward his viewpoint. Thankfully I caught myself, reassured myself that there’s nothing wrong proclaiming the goodness of God even to a convinced cessationist, and finished the story by stating what happened to me in a matter-of-fact sort of way. My dad’s response was just what I had expected: “Hmmm. Okay, son. That’s great.” But with a tone of voice which seemed to belie his true feelings on the matter.

In the end, I share Olson’s suspicion that, “our contemporary evangelical avoidance of the supernatural in the physical realm of reality has little to do with intellectual questions and issues.” I also believe that, “it has more to do with wanting our religion to be respectable; above all we don’t want to be viewed by the world around us as fanatics. The abuses of the supernatural seen on cable television cause us to drop it entirely.”^[6] I think that’s the bizarre sense of obligation I felt when speaking with my dad. It was that feeling of “respectability,” yet obviously one based purely on culture instead of on the kingdom.

What is also just as obvious is that the abuse of a thing should never dictate the avoidance of that thing altogether. Yet strangely, this too, is a standard practice of cultural respectability. As Olson frames it, “the cure for abuse is not disuse but proper use.”^[7] I believe that Christians should labor diligently to not be conformed to the patterns of this world, but instead should continually place themselves in a place to be transformed by the renewing of their mind (Romans 12:1-2). The Enlightenment has poisoned our minds with the toxins of respectability and the genetic fallacy.^[8] The truth of Scriptures, contained especially in the life and ministry of Jesus and the early church as our lifestyle and pattern for the kingdom, provide the source material for this transformative renewal of our minds. This, along with an openness to miraculous experiences and participation in the power of God, will ultimately inoculate us from our cultural anti-supernaturalism and return the people of God to a place of effectiveness in the mission Jesus has called us to until His return.

Reviewed by Rob Wilkerson

Read the full article: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2015/04/embarrased-by-the-supernatural/

Notes

^[1] http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2012/12/what-does-supernatural-mean-can-a-person-be-christian-and-not- believe-in-it/

^[2] http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2015/04/embarrased-by-the-supernatural/

^[3] http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124007551

^[4] http://secularpolicyinstitute.net/survey/americans-belief-in-god-miracles-and-heaven-declines/

^[5] http://www.today.com/news/there-afterlife-does-prayer-work-todays-survey-faith-spirituality-t14176

^[6] http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2015/04/embarrased-by-the-supernatural/

^[7] ibid.

^[8] http://www.logicalfallacies.info/relevance/genetic/

Don’t miss my interview with Josh Packard this Tuesday night. Thanks Pneuma Review for asking me to review the book which led to an interview with Josh. The book is: Church Refugees: Sociologists reveal why people are DONE with church but not their faith by Josh Packard and Ashleigh Hope.

Watch the recorded Interview now

Are Pentecostals offering Strange Fire? (Panel Discussion)

Rob Wilkerson responds to the article, “The Elephant in the Strange Fire” by Cameron Buettel, published on November 3, 2014 on John MacArthur’s Grace to You ministry website.

Frankly, I’m a nobody in the kingdom. I’ve never published any books, though I’d certainly like to one day. I’ve never led a church larger than a few hundred people. And I’ve never had any sphere of influence larger than the people directly under my leadership before. So when the folks at PneumaReview.com asked me to respond to an article published this past Monday, by Grace to You employee, Cameron Buettel, I felt like a mouse beneath Cameron’s elephant.

I’ve never seen an elephant respond to a mouse. But it could be either messy or humorous. Hopefully in my case Cameron’s elephant will simply be still, be informed, and be educated just a little when it comes to a biblical charismatic theology. When Cameron penned a follow-up challenge to charismatics who stood in line of John MacArthur’s Strange Fire conference, held a little over a year ago, he confessed two things to his readers. First, he has a charismatic background and grew up in mainline Pentecostalism. Second, he consumed an unhealthy amount of videos and writings from influential charismatic leaders.

Cameron Buettel, from his blog.

To the second acknowledgement I’d simply agree with Cameron. Yeah, it’s unhealthy to watch really too much of anything on TBN or YouTube, assuming I am able to reasonably deduce who it was that he watched and read. And I may be totally off on that. Who knows? But here’s what I feel like I do know with some measure of confidence. The guys who seem to make enough money to spend it on television broadcasting in order to turn around and ask for more money make me angry, frustrated, and irritated that people who probably want to follow Jesus are being duped into following a charlatan.

But here’s the stickler. Just because they can afford to put their wares on the air doesn’t mean they are the poster children for the charismatic movement. It just means they are the poster children for the charismaniac movement. There’s a big difference. Biblical charismatics know that. And refusal on the part of cessationists to admit that there is a difference continues to be part of the dishonesty that creates a divide between us. I am charismatic. But I am not charismaniac.

To the first acknowledgment I’d respond that everyone will find little to much that is or was wrong with the denomination they grew up in. I grew up Southern Baptist. There is much to be praised there, like the fight for inerrancy. But there is much that is wrong there, from my personal viewpoint. And here’s the rub I felt in Cameron’s article. He writes from what seems to be a reactionary perspective rather than a responsive one. The answer to the bad charismatic and pentecostal theology he personally experienced is not zero charismatic and pentecostal theology. Ditching the whole thing, Cameron asserts a bullet-pointed list of what he perceives to be a standard, predictable, step-by-step, “codified playbook of sorts” for “self-defense.”

Rob Wilkerson resonates with a recent article.

Robin Williams as Mr. Keating in Dead Poets Society

Jeffrey Overstreet, “How I Got Dead Poets Society Wrong: And how a great professor changed my mind” ChristianityTodayOnline (September 16, 2014).

Overstreet’s article brought back memories. A lot of them, to be honest. To some degree, the feelings the movie evoked returned to me like I saw it yesterday.

First, there were the memories of how I felt as a high school graduate, the same year the movie was released. I remember identifying intensely with Keating, a mentor every kid wished was his dad. I remembered thinking how much of Neil was in me, both the joyous freedom to be me, mixed with the insanity of conformity to cultural norms and standards.

Second, there were memories of how I felt about rules and standards. Growing up on the legalistic side of Christianity, I could understand the concerns of Neil’s father and Keating’s administration. Rebellion is built into every fiber and DNA strand of every human being. This was probably true of me when I watched it. The movie was like a pinball inside my soul, thrashing around, ringing bells, sounding noises, while smacked by the paddles of my legalistic upbringing and the taste of free grace.

Third, there are memories of my parenting. I’m a father to four awesome kids. Too often I’ve parented like Neil’s father. At least, that’s what I fear. More often I’ve wanted to parent like Keating, loosening the ropes, the guides of culture (including Christian culture) from the fragile sapling of grace I saw growing inside my children. Overstreet said it best. “Looking back at authority figures who have inspired my respect, and at those who have been driven by ego and a desire to control, I’ve come to suspect that anyone who seeks to instill character in another person by force will produce an equal and opposite reaction.”

There is a root found in both men in this movie. It is fear. Plain and simple. Neil’s father was fearful that his son wouldn’t fit into his tiny little world, that his son would find a type of happiness that he had talked himself out of years earlier. He was fearful of freedom, so he couldn’t let his son enjoy it. Then there’s Keating. Overstreet believes that “Mr. Keating models a healthy balance of freedom and responsibility. He descends into that world of order, accepting the form of a servant, and makes all things new. He shows them what the imagination, taking the shape of love, makes possible.” Perhaps. Probably. But undoubtedly obvious in Keating, as well as in his real life character, was this tinge of immaturity.

In this review essay by Rob Wilkerson, he reflects on his background as a disciple of John MacArthur, his becoming a continuationist anyway, and his look at Michael Brown’s book, Authentic Fire: A Response to John MacArthur’s Strange Fire (Excel Publishers, 2013).

I loved pillow fights when I was younger. I haven’t enjoyed one in a while, which is remarkable seeing as how three of my four children are boys. Given my dear wife’s deep dislike for our boyish antics like spontaneous, combustible wrestling in the house (or in public), I can’t imagine she would like pillow fighting either.

The last time I remember a good pillow fight was the time I cheated. I was fighting my high school friend Charles Hardman. He was a black belt in Karate and always won when we wrestled, which is kind of like him cheating. So I figured I’d even the playing field at that night’s sleepover…by putting a phone book in my pillow! Yellow Pages, to be exact. I won. No surprise there, of course. It was easy. I did it in one hit. And he was still my friend. But my tender conscience made me feel like a putz for it later.

Friendship makes all the difference in the world, doesn’t it? This is especially true when some topics of conversation feel like a pillow fight between friends. How much more is this true when friends are Christians, rooted in the grace of God in the love of Jesus Christ! Christian friends can do life together, hang out, talk, argue, discuss…and even horseplay! Christian friends also rub each other the wrong way, and even sin against each other at times. But in the end, the grace of God seems to be a supernatural oil that lubricates an otherwise very unstable and unhealthy relationship.

I’m Privileged to be a John MacArthur Disciple

The secret to a great friendship is really no secret at all. It’s just plain, old-fashioned, biblical grace. And that’s what I found missing in John MacArthur’s recent Strange Fire Conference and accompanying Strange Fire book. I met John MacArthur when I was eighteen years old. He stayed a couple of days at my house. I almost wet my pants when my dad introduced me to him. I’d had the privilege of being assigned The Gospel According to Jesus as a required text my last year I of high school (Yeah, I was homeschooled. My parents pulled out my senior year. But this isn’t an article about teenage therapy). At that age I thought John was just one-half level below Jesus.

I went on to spend more time with John and some staff members a couple of years later when he came back to my dad’s church, where an East Coast Shepherd’s Conference was held a few times back in the early 90’s. I went through my theological puberty with John, and I’m very thankful for it! I consumed hundreds of hours of John’s preaching for years and loved his approach to Scripture. A few years later when the elders of the church I attended discussed seminary with me, there was only one that they would commit to pay half my tuition and books. It was a no-brainer for me to attend The Master’s Seminary because of my deep respect for John and his ministry. I wanted to learn the Word and learn how to preach and teach the Word just like John did, and still does.

The Master’s Seminary and John MacArthur’s ministry may be well known for their stances on dispensationalism and against the charismatic. But they are also even more renown for equipping men to discover God’s Word and lead the flock with it. I can’t say enough about the equipping I got while enrolled there. God was with me and my family during some difficult and dark days, including the loss of our second son after completing my first year, and my wife’s conversion to Christ during my fourth and final year. Thinking back on those formative years, I can’t help but recall the gracious love and care, in particular, from Dr. Irv Busenitz (V.P. for Academic Administration, and OT Professor), and his wife, Karen, who were like bookends during our time at The Master’s Seminary. I think of Dr. David Farnell who condescended to our level with humor only a friend knows. And I can’t forget the trials and tribulations of New Testament Introduction with the famed Dr. Robert Thomas, with whom I shared too many breakfasts to count. Finally, my few months working on staff with guys like Steve Camp, Tom Pennington, Jerry Wragg were invaluable in terms of shepherding the flock. And then there’s my old friend, Lance Quinn, who talked my wife and I into coming to The Master’s Seminary to begin with. I am privileged to be considered partners in the same gospel with these men.

I Feel Like I Got Burned with Strange Fire

But here’s the rub. I feel like John loaded his pillow with his Strange Fire book and conference, and hit me over the head last Fall. To be sure, John probably has no idea that I am one of a handful of graduates from The Master’s Seminary who went to the dark side and am now a charismatic. While doing my due diligence about ten years ago in preparation to preach through Romans 1, I used what I learned at seminary and ended up embracing what I would call a biblical-charismatic theology. Combined with my reformed(ish) theological foundation, my experience in the charismatic is grounded and guided by sola scriptura.

There are many other charismatic friends out there who are also just as biblically grounded. I think we all felt a pretty big knot rising on the top of our head, dizzy with stars, when John hit us all with the Strange Fire phonebook inside his expositional pillow. And it still hurts. But love doesn’t keep a record of other people’s offenses, so forgiveness has won the day. He’s my grandfather in the faith, after all. I mean, how can a guy be mad at grandpa? Even if he does floor you with a knock-out swing.