50th Anniversary

[This is a repost from Pastor Terry's Blog originally posted Thursday, 3/11/10.]

This April 3, marks the 50th anniversary of the Charismatic Renewal in the mainline Protestant Church. On that date in 1960, Dennis Bennett, the Rector of the fashionable St. Marks Episcopal Church, in Van Nuys, California, received the Baptism in the Holy Spirit with the evidence of speaking in tongues. Although many of his congregants followed him into the experience, many others rejected it. The incident created such a furor that the national news media picked up the story and carried it nation-wide.

Being a humble man, Bennett resigned his parish to quell the conflict. The embarrassed officials in the Episcopal Church re-assigned Bennett to a small, inner-city parish in Seattle, Washington, with the hopes that this controversial issue would go away. St. Luke's in Seattle was about to close anyway, so they gave Bennett liberty to continue practicing and teaching his new-found Pentecostal experience.

But St. Luke's didn't close. Within a matter of weeks it was the largest parish in the region, with some 2,000 people attending services every week. Episcopaleans and other Christians were coming from everywhere to receive the Baptism in the Holy Spirit -- complete with tongues. (Dennis Bennett later told my professor, Dr. Synan, that for twenty years at least twenty people each week received the Baptism in the Holy Spirit in that church.) This spiritual fire quickly spread throughout the Episcopal Church and then into every Protestant denomination, becoming a major movement known as neo-Pentecostalism, or more commonly, the Charismatic Renewal. (Charismata is the Greek word for the supernatural gifts of the Holy Spirit.)

Many Charismatics left their mainline churches and joined Pentecostal churches, bringing refreshing to "tired" Pentecostal churches. Many left to form new, non-denominational churches. Many others remained in their mainline churches, hoping to bring renewal. Some entire congregations, like St. Luke's, remained with their denominations, but were fully Charismatic. But there was not a corner of the Church that was not affected by this move of the Holy Spirit. The Roman Catholic Church would also experience this renewal (as I shared in yesterday's post) and even the Orthodox Church. Jesus said, "The wind blows where it will." (John 3) The Holy Spirit will not be confined to or prohibited by denominational structures, but goes where people hunger and thirst for God.

Today in America, more than half of Evangelicals (Bible-believing Christians) are Charismatic/Pentecostal. Worldwide, 60% of Protestant/Evangelical/Orthodox Christians are Spirit-filled and that percentage is increasing daily. Centuries ago the prophet Joel predicted that in the last days God would pour out His Spirit on all flesh (Joel 2:28). Peter applied that to the Day of Pentecost. That was the "former rain." But there was to be a "latter rain," just before the harvest. How fortunate we are to live in these days of prophetic fulfillment!

Repost from Pastor Terry's Blog.