OK, here is part 3 of my ongoing story of how I came to describe myself as a “reformed charismatic” (read part 1 and part 2 first). If you are interested in hearing my normal ‘testimony’, then Tim Challies has pretty much covered what I would need to say in his excellent post here.

Diversity at University

In 1994, I went to study a four year masters degree in electronic engineering at Southampton University. I quickly got involved in the Christian Union there, which I thoroughly enjoyed and kept me extremely busy particularly leading various hall groups and cell groups, leading worship and doing the PA. It was also a good learning experience as I came into contact with other Christians from church groups I didn’t even know existed. Despite our wide variety of backgrounds, there was a real sense of love and unity amongst the 300 or so members, and it seems a shame that once everyone leaves university they head back into their separate denominations and rarely do anything together again. It is not as hard to worship and witness together as we sometimes think.

Going to university in a place I had never been to before also gave me a chance to search for a church. I tried some of the charismatic churches first, but it was the height of the “Toronto Blessing” and many of them had put preaching on hold. I wanted to hear some good expository preaching, and also wanted a church that wasn’t making a big deal of whether you were ‘for’ or ‘against’ the ‘TB’. Portswood church, an evangelical (noncharismatic) church fitted the bill perfectly, thanks to the pastor John Symons, a man I have the utmost respect for, and whose warmth and wisdom were a real blessing to me throughout my time there.

Two notable things happened while I was at university, that would result in changes to my theological outlook; both were unplanned. The first happened when one day, feeling bored with my electromagnetism studies, I ventured into the theology section of the university library. There I picked up Calvin’s “institutes” and Hippolytus’ “The refutation of all heresies” (the sheer audacity of the title attracted me). I was already an occasional reader of devotional books (I liked biographies) and loved listening to my large collection of sermon tapes, but had never delved into anything like these books before. They encouraged me to start thinking more deeply about what I believed and why.

The second thing was I met Steph, who is now my wife. Steph was from a Pentecostal church in Bromley, and the Christian friends who had witnessed to her and discipled her could only be described as “nuts for Jesus”. For them, a Saturday wasn’t for shopping and watching TV – the morning would be spent praying and the afternoon evangelising strangers in the high street. It took some getting used to, but I learned to appreciate their zeal for God. It struck me as odd that the two groups of people I knew most bold in evangelism were those hyper-charismatics from Bromley and the anti-charismatics fron UBM. They would get on well together if they could understand one another.

Steph and I didn’t argue much, but when we did it was always about theology. I wanted her to stop listening to Kenneth Copeland and she wanted me to stop listening to Hank Hannegraaf. We argued passionately about the possibility of an outer court in heaven, the trichotomous anthropological nature and of course Calvinism and Arminianism. Most of our differences are now resolved thankfully – she has seen the error of her ways (hope she doesn’t read this!), but she did have one (typically Pentecostal) question that I couldn’t answer to my satisfaction. Why don’t you ask God for the gift of tongues? It bugged me that the honest answer was that I didn’t want it, mainly because it was weird, but I prayed about it anyway, not so much seeking the gift but just talking over my confusion about it. A breakthrough came one day when quite unexpectedly I started praising God in tongues after passing my driving test! I was shocked, and didn’t do it again for a number of years.

Well done if you’ve managed to stick with my story this long. Only one more part to go.

Here is the second part in my series on how I became a “reformed charismatic” (read the first part here). It really seems to be personal story telling time in the blogging world at the moment. Today’s installment covers from when I was about 12 to 18. I am particularly conscious as I write this that many of my friends look back on this time with mixed opinions and the internet is not the place for a full discussion of all the issues, so I will simply give the basic details and how I felt about it at the time.

Drifting Away

After Ern Baxter died, the church I attended slowly but surely became less and less charismatic. More hymns were sung and fewer choruses. The charismatic gifts were seen less and less. We no longer attended Bible weeks. This was largely due to the pastor’s growing concerns about the direction that the charismatic movement was headed in. It lacked commitment to Scripture, had antinomian tendencies, left false prophecy unchallenged and there were even a number of tragic cases of gross immorality amongst leaders. “Open to the Spirit” increasingly meant “open to anything whatsoever”.

By 1994, my church had lost any resemblance whatsoever to a charismatic church, and with the onset of the “Toronto Blessing” began to actively criticise the movement. Dr. Jebb had earlier written a booklet defending a basically Pentecostal doctrine of the Baptism in the Holy Spirit, which in his typical style was argued with hundreds of biblical references. He now wrote a second booklet arguing against his position in the first. It was in a difficult time for the church, with many people leaving, including the families of quite a few of my friends. Many though were persuaded that the charismatic movement had gone off the rails and we were best staying out of it. Others stayed simply out of love and loyalty to their spiritual family and home, not knowing quite what to make of the change in direction.

The big problem, we were told, was that the charismatics are after “experience” which is subjective, not objective. We should be content with the objective Word of God and remember that worship is not about enjoying yourself but honouring God. It seemed to make sense to me at the time, but it was not until a few years later, when I started reading John Piper, that the whole idea of honouring God by enduring boring worship was blown away (not of course that it was put quite like that, but that was the general impression I got).

I was now on the verge of starting university, and was encouraged to read books such as “Charismatic Chaos” by John MacArthur and “Christianity in Crisis” by Hank Hanegraaf. These confirmed to me that the charismatic movement was irretrievably lost in a mess of muddled thinking, and that I would do well to avoid it. I was also beginning to read more of the Puritans and Reformers who had a cessationist stance whenever they touched on these issues.

About this time I started going on yearly missions with UBM, where I found many evangelicals with a love for the Word and a heart for evangelism, but I quickly discovered that charismatics were viewed with extreme disapproval. So at this stage in my life all the people I looked up to in the faith were noncharismatic in practise and teaching, and I was regularly hearing anti-charismatic anecdotes which bolstered a growing prejudice against them.

Despite all this going on, these were years of significant spiritual growth for me. I was baptised, and got about as fully involved in church life as I possibly could. I loved the youth groups especially, and the atmosphere of controversy over the charismatic movement and particularly contemporary Christian worship music (which was viewed with extreme disapproval) did at least serve to get me thinking and studying the Bible for myself.

So I was in a fairly settled position. I believed that the charismatic gifts were still valid for today, but that most churches who tried to use them were seriously deficient in other areas. In fact, I do not ever remember hearing a cessationist argument in church, except for one sermon on why there were no longer apostles today. I had been warned of the excesses of charismatic practise, but had not rejected charismatic theology. Perhaps I would have left it at that, content with a noncharismatic evangelicalism, but there were still issues for me to think through, and some of these came to the forefront while I was at university (which will be the subject of part 3).

Adrian Warnock and Diane Roberts are putting together a Reformed Charismatic aggregator. They asked if I would mind explaining how I ‘evolved’ into a Reformed Charismatic. I had been planning to post something about this anyway as a follow-up to my ‘dividing lines’ posts (here and here). I wouldn’t actually say I evolved into one, rather that I started off as one, evolved away from it, and then came back. Following in the recent tradition of Jollyblogger and Adrian, I will post this as a multipart series. For brevity’s sake, it’s not my testimony, and neither is it intended as a defence of being reformed or charismatic.

The Early Years

I spent just about my entire childhood in church. It was (back then) a reformed charismatic Baptist church in Dunstable (which is mentioned in the Bible you know – look carefully) and it had its own Christian school which I attended. With a Saturday night youth group as well, I was in the building seven days a week most weeks. The pastor, Dr. Stanley Jebb, was a very scholarly evangelical Calvinist, who passionately believed in expository preaching. Every Sunday morning the whole church would gather at 10:00 for an hour’s ‘Bible school’ where we studied church history, or books like J C Ryle’s “Holiness”, or A W Pink’s “The Attributes of God”. At 11:15 we had the main morning service, and from the age of five children were expected to stay in and listen to the sermon. The pastor would quite happily discuss the Greek text and talk about some more advanced theological concepts (for example, at the age of seven I was well versed in the difference between syntheke and diatheke, and why ‘propitiation’ should be prefered to ‘expiation’). In many ways, some of his distinctive ideas lined up with traditional conservative evangelicals, teaching head-covering for women, strongly advising total abstinence from alcohol, keeping Sunday special and dressing smartly for church.

But we were also very definitely charismatic, and involved in the “restoration” movement (now more commonly called the “house church” movement – see Andrew Walker’s book “Restoring the Kingdom” for a historian’s perspective; see also a critical Banner of Truth article ). We went to some of the early charismatic Bible weeks (Dales and Downs) and eventually organised our own (the Anglia Bible week) with speakers such as Peter Lewis, Barney Coombs, Bryn Jones and Ern Baxter. Ern was an American and part of what was known as the “shepherding movement”, which our church was also in and came under his authority. He had a similar passion for the Word and Spirit as our pastor did, and would regularly come over to give teaching.

My earliest recollections of church include the charismatic gifts being used regularly. The times of worship were often powerful with a real sense of the presence of God as people sang “in the Spirit”. As young people we were encouraged to seek the baptism in the Holy Spirit. I still have a slip of paper from a Bible week when I was eight years old which states that I had asked that day to be prayed for to receive the baptism in the Holy Spirit. However I never did speak in tongues as a child (neither to my knowledge did any of my friends), and this was not considered a problem by anyone. In fact, that week is probably the time that I would say I became a Christian – it is my earliest memory of earnestly seeking God.

Read Part 2 here