Four purpose statements of Perichorus:
1. A call for true Pentecostal revival.
2. Visioning a new kind of Pentecostal church for the postmodern world.
3. Conceptualising Pentecostal ethos through postmodern paradigms.
4. Encountering Jesus as the Baptiser in the Spirit.
Encountering Jesus as the Baptiser in the Spirit.
Finally, I am envisioning a church where we preach through word and deed, the full gospel of Jesus our Saviour, Baptiser, Healer and Coming King. This a church where we are fanning into flame the fires of Pentecost.
This means that the baptism in the Holy Spirit, lies at the centre of life in Christ. Through the baptism in the Holy Spirit, what Jesus first began to do and teach, He now continues to do through the Church when He pours out His Spirit upon us.
In the pluralistic culture of the Church world today, with its attendant marketplace of competing doctrines readily and popularly available through the both hard and soft copy, the definitive contours of Classic Pentecost are often blurred. Yet amongst the interpretive communities within Scripture, there is also all through the Bible a tradition of the Spirit’s vocational-prophetic anointing that finds its fullest expression- as we Pentecostals often agree on, in Luke-Acts.
For at the centre of the prophetic ethos which God has entrusted to Classic Pentecostalism, is the movement’s distinctive doctrine and experience of Spirit-baptism, experientially signified by the phenomena of speaking in tongues. This baptism in the Spirit is not a one-time, past event, but an ongoing encounter with Jesus, the Baptiser in the Spirit.
Historically, we have called this tarrying before the Lord. We can keep on seeking from Jesus, a fresh baptism in the Holy Spirit. This promised life of encounter through seeking after the Baptiser, is the climax to the biblical tradition regarding the vocational anointing of the Holy Spirit. A Pentecostal church ought to be especially informed by all the biblical symbols and metaphors of the Spirit’s presence, and that while we live in the Age of the Spirit, we need to seek a continual drinking of the Spirit.
A genuine and authentic Pentecostal ethos will indeed therefore manifest an “ethos of radical difference; a “radical alternative,” “to the prevailing consensus of the day,” arising from “an apocalyptic re-evaluation of everything” that had been taken for granted prior to encountering Jesus as the baptiser in the Holy Spirit.
Through the baptism in the Holy Spirit, we take a radical step into Jesus’ life-story, whereby God is further re-creating and restoring us into His likeness. Through Spirit-baptism we are thus experientially baptised into the biblical story. This story has the power to script to our own life story, as a people delivered out of Egypt, journeying now through this present age by the Spirit’s presence, as we march to a new world order, the Zion of God, where justice will roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.
It is through each new shattering experience of Spirit-baptism, that our Lord Jesus Christ disciples us through radical and new re-evaluations of so much we take for granted. Filled with the Spirit of prophesy, we become more attuned with God’s dream for the full manifestation of His Kingdom throughout all creation. Jesus empowers us to question the prevailing consensus, and prophetically proclaim through word and deed, a new future for the world around us.
Monte Lee Rice (© copyright September 2008)
Very refreshing site. As a Classical Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada pastor i am concerned about the decrease of “pentecostal” distinctives in our churchs today; including my own. Problem is
that instead of waiting for the genuine movement of the Holy Spirit, so many have settled for the abundant couterfeits and the Holy Spirit is grieved. We need to wait on God “tarry in the upper room” and we will have our SUDDENLY…they were all filled experience..james