Renewal
for Mission in the Power of the Holy Spirit
Martin
Cavender Director
of ReSource
“May
I come and interview you about what you’re doing?” It was a happy surprise
to be ’phoned recently by a journalist who wanted to produce a piece for the
Church of England Newspaper.*
I had been trying for years to get something about evangelism and
mission, and renewal for mission, into the Church newspapers – and here was
the opportunity, unsolicited.
We
talked, and the article appeared in the CEN.
It was reasonably accurate, though I wished it had emphasised
some elements rather than others; but all in all it was OK. What had been
interesting, though, was the form of questioning.
There was a clear stance being taken about what renewal was, and what it
was not; and lots of the questions came in phrases which spoke of yesterday
rather than today or tomorrow. ReSource is convinced that God is doing a new
thing at the moment, as he always is; yet here were questions which wanted to
hark back to another time.
Don’t
mistake me, I believe passionately that
‘The Holy Spirit comes – as part of the package’, in John
Leach’s words.
Some history: I came to faith in a real way in 1984 and was immediately
swept up into the renewal movement, which was strong and well led in Bath &
Wells Diocese. I
took baptism in the Holy Spirit as normative, and assumed that evangelism,
healing and the prophetic, and all the gifts of the Spirit were part of the
natural life of the Church, across traditions and denominations.
They were clearly biblical, after all.
“Come, Holy Spirit” was a proper Christian invitation.
I knew, of course, that not all the Church operated like that – I had
by that time been a Diocesan Registrar, an ecclesiastical lawyer for 10 years,
so knew the Church quite well from the inside – but I was not clear quite why
it didn’t. Isn’t
the Church of England a biblical, Trinitarian Church, after all?
Sometime
later I read ‘The Holy Spirit & Liberation’ by the Roman
Catholic theologian Jose Comblin (Burns & Oates,1989).
Comblin speaks there rather unnervingly about the Jesus event and
the Holy Spirit event, with the conviction that each is crucial to the
other, neither can exist without the other.
He lays out the extraordinary relationship in the Christian faith between
Word and Spirit, between Easter resurrection and Pentecost mission, especially
in relation to the needs of the poor.
He is clear that Western theology has sought to play down Pentecost in
favour of Easter.
He says, “A theology mutilated in this way cannot be effective on the
plane of action; without experience of the Spirit, Jesus could never have moved
men and women of his day as he did, not even those who heard him and followed
him”. Moving
us to action is what Pentecost is all about.
In the words of Bishop Tom Wright of Durham, “Renewal in the Holy
Spirit is not given as the spiritual equivalent of a trip to Alton Towers; it is
given in order to carry the victory of the Cross into the world”. Yes, as
I said in
answering those questions from the journalist, baptism in the Holy Spirit is
crucial – but it has a greater purpose beyond mere renewal of the individual
or the local church, vital though those may be.
Among
lots of other sources, I had picked up the same message from ‘Word and
Spirit at Play’ by Jean-Jacques Suurmond (SCM, 1994), particularly in
the foundation of the Pentecostal Church and in the vital nature of the constant
re-creation that the Spirit brings. I
had been going to ARM Conferences and to ‘New Wine’ during
the 80s and 90s which reinforced the message, as well as taking me off in other
directions for exploration and thought.
Toronto and its effect among our local churches was a vital marker in the
journey for me, as were my visits to Africa with SOMA and seeing the Lord
at work in healing and deliverance, and in many other ways.
From 1992 I had been working as Director of the Archbishops’ initiative
for evangelism, Springboard, and on the road had seen plenty of evidence
of the renewing, recreating power of the Holy Spirit.
I needed no convincing.
I
became a Trustee of ARM in 2000, both because I owed ARM so much for its effect
upon my own journey of faith and because I believed passionately in what I saw
it doing under the leadership of John Leach, and before him Michael Mitton. ‘Community
Transformation’ was the buzz phrase then, as it should always be.
Things were happening.
In Newtonian, linear terms it was as if the 60’s and 70’s had been
about personal renewal; Toronto had been about renewal and refreshment of the
Church; and here we were in the new Century with the Spirit renewing and
transforming communities.
Of course it wasn’t that simple – post-modernism had been biting deep
for 30/40 years, and the whole thing was not so much Newtonian and linear
as it was Chaos theory.
Nevertheless, the Lord was/is at work, and it was/is a good time to be
alive and a believing Christian.
200 years of the atheistic experiment of the Enlightenment had seemed to
have collapsed with the Berlin Wall (no wonder Richard Dawkins is so militant
and angry) and there was a new longing for spirituality and truth in the
transcendent.
In
2002 the ARM Trustees took themselves off with a small group of clergy to a
Retreat House in London, to pray and think together for 48 hours.
What part would ARM, with its years of distinguished and fruitful history
in renewal, play in this new order of things? There was a sense of the greying
of the original renewal excitement – what was that all about?
Was ‘New Wine’ God’s new way forward? How should
ARM respond to what was happening in the Church and the culture? What was the Holy Spirit saying to
us?
We
were amazed by what happened.
We were clear and unanimous that God was not calling us to develop ARM in
some new way. We
were staggered to find he was leading us to ‘bury the seed’ and wait.
It was all very biblical; but it was still an horrendously difficult
message to bring to faithful supporters. The response was hugely varied, with
the great majority pledging themselves to stay with it in the waiting.
We
formed a ‘Pilot Light’ group to pray through the process in the
waiting, while the Trustees handled the logistics of closing down ARM.
We were determined to do it all with as much grace and care as we could.
And then we waited and we prayed.
The
Pilot Light group tried to be as faithful as possible to what we thought
we had heard, and treat the seed as buried.
We didn’t keep digging it up to see what was happening, but waited.
Then 15 months later God seemed to say, “Now!”; to which we
responded, “Yes, but what?”
Out of that and lots of prayer came the shoots of a new work with a new
team and a new vision, waiting for a new name.
Some months passed, and it was to be ‘ReSource’, which said it
all. Not only
to serve the Church as a resource, but also to point the Church and its people
back to the source of all things, to re-source it and them in God the Father,
Son and Holy Spirit. There
was lots of stuff about water, hence the logo of a drop falling into a pool and
rippling outwards, and lots about being made new, circling around texts like
Isaiah 43:18-21 and Revelation 21:5 and plenty of others.
I was appointed as the ReSource director, giving up my
Trusteeship; and, crucially, Dr Alison Morgan became the theologian/writer for
the work, and the first member of a small and enthusiastic team. Alison’s book
“The Wild Gospel” (Monarch, 2004), 5 years in the writing, coincided
unexpectedly and precisely with our launch in a way that could only have been of
God; and became a foundation text for ReSource, paving the way for other
materials and resources.
The
well-known Saints Alive! series had been reprinted by Kingsway in
2002, so were in stock and ready to go ; and we also picked up and reprinted
with approval some of the appropriate Springboard materials, such as ‘Growing
Healthy Churches’ and the ‘Oikos’ prayer card.
Archbishop
Rowan Williams commissioned ReSource into life at Burford Priory in
November 2004, and Archbishop John Sentamu became our patron in 2006.
We hold to an Anglican distinctive, following ARM; and also pursue the
ARM principle of, “if it’s real it must be local”. On
we go, with a new Magazine and all the rest.
It has not been easy financially, and we are going through choppy waters
at the moment; but we believe it’s God’s vision and that he will provide and
lead. We
have sought from the outset to work with all others in the river of God’s
renewal, believing ReSource to be just one of a number of streams at this
exciting moment; and we have sought, too, to ask forgiveness and look for
healing where ARM may have got relationships wrong in the past.
We have wanted to begin this work on a proper, clean footing.
So
far, so much history.
What’s it all about?
Well, we believe it is about being willing to revisit the whole concept
of renewal in the power and grace of the Holy Spirit. In the words of William
Abraham, “We must acknowledge that the crisis of renewal has been overtaken
by a crisis in renewal itself”
(The Logic of Renewal, Eerdmans 2003).
What is renewal, and what’s it for?
Is it Scriptural?
Is it about a past work of the Holy Spirit, a phase from which we have
now moved on? Is it
a word which is too caricatured to be helpful any more?
Or has the time come for us to extend our understanding of its scope and
purpose under God? Is
renewal about getting back something we’ve lost – or could it be about going
to somewhere we’ve not yet been?
We’ve produced booklets on these and other questions.
I’m coming to a gathering in Builth Wells on Thursday 24 May,
and I hope we may explore these things together. We long to support,
learn from and resource ARM (Wales) as our sister in Christ.
So
far, so good. We
have tried to do our theology as we go, listening and praying.
We have a growing number of Associates and Missioners doing the work.
We have more Parish renewal weekend invitations than we can currently
cope with. We have
had contact with some 18 English dioceses so far, and the number is increasing.
The diocesan work ranges from consultancies with Bishops and staff
through to CME training in renewal for mission, and a couple of dioceses are
asking us to help them deliver their diocesan strategies.
The speed of the take-up has taken us aback.
So has the number of invitations to speak at Conferences and regional
meetings, from diocesan missioners and the Archbishops’ Council through to
Baptist Strategy Conferences and New Church gatherings, from ‘Charismata’
to ‘Fresh Expressions’. There is something about
the combination of renewal and mission which seems to be capturing the
imagination in unexpected places.
Another word in the air is ‘confidence’, whether in the
diocese, the mission of the Church or the Gospel itself.
We think part of ReSource’s work is to cheer up the Church.
And at Builth Wells? Well let’s talk it over. Let’s see whether that journalist was right to hark back to what is known and familiar in renewal; or whether God is indeed doing a new thing.
The
Church of England Newspaper April
5 2007