Paul Bickley Theos The Hundred: What Can Cricket Teach Religion?
Surviving Church Bleeding for Jesus. Martin Sewell reflects
Psephizo What does charismatic renewal bring to the Church?
Ian Paul interviews Christopher Landau, the new Director of ReSource.
Calling “The Hundred” a fresh expression of cricket puts it in a whole new light!
re the article on Psephizo’s blog; those of us whose lives were transformed by the earlier charismatic movement that spread in the1960s through the Anglican and Roman Catholic Churches around the world through the inspiration of people like Fr Dennis Bennett, an English-born T.E.C. priest in Cailfornia – can attest to the power that was released from that event; which was described in his seminal book: ‘Nine’Clock in The Morning’. Bennett was a leading figure in the Charismatic Movement within the Christian church. After proclaiming on April 3, 1960 from the pulpit that he had received what he called ‘Baptism in the… Read more »
Reading ‘Nine O’Clock in the Morning’ was one of the most important of my steps to personal faith as a young teenager.
I agree. I first experienced the baptism with the Holy Spirit in the months after born-again encounter with Jesus in 1989 following a serious car crash in the Scottish Highlands. Seeking prayer for the fear I had of getting back in a car, members of the Kilmartin Fellowship laid hands on me and I found myself speaking in tongues. That has been part of my Christian way of life ever since. I have described it all here In the years that followed I came across ‘Nine O’Clock in the Morning’ which was really encouraging. I also remember Colin Urquhart’s book… Read more »
Thanks for that, Susannah! When I look back on my early days of faith in the 1970s, I remember lovely home groups with open prayer and Bible study and singing simple songs and laying on of hands for blessing and healing. The group I attended met on Thursday nights, and I can distinctly remember sitting in school on a Thursday morning and being excited about what was coming up that night. I knew I was going to experience the touch of God in a tangible way! I remember the sense of relaxation and informality in the context of the Sunday… Read more »
Thank you for these fascinating comments. It’s so interesting to me that ‘Nine O’Clock in the Morning’ and ‘When the Spirit Comes’ are both mentioned – where the Holy Spirit was seen moving in liturgical/’traditional’ contexts. I think there’s plenty of space in the church for that to happen again today…
Hi Chris. I am aware of healings taking place and the gift of tongues being given at the receipt of the sacrament. I also think that the Spirit has breathed into the liturgy, and that wherever the sacrament is celebrated ‘The Lord is here’ and ‘His Spirit is with us.’ In a sense isn’t the liturgy necessarily ‘charismatic’ in its origin? (Odo Cassel etc)
Thank you. This is close to my story too and heart warming. As already noted, the movement was introduced into the UK Anglican church life via a sacramental, Anglo Catholic theology. The first tape of worship songs I bought was basically a folk setting of the eucharist. More recent expressions have been strongly shaped by American evangelical/revivalist traditions (eg John Wimber). That too has brought significant gifts. But I miss the more integrated, sacramental expressions which marked its beginnings. These days I still pray in tongues in private prayer though I am rarely in churches which would even know what… Read more »
One correction: the events I described were in 1979, not 1989 (typing too fast!).
I would echo much of what others have said, but my introduction to the charismatic movement came in the USA in 1971. I was in my final year of high school and disenchanted with the various brands of Christianity I’d encountered up to that point. Then the Jesus Movement started making the news – a psychedelic picture of Jesus appeared on the front cover of Time. At the same time my Uncle Reg, who worked for Christian Literature Crusade, was sending us books like ‘They Speak with Other Tongues ‘by John Sherrill and ‘Nine O’clock in the Morning’. I had… Read more »
So many commonalities here, Janet! The Jesus Movement (which in early 70s UK was largely filtered to us through ‘Buzz’ Magazine – in whose pages I first read about Larry Norman and Randy Stonehill!) was really influential on me, too.
What many post-millennial Christans may not understand about the 1960s eruption of the Charismatic Movement is that it received its greatest impetus from Pope John XXIII’s calling of the Second Vatican Council in the Roman Catholic Church. The beginning of this epochal decade in the history of the modern movement was NOT an initiative of the Evangelical or Pentecostal Churches, although people from the more Protestant church communities were drawn into the renewal. Its Catholic origins, may explain why its impetus was more towards the raising up of a robust Catholic-oriented spirituality with a strong emphasis on the Sacraments of… Read more »
That’s really interesting, but it doesn’t reflect at all my experience of the early Charismatic Movement in the USA. There it began in Pentecostal and what we in the UK call nonconformist churches; its roots were in the Azusa Street Revival of 1921. From these beginnings it spread to mainline denominations including Episcopalian and RC ones. But I would argue it wasn’t the ‘initiative’ of any church, but of the Holy Spirit herself. Having said all that, the first book I read after being ‘filled with the Spirit’ was the selected correspondence of St. Bernard of Clairvaux. I have no… Read more »
The common denominator here, Janet – in the experience of all of us at the time – was the sovereign work of the Holy Spirit. However, for me it was important to know that it was actually happening in the wider Catholic Church for me to accept its validity. Although, in New Zealand, perhaps because of our distance from the renewal in Europe and the U.S., the Roman Catholic renewal followed that of us Anglicans..
Yes, I think what mattered for all of us was that it was happening in all kinds of churches, including our own. The Holy Spirit doesn’t discriminate or have favourites.
And what I remember was that there was a lovely time of the battle lines and doctrinal disputes being set aside for a while. The common experience of the Holy Spirit seemed to be enough for us to recognize each other simply as fellow Christians and rejoice that God was bringing us together.
Yes, I feel very privileged to have experienced it.
This was my experience as well – the Holy Spirit at work in charismatic renewal in our local Roman Catholic church, in Baptist church, in my Highland house church, and in the Anglican church I joined when I moved south of the border.
It was a very gentle movement back then. It just seemed to be breaking out where the Spirit willed. Like others have said, it seemed a treasured time.