A Pentecostal and a Catholic Discuss the Essence of Christianity

I’ve been mean­ing to men­tion for a while now that I’ve start­ed a blog con­ver­sa­tion with Sean Gal­lagher (a Catholic who runs a blog title Note Bene) about the rea­son Peten­costal mis­sion­ar­ies seem to tar­get Catholics.

Here’s the run­down so far: it all began when I read Sean’s August 24th post about Pen­te­costal pros­e­lytism. I made a com­ment on that post­ing explain­ing my point of view.

As a Pen­te­costal mis­sion­ary (albeit to Stan­ford and not Latin Amer­i­ca), I’d like to com­ment.

Some peo­ple who attend Catholic church­es are fol­low­ers of Jesus, and some are not. My strong impres­sion is that here in the Amer­i­c­as the major­i­ty are not.

By way of dis­claimer, I would like to add my belief that the same prob­lem exists in most denom­i­na­tions (includ­ing mine): too many peo­ple are involved because of momen­tum and not because of faith. I do think the prob­lem is par­tic­u­lar­ly acute in the RCC.

That being said, I nev­er delib­er­ate­ly seek to pros­e­ly­tize peo­ple who are faith­ful adher­ents of anoth­er Chris­t­ian tra­di­tion. In gen­er­al, if a stu­dent tells me they are a Chris­t­ian I believe them, and I try to help them grow in their faith. If I am of sig­nif­i­cant help to them, they often wind up switch­ing their adher­ence.

How­ev­er, when I meet some­one with­out a vibrant faith (such as the infa­mous East­er and Christ­mas only crowd), I try to help them either reawak­en a faith grown cold or dis­cov­er true faith for the first time. When­ev­er that hap­pens, they almost always switch their adher­ence. This is what I believe is hap­pen­ing in South Amer­i­ca.

The switch has two roots, I think: one is an emo­tion­al intu­ition that what’s work­ing for us might work for them since we were so help­ful to them, the oth­er is that we express sig­nif­i­cant­ly dif­fer­ent doc­tri­nal posi­tions from the RCC that if believed make a switch vir­tu­al­ly inevitable.

He thought that what I said was pret­ty inter­est­ing, and brought it to the atten­tion of his read­ers. Short­ly there­after, he post­ed a series of ques­tions for me answer

.

I answered his ques­tions via email, but for your con­ve­nience, here they are:

I’ll answer your ques­tions as best I can, just remem­ber that I’m not a spokesper­son for my denom­i­na­tion (much less for all of Pen­te­costal­ism)… I come from the strand of Pen­te­costal­ism that val­ues oth­er tra­di­tions with­out com­pro­mis­ing the integri­ty of my own (much like the founders of the Soci­ety for Pen­te­costal Stud­ies).

First, what is a fol­low­er of Jesus? I should state for the record that I am using this term syn­ony­mous­ly with Chris­t­ian. The authors of the New Tes­ta­ment seem to have been inca­pable of con­ceiv­ing of a Chris­t­ian who was not active­ly seek­ing to emu­late Jesus. Jesus’ call was (and is) to “come, fol­low me.” In fact the very label Chris­t­ian refers to the con­cept of ‘lit­tle Christs.’ Hav­ing said that, I would define a fol­low­er of Jesus as some­one who has embraced the teach­ings and exam­ple of Jesus as the foun­da­tion of their lives and has brought their lives under the influ­ence of the God (become cit­i­zens of the King­dom). The clas­sic word for this action is repent: to turn from a self-direct­ed life to a God-direct­ed life.

Sec­ond, defin­ing a faith­ful adher­ent is always tricky. I mean both faith­ful (con­sis­tent par­tic­i­pant in a local com­mu­ni­ty of Chris­t­ian faith) and faith-full (con­forms to the def­i­n­i­tion above). Allow me to demon­strate by way of coun­terex­am­ple what I’m get­ting at:

* Sup­pose that I’m in con­ver­sa­tion with a stu­dent and they dis­cov­er that I’m an ambas­sador for Christ. They make some sort of com­ment along the fol­low­ing lines, “Yeah, I was raised in church, but I just don’t find it mean­ing­ful. I stopped going when I was a teenag­er.” In my mind, they flunk both tests–they need to be intro­duced to the King and enrolled in a local com­mu­ni­ty of like-mind­ed believ­ers.

* Sup­pose that I meet a stu­dent who says, “Yeah, I love going to church–that’s where all the cute girls go!” (and upon inves­ti­ga­tion I dis­cov­er that they real­ly are that shal­low). They pass the con­sis­ten­cy test but fail the fol­low­er of Jesus test.

* Sup­pose that I meet a stu­dent who says, “Yeah–I real­ly admire Jesus. But I hate the church–they’ve real­ly let me down. I’ll nev­er set foot in a church again!” Per­haps they pass test #2 (fur­ther inves­ti­ga­tion is need­ed), but they fail test #1.

I would con­sid­er all these peo­ple in des­per­ate need of God’s grace expressed through human love in the con­text of a com­mu­ni­ty earnest­ly fol­low­ing Jesus. Please note that I nev­er men­tioned a spe­cif­ic denom­i­na­tion­al back­ground for any of them–it’s irrel­e­vant to these exam­ples.

Third, how would I as a Pen­te­costal help a Catholic grow in their faith? That’s an excel­lent ques­tion! Basi­cal­ly I do it the same way I help any­one to grow in their faith: love them uncon­di­tion­al­ly, pray for them con­sis­tent­ly, encour­age them in right­eous­ness, and rebuke them in sin. Teach them the lessons of Scrip­ture (I should note that my inter­pre­ta­tion of Scrip­ture dif­fers from the Catholic under­stand­ing at points. I obvi­ous­ly teach what I believe to be true). Give rea­son­able answers to hon­est ques­tions. In addi­tion, here are a few oth­er actions I’d take with some­one from a churched back­ground:

* I’ve noticed that many col­lege-aged peo­ple engage in litur­gy by rote and fail to under­stand its sig­nif­i­cance (con­fir­ma­tion notwith­stand­ing). I’d try to help them see it with fresh eyes: as a heart­felt expres­sion of wor­ship and devo­tion to God. I’d prob­a­bly also give them a copy of some­thing like Peter Kreeft’s One Catholic to Anoth­er.

* I’ve also noticed that many stu­dents raised in church (of what­ev­er tra­di­tion) have a very juve­nile under­stand­ing of faith–their reli­gious edu­ca­tion stalled at a junior high lev­el and they’ve nev­er probed their faith at an age-appro­pri­ate lev­el. Inci­den­tal­ly, I think that’s one of the rea­sons so many col­lege stu­dents bail on the church. They’re try­ing to incor­po­rate irrec­on­cil­able world­views in their minds: one a 7th-grade under­stand­ing of the good news and the oth­er a col­lege-lev­el under­stand­ing of sec­u­lar phi­los­o­phy. Guess which one wins? To that end, I’d try to help stu­dents reframe their ques­tions and seek answers in a more sophis­ti­cat­ed man­ner.

* Anoth­er high pri­or­i­ty on my list is to help stu­dents expe­ri­ence the imme­di­ate super­nat­ur­al pow­er of the Holy Spir­it (includ­ing the charis­ma­ta). The Bible por­trays charis­mat­ic Chris­tian­i­ty as the nor­ma­tive mod­el for fol­low­ers of Jesus. We are to exhib­it not only the fruit of the Spir­it but also the gifts of the Spir­it.

Fourth, I think I’ve addressed this ques­tion in my response to ques­tions one and two. A vibrant faith is a com­bi­na­tion of belief and trust that makes a dif­fer­ence in one’s day-to-day opin­ions, feel­ings, and behav­ior.

I hope I’ve answered your ques­tions mean­ing­ful­ly. I’m sure you’ll have some com­ments in response.

So far he’s post­ed his reponse to my answer to his first ques­tion: What Defines a Fol­low­er of Jesus? I’ll try to respond as soon as I can (although my in-laws are vis­it­ing and that will make com­put­er time hard­er to come by).