[Music] hey everyone a number of years ago when I was doing graduate work at the University of Birmingham not Birmingham I was exploring many of the topics that went on to form the ideas in my dissertation essentially I made an argument that the vinyard movement which has historically been influenced by a lowercase e evangelical and lowercase C charismatic traditions should incorporate and lean into sacramental theology and while I was reading and engaging with all these various theologians that I was just really enjoy and I stumbled upon an article in the new maternal by a theologian by the name of Chris II W Greene and the title of that article was then their eyes were opened Pentecostal reflections on the church's scripture and the Lord's Supper the article was super formative for me and I'm really excited to have my friend Chris on this episode of the sacramental charismatic so Chris we are so glad you here welcome welcome thank you man I'm excited about it it's been good to to know you over the years and your work and excited about the conversation yeah I'm you know we've done I guess this will be our second podcast the first one we danced around sacramentality but we talked a lot about art and also a lot of racial reconciliation ethnic reconciliation which you've been a huge influence in my life on so yeah it's fun so let's mean fun we're gonna talk about sacramentality but before we do that I'd love to just kind of hear you know how you're doing what you're up to kovat 19s going on you know the world is a crazy place you know from two months ago so what's going on your life yeah so I know you know this but I just found out on Monday couple days ago that my contract won't be renewed when it's up in June June 30th and it won't be renewed for the fall which you know caught us off guard of course now I wasn't prepared prepared for that again that's not quite true I think I was we prepared it in ways I didn't know but still surprised by it and that's put us into a scramble mode my wife we have three kids and my wife and I are moving as quickly as we can to kind of get our house on the market and and I'm talking to everybody I can talk to you about a job for the hall and I have a few leads I mean and I feel pretty confident that I at least will be able to land some adjunct work if nothing if nothing else but we'll see kinda how that shakes out so it's you know we're not we're not exactly I think I was in shock for the first hour or two maybe maybe a little longer I think I've got my head around it now but obviously still still a surprise and it's it's put a lot of pressure on us to figure something out really quickly yeah yeah I was I mean as I was sharing over there just it was you know pretty shocking Tim for me because when I think about like you know the who's who of Pentecostal scholars out there doing global global you know an influential work you're you're one of the top top people out there so I'm confident you know you're gonna end up being able to continue doing lots of cool God's work but yeah it's still like oh man in fact I really wish that I had an extra two million dollars in our church's budget just to hire a theologian in residence and and have you come out here because that we could do podcasts live whenever the wine actually yeah if money a few million dollars falls in your lap think of me you'll be the first you'll just so you know listen you know I guess if you wouldn't mind you know I'm thinking of this essay because you know it really does a good job of I think showing and demonstrating why the Eucharist or communion or the Lord's Supper why that is such an important aspect of worship and not just worship but it's also a formative practice or rhythm or habit that is shaping churches you know and but it gets like the relationship between the Eucharist and Scripture which I thought was really fascinating because there's obviously been a lot of reflection on on Luke 24 in the road to Emmaus and you know I know that there's a there's a number of theologians NT right I know has talked about this and de nordland has talked about the relationship between Luke 24 and the can achill relationship to Genesis chapter 3 but you just talk about this really beautiful relationship between Eucharist and scriptures so if you wouldn't mind for our listeners like give us the argument I know is written in 2013 you probably have you know moved on from any of those things but like summarize it for us for our listeners yeah so I you know it's been here since I've read the article so I'm gonna say what I think I said and you correct me if I've gotten it wrong I should say the backstory on that is I was really really still pretty early in my career and I was at that time pastoring the church in Oklahoma City and I had a mentor who had told me I should make the Lord supper the focus of my ultracal every service so do it was a PT was a Pentecostal minister and he said I think you could you know make your altar call but make your altar call impart a call to the table and that was when I was in no way prepared for that like I had know that I grew up in a Pentecostal church where we get in communion once a year and it was all risk and no reward right we believed that if you took it unworthily if you cook it with sin and your life you could die there was no like sacramental grace right it was just a thread of death and even as a kid I mean I could do that cost-benefit analysis like there's nothing to gain and everything to lose like why in the world God do it anyway it's just the the the old supper had been no part of my spirituality not really and then for him to say that I'm not sure why I took his advice but I did and a man had changed my life it absolutely changed my life and not long after that I started the ph.d program and this is what I ended up writing about which eventually led to a book but while I was moving to weekly communion I decided you know what I have to preach about this now I think what am i what am I gonna say and Luke 24 was the way in for me it was for lots of reasons I think as a Pentecostal you know the focus on the experience of God the encounter with God and that's what Luke 24 is about but it's it's an inversion of almost everything I thought encounter with God was like you know there with Jesus but they don't know they're with Jesus like he is he's with them and and yet they have no sense of that and one of the things that really got me was that he taught them everything the scriptures say about himself and they still don't see him and something about that impressed me because it would this reality that there's something about the Bible alone even when Jesus is a teacher that doesn't in itself open eyes you know that they here's Jesus teaching them everything about himself and he remains a stranger to them it's not until after their eyes are opened at the supper that they realize ah this is who this is who was talking with us and and this is why we felt what we were feeling but didn't know what to make of it and something about that story just captured me write that here is this is why it's important that we come to the table every week to have our to have our eyes open to the story of the brokenness of Jesus his broken body and his shed blood and one of the things the mentor had said to me was whatever you're preaching about if you can't transition from that to the story of the Cross it isn't a gospel message yeah that's right and so he was essentially urging me to think about communion as the tether for my preaching right like this is let this pull you back to what what's essential and it did do that but it did a lot more than that too right I mean it started it quick quickly revolutionized everything for me it started there but I didn't end there yeah that's that's really powerful yeah I mean I like to think about how the Eucharist it does so many things you know like when I was growing up real similar to you communion was like never a celebration first of all if you smile you've probably come really close to it you know like you're about to get you're about to get cosmic killjoy God throwing down lightning bolts on you but I remember when I started you know reading scripture more and and thinking a little bit more about about what was happening in the context of the Eucharist I you know obviously there's an emphasis on the cross the you know forgiveness there's I think it's really interesting how Paul has an emphasis on social justice in 1st Corinthians 11 right like make sure that everybody is able to receive you know grace and then I thought it was really fascinating that you see this this opportunity to recenter in reorient our lives around around the story of Jesus and the kingdom and you know and the sacrificial nature of Jesus and yeah there's a lot of really cool things there so did you find you know when we when we transition so I had we have the same experience you know I had been pastoring a vineyard church for about 11 years we did weekly weekly Eucharist got you know it's part of our worship service we were in a highly catholic highly Lutheran context so it was not and it was not a hard sell because everybody was like wait churches don't do that it was like really what so it was not it was almost like you had to do it you had to do it weekly a to be taken seriously and then also as a missional thing to in an in addition to the formative aspect of it but moving to California I started you know pastoring a church context where it was kind of irregular I mean once a year or twice a year and what I found was there was some pushback you know well why would we do it weekly you know when it's it's gonna minimize the the value of the Eucharist and things like that so I guess you know help us make a case you know I cuz I'm already with you obviously you know make a case for a weekly weekly sacramental theology being embodied in the practice of the Eucharist yeah I mean I think maybe the best places to start with the way that practice changed me I mean I think there are lots of ways in which you know again when I started I was just simply thinking of it for its kind of its power or to remind us of the story right so it's still a very memorial istic notion it was still very much about the reason the Supper is important is that it reminds us of the story that matters which is true I think I just think that that's that's far from the whole truth right and what started happening really quickly is I started to realize that what's happening in this meal is more than a symbol of other things that have happened but is itself a reality right it is and it's a reality I didn't even know was possible and it impinges on all all other perceptions of reality right and this is part of what I think is going on like in that Luke 24 story in that there with Jesus but they don't really know what's going on they don't know it's him and and it's when their eyes are open right that he disappears from their sight and yet they become most completely like him and it took me a long time to kind of figure out all the theological and I still course haven't but I mean it started before I started to realize all of the possible theological implications of believing in Sacrament and what that does to the way the world works right so I I think that in our tradition people who grow up like you and I have grown up we we tend to think about when we come to the Lord's Supper we tend to be drawn the two aspects of the one is the narrative that I've already mentioned the other is the experiential aspect right and when I did my PhD work and started reading early Pentecostal stories and realized how central the Lord's Supper was to their spirituality which we may want to talk about today because that totally took me by surprise too but one of the things that that they emphasize right is that the Lord meets us here at the table right the Lord is present so there's this real emphasis on the experience of God but if you keep pressing and I think both of those things are true let me be clear I think the narrative aspect and the experiential aspect I think are true but if you keep pressing past that deeper into what it means to believe in sacramental presence then everything starts to shift and the way you understand everything it's not necessarily you believe different things but that you believe all the things you already believe but you believe them differently like you hold them you see them in it in a kind of different light and you know I think that's a kind of Copernican shift right when you when you get to the place that you see the world sacramentally it's it's hard to recover from that yeah well do this I think that's a great great spot to maybe have you reflect on a little bit because you know I'm originally I kind of have been brainstorming this idea for this podcast for I mean it's probably been a couple years of in the back of my mind thinking about wanting to really start thinking more intentionally about the you know the wedding of the sacramental and the charismatic traditions and because what I what I found is my my I think we probably both agree on this is like I think that the more charismatic you are or the you know the more Pentecostal or however you want to they're no more numa to logical baba will say that you are it seems like it's such an easy on-ramp into the sacramental stream of Christianity because sacramentality is all it's so rich with Numa two logical implications I guess so there's a lot of people though I know that our tuning in and and keep messaging me asking me like what are you gonna get to like defining what a sacrament is or sacramental theology and sacramentality so I I plan on doing that in a future podcast but I'd love to get you know in your in your like you know in your way of framing the conversation around sacramentality how do you define sacramentality or sacramental theology and then maybe maybe define a sacrament for us in your as you think about those because those are all related but obviously in you know the literature they're used differently sure yeah and obviously this is you know you can spend a lifetime studying these things and and different theologians and different theological traditions use some of the same terms in slightly different ways but but this is the harder that I think a sacrament is a sign that accomplishes what it signifies so water baptism is a sacrament in that the sign is washing in the name of the Father the Son and the Spirit and if it's sacramental what we're saying is that time in that sign being enacted God is doing what the sign suggests right so if the if the sign is washing in the name of God that's in fact what's happening we're being watched by God from our sins right so you know the sacramental view of water baptism is nothing water baptism saves you I mean no one wouldn't think that it's that God works in that act to accomplish what that act signifies right so that he God who alone could do this washes away our sin and at the table the sign is feasting on bread and wine and giving thanks to God and that we trust becomes the body and blood of Christ to us and is not just a sign of those things but is in fact the way in which God is acting bringing about what they signify right so like though in the language of Scripture pulses in 1st Corinthians 10 which is interesting I'm sure you've noticed this yourself but first 15:11 dominates Pentecostal historically has dominated Pentecostal reflection on the Eucharist and that's problematic because it's not the only text even in first Corinthians several other really important texts in Corinthians and one of them is first printings 10 where Paul says because there is one lope there is one body and because we all drink in one cup we share and the Lord mm-hmm so I think the way the church traditionally has read him and I think the right way to read it is he's saying listen these signs this bread this cup God is acting in our eating and drinking of those things to bring about what they symbolize to bring about what they signify and so in a sense in a sacrament is a sign that does what it signifies it is of course God is the one acting but yet God accomplishes what it signifies yeah I mean that seems like that's one of the things I mean I think if memory serves me correctly I mean Paul uses Koinonia right there first Corinthians 10 right to describe the the relationship between the the sharing right it's it's a partnership or yeah it's obviously there's more going on than just the symbolic swingley and I guess approach to that yeah that's really helpful so this I'm kind of skipping ahead maybe with this next question but I am kind of curious I saw this meme recently a friend sent me and it was it we laughing because normally memes are just annoying to me but this one was pretty funny it has a picture of of somebody that says Rome and it says we have seven sacraments then it has Presbyterians and says we have two sacraments then it has Lutheran's and it says you guys are counting sacraments and then it has a Baptist and it's what our sacraments and so I always think that's funny because I think when I'm talking to people who are less maybe less influenced by sacramental thinking and reflection it's always the question that comes up well how many sacraments do you believe there are and you know there's a lot of discussion over whether we should use the language of sacrament or ordinances and I don't really care about having that conversation a whole lot because I think it's kind of a you know it's it's framed on an entire different theological framework I guess but I would be curious when you think about the number of sacraments a is that a helpful question to even ask or is there another question and B if you do what what would be your response to that how many sacraments do you think there are well I think it is a helpful question but it's one of those questions that's helpful pretty deep into the conversation not at the beginning of the conversation because I think at least in my experience both passed orally and theologically I found that it you you have to wrestle with these concepts for a long time before you start to even know what you're really saying and you know I think for a long time in fact I would say even when I wrote that paper I still didn't quite get what a sacrament is exactly and how it differs from what I had I mean I think I knew enough to say what I said I think I still agree with what I said but I would just say what I think of now is Sacramento is so much more robust than what I could have thought again right it just takes a long time to grasp the concept right I think this is this is probably too simple but I think I can identify stages and my thought right so I think before our Road template before I had that conversation with my mentor I thought of the Lord's Supper as you know a kind of visual aid to to the gospel you know it's like oh isn't this neat right like juice looks like blood and bread looks like body or something you know mmm and then when I first started thinking about sacramentality I was thinking about how its God is actually doing something God is actually present and active and that was already a major shift right like a major shift for me and then when I started to understand but sacramentality is a way of thinking about how reality works mmm yeah that's an altogether different shift right so I think it's pretty easy for people in our tradition like you made the point about charismatic I think I think that first shift is easy for charismatic to me the idea that God is active I mean yeah works right uh right but then the next step of what that means that God is active in these ways and not just what it means for God but what it means for reality itself the way we engage reality like that takes time and I think that at some point you do get to the question of how many sacraments are there but it needs to come deep enough into the conversation that you kind of know what you're you're saying I'm pretty much in a Lutheran frame here in that I think really there are two fundamental sacraments and then there are sacramental realities that play off of that and we can't number those so yeah baptism and the Lord's Supper absolutely are sacraments those are the you know in the ecumenical conversation there the Gospel sacraments everything else we're going to say from that needs to come back to those realities right so I wouldn't be ready to affirm sacramentality of ordination that ministers are ordained sacramentally but that depends upon the convictions of water baptism in the Lord's Supper right there what we end by sacrament we mean we mean in those yes yeah and that gets difficult because when you get to something like marriage as a sacrament a lot of the rules change in terms of how the term sacrament is is working so it gets really complicated really really quickly but I'm sure I mean I'm answering your question yeah no I I think that's really helpful I don't know if this is the way I've kind of thought about that is I like to use and this is maybe playing on on words a little bit but I like to think of yeah well I would say like when I was writing my dissertation in the midst of you know sacramentality it's like everything sacramental which then brings up you know that if everything sacramental nothing sacraments right but I think I'm at this place yeah where I'd say the to capital s sacraments would be baptism and Eucharist but I like that word sacramental describe to describe I think marriage can be sacramental I think in our in our traditions of the charismatic tradition I mean I think in the in the vineyard movement which you know we're kind of known for our worship I think our theology of worship is very sacramental it is a means of encountering God which I know you know Pentecostals have long believed with that I think laying on of hands you know Dan Tom Berlin's book I think Pentecostal sacraments you know he lays out and I don't think he gets too much into the weeds of sacramental versus sacrament and whatnot but seems like in our traditions there's definitely you know a lot of I guess room for that but I love what you said about how at the end of the day we are I guess in some ways talking about a world worldview you know Hans burrowers must been a huge influence in my thinking about using that word reality to describe the sacramental you know tapestry so to speak you know so no I really I think really yeah I really love that yeah I think it's a again it's hard to it's such a you know I gave a talk a few weeks ago on evil and afterwards this guy caught me and said hey I love that but I don't know that I understood it all can you give me the elevator pitch listen man there there's no elevator pitch for Christian responses and evil right and and I feel the same way about sacraments there's no there's no elevator pitch right I mean the the this is a long conversation that requires a lot of attention and the I think some of us will find our way in via experience I mean I know people who had profound experiences at the sac but in terms of getting your mind around it so that you say it in a meaningful way so what you're saying is intelligible that takes that takes a lot of time and it takes a lot of a lot of reading and and reflection you know so I mean I encourage people but I guess I want to say I want to make a distinction here between the experience I would want people to have in a worship service of the lord's table versus what I think it requires for ministers and theologians to understand what what we're claiming right I don't think everybody in our churches has to go through all this work before they can come to the table rightly I mean it's I totally reject that right I don't I don't at all in fact partly because I am the sacramental Asst I don't believe that it is value is in my understanding of it the Lord's Supper is the Lord's Supper whether I have any idea what's going on or not I don't bring meaning to it by my understanding this is this is what I think is fundamentally wrong with his Memorial ISM the idea that the table means what I bring to it now I think the way I come to it matters but it doesn't make it what it is yeah so for instance someone someone like Thomas Aquinas is really helpful here medieval Catholic theologian mm-hmm in which he talks about how what we our spiritual state when we come to the table does not at all determine whether or not Christ is present but it does show how that presence matters for us and how it yeah how it impacts them my question in relation to that is getting to the issue of open table versus closed table so here's my my experience and then you can tell me why I'm wrong if you disagree you know I found I found myself before I was you know more I would use the word sacramental describe myself charismatic but you know I did my m.div and a reformed environment so I was I knew all about the closed table arguments I remember reading lots of debates that were trying to make it very clear that Judas was not at the Last Supper he you know lots of those and and so I could you know I could lean on first Corinthians 11 pretty well to really think about whether or not you know the table should be open and I knew all about the presbyterian come you know coins that were used to to be given to people who were worthy but I found myself that the more that I became sacramental in in Amen I embraced this worldview that saw things actions activities that were formative were also means of experiencing God's grace God's presence his love the more I started having a challenge with a closed table it's like the more sacramental I became the more of an open table advocate I became because I saw it as a means of encountering Jesus even if it's the first time and then I read I think it's forgotten power by William de Artega who is an Episcopalian I believe an Episcopalian Pentecostal type of thinker and he makes the case for that from the Second Great Awakening you know that that was a prominent feature within their their preaching and whatnot so I'd love to know like what are your thoughts on on open table because I love what you just said Aquinas kind of gets us to this place where we start asking how it's not whether or the Eucharist is shaping us it's how it's impacting us right so what are your thoughts on that yeah a lot of things I'll talk a little bit and you tell me to shut up when when you're ready for me to show up I I think I'm ready I got 30 minutes ready to go I think some of this there's so many factors at play but let's talk about the biblical one first I think one of the problems we have and you've already ended at this a couple of times is that because we're dominated by a certain reading of one text right so we're hyper focused on for instance 11 and we're hyper focused on a particular reading of that passage to because of that kind of hyper focus when most of our churches I think the Lord's Supper is kind of OneNote you know it's a it's a somber reflection on what Christ did for you and how you shouldn't take that lightly or else at least that's my experience so the way 1st Corinthians 11 is read which i think is a miss reading of her strength is 11 but even if it weren't in this reading that's still only one text in the scriptural witness right and as I said already 4 Corinthians 10 verse 20 ins 6 also have things to say about what what's happening at the table but but leave that aside for a moment even if we were to say that Paul's account of the Lord's Supper is primarily about the death of Jesus and primarily about whether or not we are living in sin when we come to the table that's not Luke's focus right so in Luke's name the focus is on the presence of Christ at the table and that the table is the table of the kingdom and which all are welcome right so I say all this to say I think if you start with Paul and especially if you start with that particular reading freshman's 11 then you can get to close table arguments pretty easily but if you start with Luke where there are multiple meals that run through the gospel group and into the book of Acts where you realize that Luke's focused on the Lord's Supper is about the table fellowship of Jesus with sinners that's the whole point Luke is making is that Jesus eats what people he shouldn't eat with and that he welcomes them into his kingdom precisely by welcoming into his table then that changes the conversation yeah automatically yeah it doesn't necessarily determine the outcome but it it makes other conversations possible maybe I'll put it like that and I would argue that there's like yeah isn't that yeah I'm just gonna say you know there's been a lot of books that have focused on the table fellowship of Luke but I'm thinking of one of my one of my favorite bible verses is in Luke chapter 7 where we read that Jesus himself acknowledges that that he came eating and drinking you know like that wasn't that was kind of the orientation of his of his ministry and so like I've always I guess I've always looked at the Gospels I think you're making such a great point so we look at first Corinthians chapter 11 and that's the only isolated text that we use to determine whether or not closed table or open table as our completely ignoring the table fellowship that we have displayed in literally all the Gospels not just Luke right I mean we see Jesus had some peculiar friends you know you hang out with some people that he was not worried about them you know impacting his reputation even though they they would have so that's what I mean so you look at Luke as having a having a particular approach to to the kingdom of God and then a lot more grounded and encountering God yeah well I mean again I think Paul's theology of the Eucharist is different than we think it is but I'm just saying even if we took that assumption mm-hmm it's it's still too narrow yes there's a look there are Lincoln embassies that are that lie elsewhere and I think John has the theology of the Lord's Supper - that's something else altogether in fact I would argue discern multiple theologies of communion in the New Testament yeah absolutely and that we should the church should practice all of them over the course of this to all the reasons I think something like the liturgical year is so important that there are times to be Songer there are times to reflect on our sinfulness and and the fact that we're forgiven but I mean if all we're ever doing is is sobriety and never you know delight in the energy of God something something is deeply metallic and so you know I think yeah even if a church of a charismatic church or Pentecostal church were to kind of shrug off the call to do a liturgical year I think at the very least they should move toward having different dimensions a kind of wider range of effective effectivity and their worship and this is one this is one way to that end right to show that in luton the note the notes are about joy about presence and a radical openness into both there is a lot about I mean he says you know fascinatingly in perspectives at the very beginning of the chapter he said I mean the very beginner book he says I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified yeah and then at the end he tells them and this is how I did that because it's the supper proclaims Christ crucified so there is a way in which I think Paul's emphasis is on the supper as the realization crucifixion of suffering with the Antichrist but that isn't the whole of Scripture right and and and it's true if it is and as important as it is that we never lose touch with that it isn't the only way in which we should be enacting not just the Lord's Supper but our spirituality in general you know and I think the you know in a lot of charismatic churches I think they're more likely to be drawn to the Lucan and the pot line you know a lot of churches are it's the suffering that we're allergic to right so but of course you need some integrate we need some integration of of all of it right it isn't an either/or and it's not something I think we can just decide which we like better you know decide you know what I prefer this to that I mean I think I think it's important that we integrate all of them yeah no III think that's yeah it's in our you know in our little small neck of the woods in the vineyard I I think it was probably five or six years ago I wrote this little booklet that was called come to the table and I it was a seven seven week devotional or seven you know devotional seven stage devotional where I took seven different themes around the Eucharist you know and so forgiveness you have taste and see that the Lord is good yeah good you know social justice I think is there but I also love that because again going back to that um it's interesting how when you look at Isaiah you see when you look when you read the Eucharist and the marriage supper of the Lamb which everybody connects those two you're right like it's interesting how much of an influence Isaiah has on that and there's a huge emphasis on anticipation of this final feast and the consummation of the age and yeah that was like for me that was actually probably the most powerful aspect of developing my Eucharistic theological lean leanings because again you know like I I was really good at at making myself feel really terrible about about myself every time I'd receive Communion as you noted I think it's obviously self reflection is a really good practice because I think in the sacramental tradition obviously there's a very strong connection to spiritual formation and the monastic traditions and whatnot but but I was like really it was it was sad too it took you know 20 plus years to finally understand that the Lord's Supper anticipates a final consummation of the age and even a Luke I mean Luke actually I say Paul and Luke but Paul notes that right there you know we proclaim his death until he comes in one day yeah we're gonna one day we're gonna have a celebration with Jesus and yeah there's a guy that's really good there's an early Pentecostal preacher he was actually an Anglican priest who had a Pentecostal baptism experience while he was presiding in the Eucharist and me he would often preach that his hope was that Christ would come while he was presiding at the Eucharist because he felt like that that was that was the pinnacle of the Christian of Christian worship and so the perfect moment for for Christ to appear but to circle back for just a moment to your claim about open table and closed table I think that I mean I have a lot to say about about that but one thing I want to make sure that I say is any time we start to police who comes into the presence of Jesus something as something is terribly terribly terribly terribly off right I think the only way to talk rightly about closed table quote-unquote is if I'm thinking about my responsibility to other Christians so when I come to the table I'm not only saying something to God I'm saying something to you right I'm saying I belong to the same body that you do and that's I'm bound to you just as tightly as I'm bound to Jesus and that you have every right to call on me when you call on him and I'm being bound to him and to you at the same time and in the same way and and vice versa so if if we're going to talk about a closed table the only sense that makes is we can't have people I can't be the kind of person who comes to the table to be with Jesus but refuses to take responsibility to care for you me right and so you know if I'm a pastor and I know that there's a man in the congregation who's abusing his wife I keep him from the table not because he's unworthy or I'm trying to even works that I'm trying to protect Jesus from him I mean he needs Jesus but we would keep him from the table only so that it's clear to the rest of the community and most of all to his wife that we take seriously the fact that we're bound to her and to him by the meal yeah and you're you're talking about someone who's unrepentant I think yeah yeah because I'm you know that's that's the the we always in our in our Eucharistic aspect of our worship gathering we always you know clarify that this is that this is the meal that Jesus left for his his disciples for his community but we also always say hey but if you want to make a decision today to make a step toward Jesus we we would welcome you to his table because it's not our table it's the Lord's table you know I think it's interesting though how we just kind of had this thought when I talked to other friends who are you know maybe Roman Catholic theologians that are in that tradition you know they have a strong clothes table and I've really often times wondered you know just thinking out loud I'm like you know gosh the more that I saw the Eucharist as a means of grace the more I could not understand how anybody would not want people to experience that grace and I just wonder if sometimes this is maybe the implications of our human fallenness it's almost like you know we put the we put the cart before the horse a bit when it comes to elevating the Eucharist right we elevate it to the point where it becomes more sacred than the one whom we are worshipping or enacting you know and I and I obviously not suggesting any Roman Catholic people listening our worship Chris but there is a sense yeah there is a sense where it's a Miss it's almost like a misplaced value system it's it's overlooking I think the implications of jesus's you know ministry in his in his kingdom and and i think what you said earlier is absolutely true to is it seems like it prioritizes a specific reading of one text and ignores like four gospels church to me are you know like yeah why are we not talking about the way Jesus did this well I think I think though the case to be made here it seems to me is you know do go back first in his 10 write that because there is one low there is one body what's what the reasons are in things eleven takes place is that they're not they fear failing to see that he says you're failing to discern the body and so you are guilty of the body and blood of the Lord and what he seems to be saying is that you don't see each other right way you're mistreating each other yeah which is a sin against Jesus I mean remember this is how Paul came a few things to say about this one is this is how Paul Paul's conversion happened right he's on the way to Damascus we all know the story Jesus appears and what he says to Paul is what what you're doing right you're persecuting me of course Paul hasn't done anything to Jesus right he's done stuff to Steven and a lot of other Christians but he didn't do anything to Jesus but the first word Jesus speaks to Paul is a word that shows him that there is nothing you do to anyone who belongs to Jesus that isn't something you do to Jesus right and that's sacramental that that Jesus life includes our lives and then that's exactly the reality pol is witnessing to which again think about how important this is that when when Paul delivers the gospel to his churches he delivers this message and this is ah this is often missed right so Paul says in Galatians when he tells a story about how he didn't receive the message from any one human being right that he didn't learn anything that's right from the Apostles in Jerusalem that means that impulse testimony when Jesus taught him the gospel Jesus taught him the Lord's Supper ya know I think to me that's like the strongest argument for weekly communion because if Jesus saw that it that that's one of the central things that he had to teach Paul it seems like it's a pretty important important thing because I guess like you say Paul Paul's yeah very clear like I've received from no one else but the Lord I'm from the Lord and this is what he taught me and it yeah it's all embedded in that first word from Jesus to PO what you've done to these people you've done to me and that's why I call it mean concerned with that at the end right at the end of first Corinthians with listen you are sinning against Jesus you are guilty of the bot you're crucifying Jesus when you mistreat one another right yeah I think one thing that's really important for folks in Pentecostal charismatic traditions to understand is that communion is not my private meeting with Jesus right when I come to the table I don't come alone that's right I come with the whole communion of saints and I am being called to belong to them so I do think that you know the idea of keeping anyone from Jesus is obscene right it's blasphemous I do think so we need to make sure that people understand the call to follow Jesus and the call to his table which are the same you know is a call to belong to a people it's a call to belong to people of God and that means in one things that really sickens me about this is that so often we turn these conversations into policing away the the worst people you know the people who are the most unchristian yeah we've got it exactly backwards the people that need to be seriously examining themselves are people like me where people who think of themselves as the ones who have the right right we're the threat yeah we're gonna end up crucifying Jesus again you know and it's a yeah it's so you know for me most of the conversations about closed open table they don't get they don't get deep enough they don't cut deep enough - mm-hmm what's actually taking place at the table and what that means for us together and not just for us and Jesus you know like the you know it's it's binding me to the church to the whole people of God and yeah therefore yeah I mean I could go on forever about that but I think you I think you see what what I'm yeah yeah no I totally yeah it just it's always see me as seemed to me as particularly troubling when the first thing that people want to do is start figuring out who can and cannot receive you know it's like ah I don't know there's a lot of texts and the Gospels about that type of attitude you know no that's that's really you're really helpful I think for you know listeners kind of exploring exploring the relationship between the Spirit and the gospel and gee the life and Ministry of Jesus the kingdom in and the Eucharist which will have to do I you know I'm right now like just starting to really think through a sacramental implication to a charismatic approach to water baptism because I feel like I know I've read a few of the essays that are out there and I'm still like I don't know that's a vineyard move it we keep I'm sorry I mean week well we keep on we keep we keep on joking around about how we need to sometime we need to like finally figure out a theology of baptism you know so I'd love to have you on for that that'd be really fun talk about that as well I have a PhD student Andrew Williams is his name I don't know Dean Oh Andrew I Andrew and I are buddies yeah he's he's going to be on an episode of the charismatic the sacramental charismatic as well yeah just let me work on that there's always writing about yeah and I think it's it's good I mean it's really good work and I think it's a great place for this conversation to start and in some ways end I mean I think he's not only raising important issues he's really showing a way a way to talk about it slowly I think so I can't wait to talk to him about it I mean it's really important work I think and you know one of the key stuff a lot about is the relationship between water baptism and spirit baptism I think that's where some of these most creative work is so be sure be sure to ask me yeah cool I'm gonna have to yeah we were talking about I'd like to have him on because we he and I both share a huge love for Clark Pinnock oh yeah yeah I mean Clark's been oh man I mean super influential flame of love is still like my favorite pneumatology out there I always recommend that to people I'm like if you read anything read this this will help you understand me yeah so I'll have to do that as well yeah well let me let me ask you this last question before I let you go and we'll have to like I said do another one of these and if kovat lasts for longer we've got so much time on our hands to you know just record podcasts thanks but you know you mentioned the Pentecostal history of sacramentality a bit and I remember again mentioning Dan Tom Merlin's book which I've mentioned that on our my first introduction I just said his book was really influential just to discover that there were Pentecostals that were thinking about that subject because at that time I just was unaware of that and then I stumbled upon your work and Ken archers work and a host of other other thinkers I mean I think Ralph del colle a you know has had been doing that for so long but we all were yeah you're when you when you think about the history of Pentecostalism you know which has a rich appreciation for sacramental theology and and then it got steeped in maybe the I'm maybe fundamentalism a bit and it kind of swung into this swingley an approach to to a lot of its theology and practices and now it seems as if almost every younger Pentecostal charismatic theologian I know they're all they're all talking about sacramental theology they're all thinking about how to bill on some of those frameworks existing what's your what are your thoughts about the future like what do you see is the future of Pentecostal sacramentality and is that going to keep on happening growing is there is there a fair amount of pushback from you know the old guard you know just where were your thoughts on that well I think an apostille ism is not a coherent tradition you know there are lots of Pentecostalism lowercase P and petitions yesterday and even within traditions there's no coherent doctrine but I think in general early Pentecostals and here I'm talking about you know early 1900s you know first 20 or 30 years of the 20th century there were a lot of Pentecostals who were still deeply sacramental largely because they were still in touch with the Wesleyan tradition not only because of that but largely meaning that they were still in touch with even with Wesleyan sacramentality and the sacraments of course are right at the heart of Wesleyan spirituality and I mean I have a hundred pages of the book devoted to just example after example after example of the example of early Picasso's who reaffirmed that not only about the Lord's Supper although that's primarily where it is but also about foot washing water baptism and laying on of hands for healing and anointing with oil and so you know one of things when I started the PhD work would never believe what was actually there in the material and mostly what I was dealing with were early Pentecostal periodicals so a lot of these early kind of hostile revivals churches and and then denominations they had their own newsletter and they would be anywhere from Q to 16 pages long they would come out once a week or once a month or randomly some of them had a huge worldwide leadership readership and some of them you know nobody read them and it's everything you can imagine a lot of it's a lot of its testimony a lot of it is announcements about so-and-so is going to be holding a tent revival at such and such place but there's also a lot of preaching a lot of theological writing I mean one of the things that stunned me about it all is the Pentecostalism I knew was profoundly anti intellectual I mean they wanted enough nothing to do with theology of any kind and nothing could be further from the spirit of early colossal and it was profoundly theological not not a lot a lot of them were trained but and they were suspicious of higher ed they were suspicious of the universities because of Darwinism and and higher biblical criticism stuff like that that eventually led to them kind of tying themselves to fundamentalists but they were profoundly sacramental and deeply theologically curious and reflective and I Walter hole and vaguer I'm sure you know his name right he was the first one to write a PhD on Pentecostals yeah and University of Birmingham yes exactly because when he founded it right he said and I still remember where I was when I read this he said so he studied global Pentecostalism before anybody else did and he said devil global Pentecostal spirituality is best characterized as blood and wound mysticism and it is centered in the celebration of the Lord's Supper as the memory of Jesus death who was present mm-hmm in in a celebrate yeah and I was like forgive my French that's just BS like like all of that seemed not on to me right and then I did my own doctoral work and man is right right like that that yeah that is true of a huge number of Pentecostals in the first 20 or 30 years I mean it is deeply mystical Daniel Costello has a great book on Pentecostalism as a Christian mystical tradition and he's right Daniel bring some of this up but early Pentecostals were deeply mystical but it was a particular kind of mysticism it was a mysticism of the woundedness of Jesus and one of the things that's striking is not only was there really high view of Eucharist and they use the language of Eucharist and the language of sacrament but also a really deep understanding of when he was was also surprising for me right look I didn't expect to see that yeah and I think that there are different factors that led to the collapse of that I think one factor is as Pentecostal movements kind of matured and institutionalized they found themselves as allies politically and culturally with white conservatives and the more they align themselves with white conservatives the more they lost touch with the roots in black Holiness tradition and their roots in wedding plan theology and they became more fundamentalist and you know there were always there were always seeds there I mean don't get me wrong I mean they were early Pentecostals were not liberals by any means but they weren't they also weren't fundamentalists as a rule although they could be fundamentalistic on all nuns of things but that quickly started to change the more the social and cultural alignment with white Protestants intensified the more I think it worked back on their spirituality and I think you see that play out in all kinds of ways one is when they started founding Bible schools they started using fundamentalist textbooks to train their ministers yeah that's right and dispensational textbooks very core I have been saying this forever the Study Bible put out by the spirit-filled Study Bible you know yeah I remember sorry I'm full disclosure I've picked on dispensationalism every episode so far so I might as well just go for it I I am NOT a dispensationalist I am flat fabric flabbergasted by the this relationship between Pentecostalism lowercase P you know charismatic all everybody's guilty of it with this connection to dispensationalism but I remember reading the the commentary aspect in the New Living Translation yeah it's like it's interesting because whoever I can't remember who wrote that on Revelation I've taught my head right now but I remember he notes that scholar notes that it's peculiar that that Pentecostals and charismatics have leaned into dispensational premillennialism as it's eschatology because by its very nature it rejects and denies the continuation of the supernatural spiritual gifts because we're no longer in the that age you know of the dispensations and so yeah I've always found that really really weird yes I think and this is gonna take us way afield and I know we're out of time but all of this is bound up with race issues too and class ease and yeah what at one of the ways it is is Pentecostals were almost without exception Pentecostals were restorationist they saw the Pentecostal movement as a restoration of something that church had lost and there there's a whole range of things and so when I when I teach it when I teach my students about it one thing I say is you have kind of soft recreationists we see that God has always been working in history but just is doing more now I mean you have hard restorationist which are I mean they have essentially Mormon theology of the fall of the church and in a resurrection of the church with an apostille movement and you got you've got everything in between right and many many of the early Pentecostals could be all over that time all over that spectrum themselves depending on yeah their setting or the topic or whatever else but one of the reasons I think they were drawn to dispensationalism is that they were still deeply rooted in a colonialist mindset and white supremacy and I don't know if this is controversial for a year here's or not but I mean I don't know find out but this is one of the things that Pentecostal restoration ISM suggested is the ala no have you seen the paper that I did on Charles Paulin and speaking in tongues have you seen this yet yeah quite yeah who everybody knows was one of the most racist people out there right yeah yeah you know the world I mean yeah yeah the world good ol boys yeah he's the world crackers and even today there are Pentecostal scholars who are trying to rebuild rehabilitate his legacy because they're embarrassed yeah hi by an because they put off by social justice warriors and all that but yes the fact of the matter is early Pentecostalism you know all kinds of ways was was already bound up with racist ideologies and dispensationalism actually fit those categories it suggested superiority it suggested you know so one of the examples of this is I don't know if you ever saw this piece that I did but it was it's not in that paper but in I can't remember right now where it is but anyway it was a you tied all this together in one in one sermon this kind of the Pentecostal movement is a last days restoration of what the church is lost but it was all coated in language of the white man's burden right that we are the Pentecostal movement is to the world what the white man and what the white race is to humanity Pentecostals mr. the church what white manatee is to the rest of the rest of the world and so there's a really ugly underside to all this you know that I think scholars are just now starting to come to terms with Rick just starting here starting to face and I mean so much of this stuff isn't really about theology it's it's about social political dynamics then force our theologies to shift you know what one will factor I'll say and cuz I know we're really in Contra but you can just cut all this out do you don't have to this is not getting cut at this is this is a good stuff but if you I'd say keep drinking whatever you're doing keep drinking keep talking we're we're rolling filming well I there's so much I want to say that I just finished a piece that'll be published sometime this fall I hope and one of the things that argued in it is that this Vista goes back to home vigor that Pentecostalism emerged as a black movement even though they were a quart young white and fountain people caught up in it and it became quickly global it was quote-unquote black in the sense that it came in resistance to the rules that everybody else was playing by right yeah it's right it was it was shaped from you know so one cliched way of talking about this is it came from the margins rather than from the center of this the anal power and that that language can be misleading too but there was something quote-unquote prophetic about it right it was it was lighting you know Harvey Cox famously compared it to jazz and and said you know they have this area and for the same reasons and we in the u.s. we've almost entirely lost that white Pentecostals have almost entirely lost God and yeah we will never be true to what I think you were called to do as a movement until we recover that you know and when one of the things we one of the things we lost in that and not only are prophetic did shall Ricky Moore doctoral keyboards mentor my teachers old testament at Lee University he talks a lot about how you remember the story of the man who loses the axe head right and the it sinks and the profit comes and calls the axe head he talks a lot about how we've lost our cutting edge and and we've lost it not primarily for theological reasons but for social and political ones and this is one of the reasons it's so nefarious when in our churches we try to keep religion and politics separated you know where at least we used to I mean I think yeah the 2013-2016 changed a lot of that but you know the fact is we're shaped by those forces whether we admit it or not and our theology is one when you look at the history you know you know what experience well you know you haven't seen someone for years and then you see them again and you're shocked by how different they look they they don't they haven't noticed their own changes because they've been living with them incrementally and one of the advantages you know someone like I have or you have who studies the history of Pentecostalism the change that's happened to our movement is astonishing right on every front right reason which we so we're talking about sacraments but it isn't just about sacraments it's about the way we understand men women and their their place in ministry it's the way we understand the responsibility and to care for the poor it's the way that we the way that we see the recent so many early Pentecostals were pacifists right and and we should go on forever with this but I think one of the things that has to happen is that we have to we have to reckon with we're a long way from where we started on all of these issues including the sacraments yeah I was just so you know the probably the most influential vineyard person out there is John Wimber you know passed away in 1997 but so there's a whole slew of people in the in the vineyard now who are either unfamiliar with who John Wimber is or you know it's been a really long time since they had any connection to anybody who knew him so I've been doing these things every once in a while on Wednesdays when I actually have the time to do it call it Wednesday's with Webber and I kind of just unpack a little bit of some wimbur theology or practices and yesterday I was thinking about that and by no means am i elevating John Wimber above Jesus so this is not you know not to says that but I was like I wonder if wimbur was alive today what would he think about the new movement you know and also I think the church I mean there's been a lot of academic work just showing how wimbur was you know they call him a grassroots ecumene you know he was definitely a guy who had a had a real strong love for the church at large and so I was thinking about that and it got me just thinking about you know that in the state of the church and and so there's obviously some really good changes because you know wimbur this is one of the areas that I would disagree with him I think in practice in in action action he was an egalitarian I mean he ordained Jackie pol injure you know and he ordained another woman to be a senior pastor when her husband had died but on paper and when he taught he was a complementarian and so you know the vineyard movement is an egalitarian movement now I'm a card-carrying egalitarian so that would be an area where I think he would he would have changed you know and he'd probably be very happy with some of the changes that have happened but but I've been I've been really thinking about that because it seems like I really can connect with that idea of losing our edge in a sense you know because we've seen that with worship so I'm like I'm really into underground hip-hop in in in the world we talk yeah we talk a lot about like culture vultures you know people who are outside of the hip-hop culture who see yeah oh yeah yeah like oh I can make some money off of that so I'm gonna wear my hat backwards or I'm gonna buy some wu-tang clothing and you know put that on yeah and and but it's interesting how in the church I think kind of what you're getting at is there's a there's a bit of that that's happened you know we would use other terms colonialism might be a more you know academic way to talk about it but with worship I think it's interesting how there's a lot of churches out there Leicester Ruth at Duke University is you know written a ton of stuff on how the vineyard essentially the vineyard in Calvary Chapel kind of introduced the intimacy of worship into the you know the contemporary church and so there's a lot of churches that sing the same songs that Pentecostals would sing but they don't have the underlying theological framework to understand what actually is happening you know we're not just singing songs about God we're singing songs to God and it's a space to encounter him and and I think that's detrimental to the practices though because it's like you're it's like you have you're getting a little bit of it but it's not you know it's not the full the full thing so I think what you're saying is probably true in a lot of different areas of the church at large yeah I mean I think you know Charles Taylor philosopher talks a lot about kind of cross pressures and how we get we get influenced by a lot of different forces coming at us from a lot of different directions I think you know so if you look if we if we think about sacraments for example and what I really would hope everybody hears though is that what's happened with sacraments has happened with worship broadly and without and just with the way we imagine the Christian life period right like it's affected us so deeply but you you've got the social political courses the economic forces that I think are shaping us without us ever acknowledged without us ever owning that that's what's really going on right that were but we're becoming more and more middle-class and more and more white more and more concerned with though that demographic and and concerns that go with being in that demographic but we're also being shaped by the alignments we make in that process right so the more and more we align with fundamentalist voices even though it's Thea logically incoherent we then find ways to make it work right so we're in our schools over the decades we've used dispensational textbooks you know like so for instance one at one of the books that's been used was used when I was in Bible School was was a perfect Aryan systematic theology is named slipped my mind but it's kind of the culmination of why I can't remember his name I want to see Jacques Ellul but that's definitely not it I wish I was a Lewis Berkoff yeah Birkhoff exactly burka so Birkhoff is the theologian in the dutch reformed tradition I mean he when we talk about Calvinists most of us don't know what we're talking about when we we sit but when we say Calvinists he is who we mean and Berta has had an enormous influence on our theologians for generation which is absurd right not that relation around him but that they would read him without knowing what they're reading without realizing how much what he's saying is that odds with who with who we are not that everything he says is ology that's right so you've got those there's a mutually exclusive yeah there's a mutually exclusive ideas happening right you know because - yeah I think James James James K Smith has that whole idea thinking from our own Wells which has been really influential in my thinking it's like yeah know if we should be going to those folks to talk about you know the Holy Spirit like there might be some other traditions that would be more helpful to us well I mean I think part of the problem is right is you need to be able to engage in those conversations but know what you're doing and I think that part of the problem with at least my branch of the Pentecostal community we haven't known what we were doing right we were being pressured and didn't know we were being pressured we were being changed and know we were being changed and another factor to name here is the success of our churches in terms of the numerical growth and in terms of the ways in which Christian television Christian Internet Ministries Christian radio back in the day and we weren't ready for that what that would do to archeology and yeah that's right we are suffering from all of these things and there are many more things I could name but all these things are pressures on us that for the most part we don't even know our pressures and we don't even realize they're really and venting most but when you look at the history of our movement and you look at what we were saying a hundred years ago and what we are saying now or we were saying even 30 years ago and what we're saying now it's unbelievable how much we change and and not always for the worse like you said I mean there are some good things that have pointed that and I think I think we should trust that God is at work in the midst of all this so again this is not some kind of jeremiah about how it's all been for loss but what what breaks me about it is that it's mostly happened without us even noticing it's happening that's what polished me not nothing it's all bad there's a lot of it isn't a lot of it isn't bad right a lot of it is been good but we're we're still just kind of being blown around by whatever the pressures are I think you've just made a really great case for why theological reflection is so important for the church you know Chris but it's been man it's been an honor and a pleasure to have you on I hope that you will come back on and do another one of these things you know I just love having having your voice and you've been like I said influential in my life and our real gift to the church you know for the kingdom and we're be praying for you I'm hoping that you you come into 2 million dollars and then you can just move to California and just come on staff at our church for free so all right if you'd uh yeah if you'd be willing to do that but again thank you so much I really appreciate it so there's a lot of fun hyperacute I know I know I've got a little worked up at the end but it was a great conversation I know it a lot [Music]