For the last couple of years we have been trying to facilitate a variety of spiritual pathways within a Charismatic context.
We have always been concerned by the fact that, even at best, a good chunk of people did not really seem to engage with Charismatic style worship. Then we used a Willow Creek course called AN ORDINARY DAY WITH JESUS that looked at the different ways in which we draw close to God. They listed seven, from which they drew on Gary Thomas’s book, SACRED PATHWAYS.
Initially people liked the idea and could see the point. We have a long way to go in working this out yet but have realised that some people really do believe that the expressive pathway—charismatic worship—is a super-pathway at a different level to all the others. It leads to those sort of unsatisfactory conversations where people say, “I don’t disagree with you but…” and the but boils down to the fact that a week without forty minutes of guitar-led singing of in increasing intensity is a week ill-spent!
Looking back, it was inevitable that we would get to this point when in 2002, we shut down our Sunday morning meeting once a month to go and make friends with local people and help them on their houses. We were saying, ‘This is worship, too.”
I need to explore this issue in some depth in the context of the post-Charismatic thing—some people hint that without the distinctive package, there is no real role for a church like us. I really do hope not!
