welcome back to pneumatology in this brief lecture i just want to give you a little bit of some insight that i have gleaned from my own studies and maybe a survey of the landscape as it currently stands and then um we'll take together all of the things that you've been learning from me and dr william in our in our time together when we see one another which i'm looking forward to um intersection with dr william you learned about the history of the movements of the holy spirit and the purpose of that was to deal with the sometimes believed idea that exists amongst pentecostals mostly that the holy spirit like did stuff for a couple hundred years and then did nothing and then showed up again in uh in azusa street that's obviously not true and so one of the things i wanted to show you is the historic patterns of the way the holy spirit has been moving so that you might more accurately judge what you see today the second part of what we've done is we've done some theological work now um the heavy list lifting of systematic theology is going to be done in an actual systematic theology class so what i showed you there was actually a lot of the outcome of my own phd research that has to do with the role of the holy spirit and here's why i did it that way i am developing this christotelic pneumatology because i live in two different worlds on the one hand i live in like the reformed academic theological world and then on the other hand i live in the missional pentecostal charismatic let's go do some amazing things for jesus world most people don't live in both those worlds and there's a reason for that it's because they don't talk very well together over here we talk in the language of experience which often is not in nicely cut out theological categories and over here we tend to talk about language of research and theological categories and creeds which does not nicely map onto present experience all of the time and so very often the conversation breaks down between these two groups along the lines of the gifts of the holy spirit particularly like the revelatory gifts and so historically we've come to that conversation because of how we got to modern day pentecostalism which grew out of the holiness tradition which grew out of wesleyanism which grew out of you know et cetera et cetera so i wanted to take a fresh look by ignoring the question about the spiritual gifts you know the supernatural stuff and simply asking a different question if jesus is the perfect version of what it means to be human then what was the perfect version of what it means for the holy spirit to work in that human and that's why i took the approach that i did i wanted to see what the holy spirit may have been doing in adam and how he failed what the holy spirit was doing in jesus such that he could succeed and what the bible has to say about the holy spirit's work in the early church and what i've discovered is working along those lines actually creates a place of unity a bridgehead between this world and this world which is nice because that means i can talk more freely in both these worlds so you might think well that was very selfish of you adam to do all this research just for yourself well it wasn't just for me i've also noticed that as our movement has grown there are some people who are more inclined to live over here in the theological biblical studies technicality world and they tend to be our teachers and then there are others over here that tend to walk into rooms and crazy amazing spiritual stuff happens and these two kinds of people tend to really frustrate each other because they can't talk very well together so i wanted to develop a way of looking at the holy spirit where we could both come together and go whoa what were the holy cow awesome crazy great cool amazing things that the holy spirit was doing in jesus and what can we learn about that about how what we should expect him to do in us and create a bridge of language and a bridge set of ideas through what i'm loosely calling a christotelic pneumatology or a study or an understanding of the holy spirit that is designed to get us both toward jesus so hopefully that's coming to you as a gift hopefully that's come to you as something that you found refreshing now i say all that to review just a little bit of what we have done in light of what we will be doing where you live no doubt there are some really amazing things happening in the holy spirit doing all kinds of stuff and also there are some counterfeit things there are some things that look like the holy spirit and sound like the holy spirit but they really aren't the holy spirit how are we to judge those things well over here we tend to undervalue experience and just say well if it doesn't fit neatly into my category it probably isn't god and over here we tend to overvalue experience and say well amazing things happen that must have been god but we can't do either of those things we don't have the luxury of being that lazy if we really are going to take our mission seriously planting christ-centered spirit-empowered socially responsible churches and ministries in every nation then we have to develop a way of understanding what the bible says about the holy spirit more robustly and understanding our experience more faithfully so that when we come to certain movements of the holy spirit we can begin to understand them and apply what is helpful and maybe help our brothers and sisters in what is not a perfect example of that in my own nation has been the the rise and somewhat fall of the church called bethel reading now at first glance seems like a cool pentecostal church where people seem to get healed that's awesome but when you hear some of their teachers talk oh boy they say some things like you know god always only ever wants to heal you and if he didn't heal you it's probably because you lacked faith and they and then they tend to do some things and as time has come come along some of their practices have come out as sounding more more pagan in some ways than than um than biblical now i'm not here to attack them the bible says that we should love others love is patient kind it hopes the best it believes the best i i hope that everything that happens at bethel reading is awesome i'm using them as an example to say here came this church on the scene of the like american christianity and these people more or less entirely rejected it and these people more or less entirely accepted it but the reality is just a little bit more nuanced some of what they were doing was great some of what they've been doing is terrible and if we don't have these language of practice and the language of theology speaking together we won't be able to judge such things well i want you to be able to do that in your own nation in your own context if you're not in america it doesn't really matter about you know this particular controversy but i guarantee you that there are things going on in nigeria or in south africa or in southeast asia that are similar but a little different and i want to equip and empower you with the tools to be able to see those things and understand them and apply what is helpful and disregard what is not all the while holding the law of love together so when we come together one of the things that i'm going to hope that you're able to do is come just ready to discuss maybe one of those controversies around the holy spirit in your particular nation or context and maybe how you're thinking about it in light of what you've learned and what you've read and then we're also going to hear a little bit from some of our prophetic leaders in every nation about their own experience with the holy spirit from particularly people who are really good at having both sides of this of their minds talk to one another but the theological side and the experiential side so that's a little bit of the layout a little bit of what we've been doing in this cristotellic rheumatology and a little bit of an update to this point as you prepare to come together there it is [Music]