"The brothers and sisters are enthusiastic readers of the Bible and intellectually understand the Word of God. Emotionally, they should be longing for the anointing of the Holy Spirit and ministering by the power of the Holy Spirit," said a pastor when it comes to the definition of a healthy church.
The late 1970s to the 1990s were a period of rapid development for the church in China. The church at that time was full of testimonies of healing the sick and casting out demons. However, many believers do not have a deep understanding of the gospel, and there are ignorant and extreme ideas. For example, some people who are used to praying to other gods and the Buddha tend to worship Christianity as another idol. Others overemphasize miracles and exalt personal spiritual gifts, thereby neglecting biblical truth and causing confusion in the church.
After 2000, when the revival of the Chinese Church shifted from the countryside to the cities began, more and more pastors began to pay attention to theological education. The proliferation of seminaries means that the Chinese church has begun to rationalize.
For many pastors who have lived through the spiritual revival and the two following eras of exaltation of reason and theology, they have experienced more comprehensive things and reflected more deeply. They found that the ministry could not fall into two extremes, which are the one-sided exaltation of spirituality and the one-sided exaltation of reason and theology.
Pastor M is a grassroots pastor living in the north of China and often visits churches around the country to serve.
According to Pastor M, there have been two significant waves influencing the growth of the church in China over the past 40 years or so. One wave comes from Charismatics, especially extreme Charismatics (Pastor M believes that Charismatics are not heretics, but there are extreme phenomena about them), which over-emphasize dialects, worship on bended knees, spiritual songs, and spiritual dances, and believe that there is no rebirth without the gift of tongue. The church at this time is more spiritual and more sensory (experimental). The second wave refers to the return to theology, because the church felt that it had deviated from the truth of the Bible, so it began to carry out theological education on a large scale, but it turned out to be overcorrecting. The Church moved toward rationality and theology, neglecting prayer and the shaping of spiritual life.
Pastor M said, "Church history is like a pendulum effect. There is a period of emphasis on spirituality, on signs and wonders, and on truth. For a period of time, the church lost the power of the Holy Spirit and could not heal the sick or cast out demons because of its emphasis on rationality. Currently, some church pastors refuse to even acknowledge the existence of ghosts and blame mental illness for illnesses like ghost possession. After a period of time, people prayed to seek those miracles ang signs because they were eager to return to spirituality, and the church wanted to pull people back from reason. Then they went too far, thinking that theology was all human theory and had no redeeming qualities."
The Church often walks a fine line between rationality and spirituality (or emotional experience). It's meant to be balanced, but it often ends up being left or right, he explained.
Pastor M used the Reformation of Martin Luther and John Calvin as examples of what balance is. The background of the Reformation was that the Catholic Church was very desolate at that time, and the church needed repairs but had no money. The church at that time created indulgences and began to persuade people to buy indulgences for themselves to ensure their admission to heaven. Later, people could buy indulgences for their dead relatives. Pastor M vividly described, "The saying at that time was that when your money fell into the offering box, your loved ones soon flew from hell to heaven! It is clear that this kind of teaching is completely contrary to the Bible, which teaches salvation by money. But salvation is by the grace of God, and man is justified by faith, not by works of man."
In Pastor M's view, it was necessary to exalt God's sovereignty at that time, while the Reformation was also necessary. "But the context of today's times is very different from that of Calvin's Reformation; there is no church that makes people pay for indulgences, and there is no emphasis on works. On the contrary, many people misunderstand justification by faith. They believe that because it is morally justifiable, there is no need for them to do anything. Some even think that since they have been saved, it does not matter what sin they have committed because they'll get a pardon anyway!" he added.
In this context, Pastor M suggests that we consider James' theology: "Faith without works is dead." He stressed that "the center of the cross is balance, and salvation is God's sovereignty, but it also requires a human response." The saved Christian has the duty and obligation to live out the honor and holiness of his birth and needs to live out the testimony commensurate with his salvation. Response is not the condition of salvation; it is the manifestation of salvation. When the pendulum has swung in favor of human behavior, then we have to pull the pendulum back and tell people that we will be saved only by God's grace. And when people feel that they can be saved no matter what, we will tell them that the saved person needs to live up to their actions."
For mature churches and mature Christians, there must be both the framework and theory of theological truth as guidance, and the prayer of life and the witness of life. Theology can help us realize the truth, and there is a balance between truth and spirituality (life).
Pastor M also pointed out that theology is not a substitute for truth, but we need different theological guidance in different situations. In conclusion, we need a balance between denying neither the significance of spirituality nor the significance of theology.
- Translated by Nicolas Cao
