When we think of the church today, most Christian thinkers recognize the importance of continuity with the past. While the apostolic succession did not protect the purity of the church, people do insist that there be a recognizable connection between the contemporary church and what Jesus taught during his time on earth. While for the Protestant segment of the church, that continuity comes through Scripture rather than a series of people, the continuity is important all the same.
One of the characteristics that does distinguish the Christian community from other efforts at spiritualism is its continuity with that original witness to what took place when Jesus exercised his ministry here on earth. It is not enough to gather together and seek to reach for an undefined higher power. That power for the church is defined by the person of Jesus of Nazareth. The church is grounded in an historic reality.
The presence of the Spirit has been emphasized by the charismatic branch of the church. Many mainline denominations failed for many years to emphasize the presence of the Spirit in the practice of the faith. The current flourishing of the charismatic stream of the faith gives ample evidence to the danger of ignoring the power of the Spirit within the church. In some sense, their success reflects a popular judgement of this lack of emphasis in other churches. While the confirmation of the Spirit may seem to many to be highly subject to manipulation, no one would want to suggest that the absence of the Spirit is acceptable.
Loren Mead sees the integrating of the charismatic expressions of spirituality into the heart of the Christian experience as one of the significant challenges for the future of the church. (Five Challenges; Loren Mead, pp.32-42) Harvey Cox, who in the sixties was an important interpreter of the church’s response to secularization, described the global impact of the contemporary charismatic movement in his book Fire From Heaven. (Addison-Wesley, 1995) If such a powerful experience is severed from the continuity of the Christian tradition, both will suffer a major loss. As Mead points out, the church which ignores the charismatic is in danger of becoming sterile and lifeless and the church which ignores the historic tradition can easily succumb to pride and risks irrationality. (Ibid pp. 38-39) If, as Bonhoeffer suggests, the Christian faith is more than an idea or a truth but is a personal encounter with the Christ, then it has to provide something that includes but is more than the rational. As people, we go deeper than our thought process and our faith must include that which touches us at that deeper level.
