I remember listening to a lecture years ago by Eugene Peterson, translator of The Message and pastor of many years, in which he referred to his childhood church as “sectarian.”
Peterson, in his adult life, was a Presbyterian minister. He was, and remains, a significant influence over me and many others. He made being a thoughtful, slow, bookish, small church pastor okay (even, arguably, “cool”) in an age when the megachurch CEO and church growth guru were the definitions of a successful pastor in our culture (something that, praise Jesus, seems to be no longer the case). For this alone, may God bless Eugene Peterson! But I knew that Peterson had grown up in a Pentecostal church, and later learned it was in fact an Assemblies of God congregation. And even at the time, when I was trying to darnedest to pursue AG credentials with a good conscience (theology nerd that I was, and am), his offhand comment about his childhood church seemed unkind.
If you are familiar with Peterson and his writing, you know he tended to share a quaintly appreciative yet generally low view of his childhood church. He, particularly, seems never to have had a pastor worthy of the title. This may or may not be true and fair. But I remember wincing at his articulation of his childhood church as “sectarian.” It was a dismissal, a waving of the hand, at the church in which he was nurtured in the faith. It was the act of a quintessential modern–for Peterson, of a quintessential baby boomer: “I love mom and dad, but man they don’t get it.” (Take this as a figure of speech. Peterson always spoke very highly of his parents, particularly of his mother.)
It would, of course, be silly to deny that the average Pentecostal church in America today arguably functions like a sectarian church. Independent. Low church. Biblicist. Anti-authoritarian (other than the pastor, who may function like a miniature pope). Often anti-education. And so on. But how we feel about ourselves, and what we are, are different things. Pentecostals are sectarian the same way Martin Luther stopped being Roman Catholic. Luther didn’t leave. He was kicked out. Similarly, however independent the early Pentecostals quickly became, they started out as Methodists, Baptists, Episcopalians, and Presbyterians. They gathered in pursuit of the New Testament gift of the Spirit. Their gatherings transcended denomination and race. They were ecumenical before it was cool–for a few brief moments, at least. And their respective denominations, in large measure, showed them the door. They were branded Montanists, heretics, enthusiasts, and demon-possessed. But they did not set out to start, and never considered their gatherings and denominations to be, a new church or “the true church.”
History, of course, has a way of moving on. And I am not the person to lay it all out. But this history, to me, places us Pentecostals well within our rights to explore the Great Tradition of the church while remaining unashamedly Pentecostal and even independent.
If you have been reading me for any length of time, you know that I have been enjoying plundering the Lutherans. And I have been plundering the Reformation in general for quite a long time. For years I felt guilty, like this was a form of having my cake and eating it, too. I tended not to read a lot of Pentecostal writers at the time. Was I cheating on my denomination? Was I Pentecostal on paper but something else in actual practice? These were real questions for me. But as time has gone on, and as I have learned a bit more about the history of our own movement, the more I have come to realize that the traditions which make up the Tradition are ours as much as anyone else’s. Our denominations (or whatever we want to call them) may exist because of a combination of church conflict and independent ministers and missionaries needing a group to call home, but our roots are still in the churches of the Reformation (whose churches exist for the same reason). Which means our roots are still in the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church.
One great example of incorporating the larger Christian tradition into our Pentecostal churches is Joseph M. Lear’s recent little book, Resurrecting Worship: A Pentecostal Liturgy for Slow Burn Revival.
Written primarily for other Pentecostal church leaders, Lear shows how he and his fellow pastor (who has since taken over lead pastor responsibilities) revitalized a small multi-ethnic church in Iowa City, IA using the accumulated pastoral wisdom of the historic Christian church. By centering the life of the church around its Sunday liturgy, Lear and his colleague (Pastor Abby Anderson) have given their congregation a new depth in their experience of God and their relationship to one another, without over-intellectualizing the faith or squashing the freedom of God’s Spirit to move in their services. They have, much like my church has done in its own services, centered their gatherings around the communion meal, or Eucharist. They have incorporated moments of corporate confession and prayer adapted from the Book of Common Prayer. And they have found a unique and creative way of incorporating the recitation of the Creed into worship in a way that best serves the educational and intellectual needs of their people.
A cynical read on such efforts would be say, “Look. The Pentecostals are cosplaying Anglicans!” And most confessional, liturgical traditions would still call their gatherings inadequate, given Resurrection Assembly’s failure to be in communion with Rome, Constantinople, Canterbury, or some conservative bishop in the U.S. or Africa. Pentecostals are still “free church” Christians, especially those of us with more Baptistic roots such as in the Assemblies of God. And, as free church Pentecostals, no one congregation can impose its church order on another. But for those of us who want to remain committed to our Pentecostal faith and fellowships, but who desire (rightly, I think) to connect our gatherings’ theology and life more deeply and honestly with the Great Tradition of the Christian church, Lear’s book is a great place to start.
Mikael Ivaska 