Pentecostal Reality Construction

An Inseparable Trinity

Modernization where secular replaces sacred lenses

Secularization provides alternative “prime movers.”

Reason is the queen and science her handmaiden

The Dilemma of Modernity

The inseparable trinity creates an iron cage in capable of providing individuals with meaningful social confirmation of their sense of reality

An Anthropological Protest Against Modernity

“A celebration in our generation that God has not forgotten His promises, that he is, in fact and deed, a loving God, totally committed to work in evidential ways through the lives of those committed to him.”

Richard Quebedeaux

The Construction of Charismatic Reality

Affective action replaces rational action

Encounter of reality is the initial framework or builder for constructing a worldview.

Left brain rationality is countered with right brain affections

“Once I was blind, but now I see” is central not peripheral.

Affective Action Yields a Worldview

Where it is central (normal) to experience the sacred in the midst of a profane world

Where it is central (normal) to expect divine guidance for personal and institutional guidance

Adaptive structures that refuse to immortalize tradition and the past

Personal participation by a majority of adherents in the “charismata”—catalyzing force of the movement.

Poloma’s Charex Index

Pentecostal-Charismatic Reality Construction as seen: Frequency of praying in tongues Receiving definite answers to prayer requests Divine inspiration to perform specific actions Giving prophecies at church services Giving prophecies privately to another person Being slain in the Spirit Receiving personal confirmation of Scriptural truth An anomaly that is helpful (p. 29) Positive relationship between education and the

Charex Index

The Crossroads

Transcendency depravation vs. the iron cage

Pentecostal identity is linked to what shapes the framework of its worldview The world view’s mantra:

It is not by might…

Ye shall receive power…

The Assumptions in Conflict

Secularization is inevitable Vibrant religious experience is inevitably

routinized by secular (non-divine) explanations of life

But re-sacralization is just as inevitable As religious vibrancy dims spiritual

hunger naturally arises

Charisma and Institutional Dilemmas

Thomas O’Dea Institutional Dilemmas The tendency for religious groups to move

from a prophetic to priestly stance

From a free flow of charismata to its routinization

The Dilemma of Mixed Motivation

From empowered call to professional career

Original motivation loses out to needs for prestige, drive for power and control

Drive for respectability and order

Case Study of professionalization of clergy and the role of women

The Dilemma of Administrative Order

The tendency of a structure to over-elaborate itself and make the organization an unwieldy machine

Case Study—the role of pastors navigating denominational structure and local church autonomy

Dilemma of Power

A temptation to compromise the “potential for influence”

A subtle temptation for religious leaders to avail themselves of close relation between religion and general cultural values in order to reinforce the position of religion itself

Accommodation and acculturation results

Case Study

When a religious organization becomes institutionalized and accommodates itself to the society and its values, faith is supplemented by public opinion and current ideas of respectability.

The Dilemma of Delimitation

There is a pit on either side of the charismatic road. One waters down the original message

and the other has a rigid position that kills the Spirit.

Case Study—is the pastor’s struggle to embody the tension between charisma and institutionalization?

The Dilemma of Symbols

The problem of trying to objectify the original charismatic moment in stable forms and procedures without routinization

Case Studies Praise and worshipGlossolalia in corporate worship Prophecy in corporate worship Preachers as prophets Altar services Testimony and witness

A Prognosis by Poloma

Social Functions of Conflict Positive if it does not question the basis of

relationship Negative if it attacks a core value

Question: Does the rapid growth of a movement and its institutionally “unconverted converts” create a threat or a new infusion of life?

Charisma and Dogma

A danger that the rigidity of fundamentalism will overpower the empowerment of charisma

The lack of theological critique of foundation which acknowledges the way Pentecostal identity has been shaped.

The creation of a “this is that” theology

Charisma Vs. Pragmatism

Does the success of growth, left uncritiqued, inevitably lead to institutional processes that can guarantee success in a less messy way?

The Ideal Real Gap

Accommodation wears away at the ideal, shifting Pentecostal ideology closer to modernity

The religious rhetoric of the ideal remains, but its context is diminished.

Wheat and Tares

An ambiguity difficult to navigate as the dilemmas become more obvious

But to abandon dogmatism for relativism, the supernatural for the natural, the ideal for real, or ambiguity for rigidity would destroy the distinctive identity of Pentecostal ideology

The Key Player

The guardians of charisma are not so much the upper-echelon leaders of a denomination as local congregations headed by charismatic pastors.

Look to Pentecost as an Historical Event for Biblical

Insight into Pentecostal Identity

Pentecost Serves as a Compass:

Theologically—it orients us to the inner logic of God’s incarnational manifestation in the world through Jesus Christ

Experientially—it orients us to the eschatological vision of redemption for the world through Christ’s presence and coming

Theologically—the Holy Spirit reveals to us the inner life of God the Father of Jesus and Jesus as the Son of the Father To receive the Spirit is to receive the mind

of Christ (1 Cor. 1:10, 16)Experientially—Pentecost is the

beginning point for our own relationship with God through Christ, for apart from the Spirit, we are alienated from the life of God (Rom. 8:9)

Pentecost Serves as a Compass:

Harry Boer—Reformed Theologian

Pentecost not the Great Commission was a conscious ingredient in the mission thinking of the Early Church

The mission imperative of the church is not centered on obedience to the Great Commission but on the empowerment of Pentecost.

The nature of the church is a continuation of the mission of Christ through the power of the Spirit.

The Great Commission becomes a command that is heard by the church already empowered by the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.

Pentecost Determines the Nature of the Church

When the Spirit poured out at Pentecost is directly related to the Spirit of the resurrected Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, Pentecost forms the basis for the nature of the Church.