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Windows\Dissertation A STRATEGY FOR ADVANCING THE SPIRIT-FILLED RENEWAL MOVEMENT AMONG AMERICAN BAPTIST PASTORS A MINISTRY FOCUS PAPER SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY FULLER THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE DOCTOR OF MINISTRY BY GARY KENNETH CLARK JULY 2000 Abstract A Strategy for Advancing The Spirit-filled Renewal Movement among American Baptist Pastors through the Holy Spirit Renewal Ministries Gary Kenneth Clark Doctor of Ministry School of Theology, Fuller Theological Seminary This Ministry Focus Paper presents a strategy for advancing a Spirit-filled renewal movement among American Baptist pastors serving local churches through a volunteer movement, the Holy Spirit Renewal Ministries. The American Baptist Denomination has experienced a serious decline in members and overall effectiveness during the past forty years. At the same time, a number of American Baptist pastors and congregations have entered into a Spirit-filled, empowered ministry with significant evangelistic conversion growth and multi-gifted charismatic breakthroughs. With the evidence that traditional Baptist Churches can be transformed through a spiritual renewal into dynamic, growing congregations which are serving their communities with the power of God, the Holy Spirit Renewal Ministries seeks to assist pastors into a renewal through the programs, influence, and goals of the Holy Spirit Renewal Ministries in American Baptist Churches, Incorporated. The paper will analyze spiritual needs in the denomination, and review the contribution that has, is, and may be made toward true spiritual renewal of pastoral leaders. The paper is presented in three sections. The first part presents the biblical and theological foundation for a Spirit-empowered ministry and a model of a contemporary American Baptist church which experienced the empowered ministry for thirty years. The second section presents an effort by the American Baptist leadership to look at the charismatic renewal within some churches and efforts to encourage other forms of renewal. The third section presents a volunteer renewal ministry of American Baptists seeking to be a catalyst for Holy Spirit-empowered service to assist pastors and congregations into a dynamic New Testament Church ministry of evangelism, nurture and wholeness. The spiritual renewing of a congregation is primarily dependent on the leadership of the pastor by teaching, preaching, modeling, and assisting individuals and groups into the deeper life in the Spirit. Therefore, the pastor must desire and experience an immersion in the Holy Spirit which produces new dimensions of spiritual power and the release of divine giftings which can be communicated to those in the congregation. This paper presents a plan by which the Holy Spirit Renewal Ministries in American Baptist Churches seeks to equip pastoral leaders with the spiritual resources provided in the New Testament to minister more effectively in the contemporary church and world. The Holy Spirit Renewal Ministries desires to see in the American Baptist Churches the fulfillment of the prayer of Paul in his letter to the Church in Ephesus that they "may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God" (Ephesians 3:19), and his exhortation to the Church in Corinth to "Follow the way of love and eagerly desire spiritual gifts" (1 Corinthians 14:2). TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS . iv INTRODUCTION . 1 Chapter PART I: GOD'S DESIGN FOR SPIRIT-EMPOWERED PASTORAL MINISTRY 1. THE BIBLICAL MANDATE FOR SPIRIT-EMPOWERED PASTORS . 7 2. ONE MODEL: FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH, SALEM, NEW HAMPSHIRE 38 PART II: THE NEED FOR RENEWAL—AND DENOMINATIONAL EFFORTS 3. AMERICAN BAPTIST STUDY AFFIRMS CHARISMATIC RENEWAL AND MEETS WITH RESISTANCE . 62 4. THE DECLINING CHURCHES—AND EFFORTS TOWARD RENEWAL . 80 PART III: THE ROLE OF THE HOLY SPIRIT RENEWAL MINISTRIES 5. TRANSITION FROM A FELLOWSHIP TO A FOCUSED MINISTRY . 101 6. THE MINISTRIES OF THE HOLY SPIRIT RENEWAL MOVEMENT . 124 7. AN EVALUATION AND EXPANSION OF THE RENEWAL MINISTRIES 145 8. PREPARE THE WAY BY REMOVING THE OBSTACLES . 172 CONCLUSION . 199 Appendix A. "UNDERSTANDING THE CHARISMATIC RENEWAL IN THE ABC" . 207 B. WCC CHARISMATIC RENEWAL FOR THE CHURCHES . 230 C. GOALS FOR THE HOLY SPIRIT RENEWAL MINISTRIES . 238 D. HOLY SPIRIT CONFERENCE SPEAKERS BY YEARS . 243 E. REGIONAL RENEWAL CONFERENCE GUIDELINES . 245 F. TOPICS OF MESSAGES FOR HOLY SPIRIT RENEWAL MINISTRIES . 248 G. REFRESHING TIMES PUBLICATIONS ON HOLY SPIRIT RENEWAL . 249 BIBLIOGRAPHY . 251 VITA . 258 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Chart Page A. Number of Churches......................................................................................... 84 B. Baptisms........................................................................................................... 85 C. Trends in Baptisms in New England.................................................................. 86 D. Church School Enrollment................................................................................ 87 E. United Mission Support in constant 1978 dollars............................................... 88 F. Tenure of Pastors............................................................................................... 90 G. Trend in Number of Churches by Ethnicity for ABC/USA.............................. 91 © Copyright 2000 by Rev. Dr. Gary Kenneth Clark, Pasadena, California INTRODUCTION "Satan, come help us! He has more power than we do!" shrieked the masculine voice exploding from the attractive thirty-year-old woman seated in my office at the First Baptist Church of Salem, New Hampshire. As the pastor, I had been called on to help this woman who had been brought to me for spiritual counseling. Yet her bizarre behavior was unlike anything I had ever seen before. Throughout the session, she sat there compulsively drawing pentagrams on herself, calling out to Satan and pleading for his help until finally, overcome with exhaustion, she crumpled into a fetal position and slid from the chair onto the carpeted floor. What does a young American Baptist pastor do in this situation? Dial 911 for emergency help from the police? Rush from the office to escape the manifestation of an evil presence? Put in a quick telephone call to the nearest seminary and ask a professor for advice? Find a psychiatrist to prescribe a tranquilizer? Quit the ministry, admitting the demands and threats were beyond anything I had anticipated? Or do what Jesus did when he encountered demonized people. Jesus never called on the Roman soldiers, the resident police force, to subdue a person with evil spirits, not even the demoniac of the Gerasenes. He never fled from the presence of evil manifestations in a person. He never consulted the leading rabbi in Jerusalem for advice. He never sought out the local shaman to administer a drug to that person. Nor did he give up his Messiahship or his mission in defeat. Instead, Jesus cast out demons with authority and power. Mark begins his Gospel record of Jesus' ministry with this account: They went to Capernaum, and when the Sabbath came, Jesus went into the synagogue and began to teach. The people were amazed at his teaching, because he taught them as one who had authority, not as the teachers of the law. 6 7 Just then a man in their synagogue who was possessed by an evil spirit cried out, "What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are—the Holy One of God!" "Be quiet!" said Jesus sternly. "Come out of him!" The evil spirit shook the man violently and came out of him with a shriek. The people were all so amazed that they asked each other, "What is this? A new teaching—and with authority! He even gives orders to evil spirits and they obey him." News about him spread quickly over the whole region of Galilee (Mark 1:21-28, all references are from the New International Version). Today, more than ever before, the ministers of Jesus Christ need to "set the captives free" in the same way Jesus did. Jesus has delegated to us his authority and power to carry out this ministry in his name (Matthew 10:1, 5-8, 28: 18-20; Mark 16: 15-20; Luke 9:1-2, 10:19; Acts 1:4, 5, 8). As pastors, we must be prepared and equipped to perform this ministry in our churches and communities because evil, violence, occult practices, drug abuse, and corruption have accelerated rapidly and have permeated our culture to an unprecedented degree today, especially among our youth. However, despite the Biblical mandate for this kind of ministry, my theological education had not prepared me for such an encounter with this demonized woman, who admitted she had been in a Satanist cult while a university student. Neither the three-year Bible institute where I was taught dispensationalism from the Scofield Bible footnotes and the detailed dispensational charts; nor the Christian liberal arts college where I majored in Bible and theology; nor the conservative theological seminary where I earned the Master of Divinity and Master of Religious Education degrees, had instructed, prepared or equipped me for the challenge. Nevertheless, there in my pastor's study, I had an encounter with a powerful evil spirit. The demons were venting their terror and rage through this woman when they were confronted by the presence of the Holy Spirit in a minister of Jesus Christ. When Jesus cast out the evil spirit from the man in the synagogue, Mark's Gospel tells us the people exclaimed: "What is this? A new teaching—and with authority!" (Mark 1:27). Jesus had initiated an entirely new model of authority and power for pastoral ministry, one that was to become the New Testament pattern not only for Jesus but also 8 for all whom he commissioned. This "new teaching—with authority" is the basis for the term "renewal" used in this paper. It is significant that Mark records this deliverance in the synagogue as Jesus’ first act of ministry after the Holy Spirit, in the form of a dove, had descended on him. Jesus later delegated to his disciples this same authority and power to drive out demons and heal the sick before he sent them out to preach the Gospel of the kingdom.
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