THE 21ST CENTURY RENEWAL OF THE PENTECOSTAL IMAGINATION
By Monte Lee Rice
I strongly believe with the utmost conviction, that God birthed global Pentecostalism through sovereign “latter day” outpourings of His Spirit. At the dawn of the 20th century from many early centres around the world such as the Azusa Street Revival, Pentecostalism emerged and has matured as a Christian tradition— a gifted tradition comprising a prophetic-type spirituality. Hence, at the high moments of our history as a movement and tradition within the Church Catholic, our communal life has perennially demonstrated ideals most nobly characteristic of the biblical prophetic tradition. Also reflecting the tradition’s historical privileging of Luke-Acts as its core paradigmatic story-framing scripture, Pentecostal spirituality has demonstrated deep resonance to recapulatory nuanced spiritualities that nuance the life of Jesus as paradigmatic for Christian life.
One of our core framing metaphors that not only shapes our communal giftedness but blends together the prophetic and recapulatory motifs into a distinctive Christian spirituality, is Spirit baptism. The witness of our communal narratives, historical testimonies and theological readings of Scripture, consistently interpret experiences of Spirit baptism as encounters with God’s Trinitarian love, pathos and mission. Such experiences initiate and renew apostolic certainty that God has commissioned one’s life as a prophetically endowed witness to the Christian gospel. The pentecostal experience of Spirit baptism thus grants a prophetic call beckoning us towards God’s empathy and mission towards creation, even as He endows us with dreams of His coming new world of Perfect Love.
Consequently, this new eschatological horizon has historically awakened within believers a heightened sense of both eschatological urgency, and the conviction that one’s life possesses a providential-orchestrated and ordained destiny towards the shaping of history and even of God’s coming new world. This encounter with Jesus through the Spirit therefore creates a heightened eschatological awareness of God’s involvement in our life and in the historical direction of human history. Moreover, as pentecostal experiences of Spirit baptism renew our eschatological horizon via the giving of prophetic hope, so also do they grant existential baptisms into apostolic experience, meaning into the biblical story-word as particularly narrated within the book of Acts, and— into the life-script and mission of Jesus.
Therefore, within the formative ethos of Pentecostal spirituality, encounters with Jesus as the Baptizer in the Holy Spirit grant us seminal gateways into the prophetic consciousness and imagination. This giftedness that demarks who we are as a Christian tradition, interprets the revolutionary power of Spirit baptism as especially evident when through our missional presence in the world— the weak and marginalized find themselves empowered to dream and enter into a better future for all creation, and meaningfully contribute to its coming fullness. We Pentecostals are gifted “for such a time as this,” to manifest in our personal and congregational way of life, a revolutionary witness to the coming Kingdom. We are also therefore an ecclesiological tradition gifted to edify all the Church Catholic in the prophetic consciousness of God’s coming kingdom. Pentecostal spirituality thus helps the Church Catholic remember that she is to question the legitimacy of this world’s prevailing realities, and demonstrate and proclaim through the power of God’s Spirit, an alternative vision of God’s new world. By the power of the Spirit given through the pentecostal experience of Spirit-baptism, we thus speak forth liberation to all humanity, and even to the whole creation.
Yet one of the most critical challenges facing Christianity today, which is particularly challenging the integrity of Pentecostal spirituality, is the formative power of 21st century global market forces that propagate for their survival— a consumerist vision for human life. A current problem of this vision is its accompanying life-shaping story world. This story world scripts and defines our worth according to not only how much we can measurably achieve but even more, to how much we can consume. Therefore, as a Christian tradition especially gifted in the prophetic imagination, the time has now come for us to be faithfully-responsive to this emerging 21st century challenge. I suggest that a core response shall comprise a return to our roots as a gifted tradition and spirituality. Therefore, we must consistently renew our memory of who we are in the Church Catholic, and let this self-awareness guide our movement towards the future.
What I find resident within our roots is a two-fold rhythm that characterizes the prophetic imagination operative in Pentecostal spirituality, fostered via pentecostal experiences of Spirit baptism. In the first movement of this rhythm, our prophetic consciousness calls into question the prevailing consensus and status quos. In this movement, the prophetic imagination that comes from God’s Spirit will prompt us to deconstruct many of our framing scripts and story-worlds, revealing a radical disjunction between what is and what should be; between unjust framing stories and the biblical framing story which shapes us as the Spirit baptizes us in the way of Jesus.
Yet in the second movement of prophetic imagination, the Spirit endows us with dreams, visions, prophecies, symbols and metaphors of hope— again opening our eyes towards the broad moral and ethical contours of life in God’s kingdom. In moments like these on holy ground, we find ourselves raised up to the heights of Zion where we affectively grasp in all its beauty— the promised coming of God’s kingdom and the role He gives us towards the shaping of cosmic history. In such times when we encounter Jesus as Spirit Baptizer, we again see God’s new world order, where the “last” of al social settings now receive grace to become the “first.” We again see the coming new world where the Spirit gives both the first and the last, the minority and majority voice, a common tongue signifying the inclusive broadness of God’s household.
I finally suggest that faithful-responsiveness to both our 21st century challenges and our historically rooted calling as a Christian spirituality nuanced towards the prophetic tradition of biblical faith, enjoins us to foster missional communities that visibly express counter-cultural alternatives to market-driven, social conventions. Our historic moment therefore infers that if Pentecostal churches are to practice a prophetic spirituality within the greater Church of God, we shall foster a congregational ethos that visibly counters dominate status quos emerging from the global market’s consumerist vision for human life.
Practicing a prophetic spirituality should comprise embracing diverse peoples and populations, so that the Spirit may reconcile them and us into heterogeneous communities shaped by the love of the Father, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. Because of these communal icons of the Triune God, the world shall indelibly identify us as communities more visibly sensitized to the socially marginalized, than to the socially affluent, powerful, privileged, elite, and secure. Yet what makes possible this revolutionary identity is that the Spirit is embracing people of all social strata into unified and blended communities of hope, faith, and charity. In doing so, we shall interpret for our world, the embracing dreams of God. Such journeys to Zion always prove exhausting, because conflict with darkness is certain. Yet along the way, the Spirit renews our strength with prophetic hope and speech that we may keep on speaking and evoking in the world we live — better realities and futures reflecting God’s dreams for creation.
As we preach the gospel of Christ from these renewed encounters with Jesus our Savior, Sanctifier, Baptizer, Healer, and Coming King— let us moreover seek new outpourings of God’s Spirit upon the whole Catholic Christian Church. Let us again turn and see the flame that burns on holy ground. Let us pray for these latter day 21st century outpourings of the Spirit. Let us do so that when they come, our world may know the kingdom of God is at hand— countering prevailing realities and empowering the poor of the earth towards their complete redemption into the riches of God’s kingdom. This redemption, which Christ availed to us through the cross, He now makes visible through the just sharing of gifts, prophesy, and power across the social, racial, economic and demographic walls that separate us from one another in this present age. Let us therefore know that God’s purpose for all latter day Pentecostal outpourings of the Spirit, is that He is embracing lost children to one another in Christ— as One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church.
About Monte Lee Rice:
As a Pentecostal, Monte envisions fresh outpourings of the Spirit for the 21st century world, empowering the powerless through preaching the spiritual, social, and revolutionary power of Jesus as Saviour, Sanctifier, Baptiser, Healer and Coming King.
Monte comes with a broad ministry background and experience in both large and small churches. While based in and out of Singapore since 1989 (where he met his wife Jee Fong), he has served on the pastoral staff for Assemblies of God as well as Anglican churches, and has ministered within some 15 nations in Southeast Asia and Africa. In past years he has raised up mission teams and established church planting targets in East and West Africa, pastored a mission church in Accra, Ghana, and also lived and ministered throughout Uganda.
As a seasoned speaker, Monte has engaged a broad range of audience platforms, and is experienced with pulpit ministry to large audiences of a thousand plus. He has lectured in the Asia Centre for Evangelism and Mission, and Assemblies of God Bible College, (both in Singapore), and in the Africa Centre for Evangelism and Mission in Jinja, Uganda. He has published articles and book reviews in the Asian Journal of Pentecostal Studies, Trinity Theological Journal, Church and Society, and Encounter: Journal for Pentecostal Ministry.
Monte earned his M.Div. degree (summa cum laude) in theology from Asia Pacific Theological Seminary, in The Philippines (2002), and his M.A. in New Testament Studies from the Mennonite Brethren Biblical Seminary (1986) in Fresno, California, USA.
Monte is a member of the Society for Pentecostal Studies (SPS, USA), and has presented papers in both the 2012 and 2013 annual SPS meetings. He is also a member of the Theological Consultation for the World Alliance for Pentecostal Theological Education (WAPTE; affiliated with the Pentecostal World Fellowship).
