From: Iain Strachan (iain.strachan.asa@ntlworld.com)
Date: Tue Jun 17 2003 - 17:07:52 EDT
Debbie,
Sorry I didn't mean to belittle your own charismatic experience in that
church. It's just that in the particular church I was in, it did make me
uncomfortable, especially as I didn't get a real clear sense of the Gospel.
I felt they'd rather lost the plot, and were perhaps attaching too much
emphasis on the experiential. Plus the preacher spent about 10 minutes
before the praying happened asking people to come up and telling you how
good it was to fall over & it all seemed like a pre-determined ritual & I've
always thought of the action of the Holy Spirit as more spontaneous, like a
wind blowing where it will, rather than a preacher telling me it's going to
blow right here if you come up now.
But hey, maybe I'm just a repressed Englishman unwilling to let go :-)
Iain.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Debbie Mann" <deborahjmann@InsightBB.com>
To: "Iain Strachan" <iain.strachan.asa@ntlworld.com>; "Asa" <asa@calvin.edu>
Sent: Monday, June 16, 2003 9:52 PM
Subject: RE: ASA Statement of faith - The Forgotten Verses
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu]On
> Behalf Of Iain Strachan
> Sent: Monday, June 16, 2003 1:13 PM
> Ten Verses
>
>
> -----
>
> A few years ago I wandered into a Penetcostal church in Calgary while I
was
> there on business. It was just the nearest one to where I was staying and
> it was Sunday morning. After a service that lasted around 2 and a half
> hours during which we had a 20-minute set from a full scale rock band,
the
> statutory "mini" sermon (25 minutes) before the collection about how the
> Lord loves people who give money, and then another spontaneous 10-minute
> mini-sermon that the Lord apparently prompted the preacher to give about
how
> maybe we'd all like to give a bit more, then the real 75 minute sermon, I
> spoke to someone in the congregation, a computer science student from
> Calgary University. He told me that in his church they just like to "hit
> 'em with the Gospel". I thought back over the whole charade, which made
me
> very uncomfortable, especially the bit at the end when people went up to
> have hands laid on them & then fall over (complete with beefy guy standing
> behind to catch them as they fell and girl handing out blankets to shiver
> in), and I tried to remember one single point where they had explained
> clearly what the Gospel is.
>
>
> I've been prayed for in one of those services, and caught. My stepson went
> with me to church - and was totally and long-term put-off by it. The
falling
> on the floor got him. It wasn't unpleasant. I was up - then I was down. No
> explanation.
>
> I go to a church where I can take people, now.
>
> In their defense, many of the charismatic churches - not necessarily the
> same as pentacostal, do use a lot of chapter and verse and spend a lot of
> time on the good news and what Jesus came for - abundant life, victory,
> healing and they do NOT forget about salvation.
>
>
>
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