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Craig L's Blog

Commonplace Holiness

Tag: community

  • The Infrastructure of the Wesleyan Revival

    The Infrastructure of the Wesleyan Revival

    John Wesley (1703 –1791) preaching outdoors

    The original Methodist revival was a movement intended to produce “real Christians,” that is, Christians who would actually live out the faith they professed. In my opinion: we are in desperate need of such a thing today.

    In the Methodist revival, the means used to achieve this goal were:

    1. a message of experienced religion & holiness which drew heavily from the Bible,
    2. large praise and preaching gatherings (the Societies),
    3. small accountability groups (the classes, bands & select societies),
    4. works of service and mercy (generally: addressing the needs of the poor or imprisoned).

    This was not intended to produce “Church Growth” or some such thing, it was intended to produce Christians who visibly and noticeably loved God with all their heart, mind, soul and strength and their neighbors as themselves. What can be learned by this evangelistic & discipleship strategy for our day?

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  • Holy Spirit, Self-Transcendence, Community

    Holy Spirit, Self-Transcendence, Community

    The following conception of the Spirit’s relation to the human person and to human community rings true for me.

    Pannenberg sees in the heightened exocentric capability of humans the basis for their uniqueness from other animal forms. In the being-with-others that characterizes their existence, they are able to transcend themselves — to look back on themselves again — and thereby to develop self-consciousness. This exocentrically based development of self-consciousness indicates [this] to him as well as the connection between humans and Spirit. Pannenberg credits the self-transcendence required for this process to the action of the Spirit, who lifts humans above themselves, so that when they are ecstatically with others they are themselves. For this reason self-transcendence cannot be accomplished by the subject itself. Rather, all knowing is possible only through the Spirit. By extension, the same ecstatic working of the Spirit found in the individual is the basis for the building of community. In fact, community is always an experience brought by the Spirit, who lifts one above oneself.

     — Stanley J. Grenz, Reason for Hope: The Systematic Theology of Wolfhart Pannenberg (1989).

    I expect worship to be an experience that lifts me out of my pre-occupation with myself.

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