We live in an age where people are rediscovering 'spirituality'. Whether it be feminist spirituality, Maori spirituality, or pagan spirituality many seem to be searching for some transcendent experience. Even atheists talk about spirituality!
Within Christianity there are a wide variety of spiritualities, each fuelled by a desire for personal transformation. How can we become the people we were created to be? Spirituality, as Alistair McGrath defines it, "concerns the quest for a fulfilled and authentic Christian experience involving the bringing together of the fundamental ideas of Christianity and the whole experience of Christian living on the basis of and within the scope of the Christian faith" It is at heart a quest, a journey, a lived experience of the transforming work of the Holy Spirit in our lives. It is a search for a genuine experience of God that will cause our lives to transcend the commonplace and be all that God creted us to be.
The paths of spirituality are many and varied.. Christianity has always had its mystics, its contemplatives, its intellectuals and its activists, all claiming the way to an authentic Christianity. There have been those who have sought to find God in solitude and in asceticism. With the wilderness experiences of John the Baptist, Jesus and Paul we can hardly deny that there is a Scriptural precedent for this approach. Other people devote themselves to a disciplined study of the Biblical text seeking truth in ever more detailed exegesis and exposition. Yet others give themselves in sacrificial service. All evidence of the search for the real. As Augustine said "you have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.".
What can we say about Pentecostal spirituality? Taking the book of Acts as our paradigm Pentecostals hunger for an encounter with God that will transform our lives. Our worship times are especially viewed as occasions when all who press in can experience God's transforming presence. Pentecostal spirituality has always had a missionary heart, it is an activist spirituality . The Holy Spirit has been poured out, God's people are empowered, Jesus is coming back and the Kingdom of God has broken into human history. In recent years the rise of social concern among Pentecostals is evidence of a widening understanding of spirituality. The transforming power of the Spirit was never something to be spent on ourselves but taken into all the world. God has poured out his love into our hearts by His Spirit - an authentic spirituality gives practical expression to this reality.
Pentecostal spirituality has from its beginnings, whether on the day of Pentecost, or at places like Azusa St been thoroughly egalitarian. The Spirit is available equally to young and old, male and female, rich and poor irrespective of culture and color. All can minister in the power of the Spirit. There is no privileged access to God. It is this conviction that has contributed to the explosion of Pentecostal churches in the last century.
A genuine, authentic spirituality must be holistic, transforming all of our lives. It should be embracive of solitude and sociality, of trial and triumph. A spirituality that claims to be Christian and is dismissive of the need to love one another is a fraud. (1 John 3:16-20). We cannot claim to be spiritual while neglecting our marriages and families. Social activism is empty unless it is fuelled by a love for God. Theology must result in doxology if it is not to end in pride. Contemplation should result in consecration.
At the least an authentic spirituality must be transparent - no secret sins and increasingly transformative - producing change in our lives. God's intention is that we be conformed to the image of Jesus. Such is the agenda of the Holy Spirit for us.
Every culture deserves to see what authentic spirituality really looks like lived out in the lives of those who call themselves Christians. Such people will transform their world.
Stephen Allen,
August 2008
