Show Notes
What if the gospel is both more strange and more gracious than we’ve dared to imagine?
In this episode of Peaceable and Kind, Derek Vreeland sits down with pastor and author Andrew Arndt to talk about his latest book, A Strange and Gracious Light: How the Story of Jesus Changes the Way We See Everything. From the poetry of R.S. Thomas to the wisdom of Athanasius, Eugene Peterson, and Pope John Paul II, Andrew explores how the gospel disrupts our assumptions and invites us into a richer way of life.
Key Takeaways
Why the gospel is both gracious and strange—and why holding the tension matters.
How the church calendar helps us live inside the story of Jesus year-round.
What it means to be people of the incarnation—finding God’s presence in ordinary life.
Why the church is called to propose the way of Jesus, not impose it.
A fresh vision of the Holy Spirit’s work—in both extraordinary miracles and the quiet, ordinary moments of life.
Scriptures mentioned in this episode:
Romans 5:8
John 1:14
Matthew 27:54
Mark 15:39
Books mentioned in this podcast:
A Strange and Gracious Light: How the Story of Jesus Changes the Way We See Everything, Andrew Arndt
Streams in the Wasteland, Andrew Arndt
All Flame, Andrew Arndt
The Chapel, R.S. Thomas
On the Incarnation, St. Athanasius
Spiritual Theology and Liturgical Theology, Simon Chan
Order Derek’s new book, Incarnation: 8 Lessons on How God Meets Us here: https://amzn.to/42jSZAs
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Transcript
Narrator: Welcome back to Another episode of Peaceable and Kind. I am your host, Derek Vreeland. Thank you for joining me for this episode. And I know you are going to enjoy this one. I have a conversation for You that I know you’re going to love. But before we jump into that conversation, let me encourage you to leave a rating and review if you like what we’re doing here at Peaceable and Kind. If you haven’t subscribed, do that right now. Wherever you’re listening to this podcast, go ahead and subscribe. And if you know someone who could enjoy the kind of content we’re producing, feel free to share this episode or a previous episode. All of those things help. My guest today is Andrew Arnt. He’s the lead pastor of New Life East, one of six congregations of New Life Church. in Colorado Springs. He is an avid reader and runner, and I’m just now learning part-time physical therapist. And so we have a lot in common. He’s the author of three books that I love: All Flame, Streams in the Wasteland, that I led a group through last summer. And a new book, A Strange and Gracious Light, How the Story of Jesus Changes the Way We See Everything. And we’re going to talk about that one today. Andrew received his MDiv from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and a Doctor of Ministry degree from Western Theological Seminary. He lives in Colorado Springs with his wife Mandy and their four kids. Andrew, welcome to Peaceable and Kind. Man, I’m so happy to be hanging with you, Derek. Thanks for having me, man. I am so glad anytime I have a chance to talk to you or email, chat, text. I’m always encouraged and you’ve already encouraged me with your physical therapy tips before we recorded. And so I appreciate it. And though I have appreciated you even before I knew who you were And uh your writing and your pastoral ministry uh has been one that has uh encouraged me as a pastor. And I feel like We have a very similar spiritual journey and we’re interested in the same things and writing the same things. We now have the same agent and writing books for pastoring people in the way of Jesus and we’re both runners and we have lots in common. I I love that. Wow. Well congrats by the way on the new book. I know it’s not new new, but it’s new to me. I got it when it came out and it went into the reading queue and you know how that works. Those things get get cluttered with books. Yeah, they do. But I absolutely enjoyed a strange and gracious light. And what talk a little bit about it? Let’s start with just that, the title, because you weave that. theme of the gospel as both strange and gracious, you weave that theme all throughout the book. So what do you mean by calling the gospel both strange and gracious and how do you see those two qualities in in tension somewhat in the Christian life?
Derek Vreeland: Well that’s a really good question. You can thank Herald Press actually for the gracious part. Okay. Strange and Gracious Light. That was their recommendation. The initial title of the book was just Strange Light, which I got from an R. S. Thomas poem. So R. S. Thomas, a Welsh priest poet in the last century, who was kind of a crotchety old guy, but he saw the beauty of God and the sacredness of everything And um as much as he could be kind of I mean, as a priest, you know, he could be crabby about the church. He also saw the potency of the church and he saw the beauty that was latent in the church. And so He has this um he has this wonderful poem called The Chapel, where he sort of paints this picture of a decaying church building. set inside this like gray kind of decaying community where really not very much is happening and death is sort of enclosing itself around this community and the building. And then he has this great moment where he says, but here once on an evening like this, the preacher caught fire and burned steadily with a strange light. So that they saw the splendor of the barren mountains and sang their amens fiercely, narrow but saved in a way that men are not now. And I remember right and I remember the first time I read that and I it gives me goosebumps even to like quote it because it gave me goosebumps when I read it and I was like, man, as a preacher That’s kind of the moment that I’m contending for is that we’re, you know, Eugene Peterson talked about how the church is like a colony of heaven living in a country of death. And we’re enclosed by so much death, and I think as preachers what we’re contending for is we’re contending for the outbreak of the light. of God in the middle of all this darkness, but it is a strange light and it always hits us with its with its strangeness. So I what I wanted the title to just be Strange Light because I thought that was real nice and succinct. And then Harold Press was like, okay. But that’s a little forbidding. Shouldn’t we also say that it’s gracious too? And I fought them a little bit on it and they won. And they were right. Um because I think it’s right to s I think it’s right to say it that way. And I think I think the gospel is gracious just in its strangeness. And it’s also strange just in how gracious it is to us. So the strangeness of it, I think um, you know, God is not the answer to all of our questions. I think that God and the good news of the gospel in many ways is like the question mark against all of our questions. And Jesus, as we know from the gospels, he very rarely answers a question directly, usually he answers a question with a question. So what he’s trying to do is he’s trying to reframe the conversation. ‘Cause we come to God with what we think are our needs, but then God kind of turns it around and he’s like, is that really actually it? Uh how about we shift the conversation to a whole new level? And it’s just as we allow God to do that that our lives actually begin to change and we experience the graciousness of our God. And also I just think the sheer graciousness of God is part of the strangeness of God and the gospel too. That as Paul says You know, you might go out of your way to die for somebody who was a decent person, but for somebody who was a real scoundrel, who would ever do that? But God shows his love for us in this, that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. So when the whole human project was a complete wreck, God looked at that and thought it was worth the life of his son. And the Eternal Trinity decided to lay the life of the Eternal Trinity on the line to to to save us? What? So that is so gracious that it can’t help but strike us as strange. And if we ever lose the sense of how strange it is, I think we lose the whole kit and caboodle. So I I like the I think Errol Press was right. I like the tension of that, because I think it’s too easy to domesticate God. So we need to recover strangeness. And it’s also too easy to forget the extravagance of how good God is. It’s easy to forget just how gracious God is. So I don’t know. I think you gotta put them together.
Narrator: Yeah, no, it it does work. And the strangeness in particular, because you know there’s a certain form of American evangelicalism that strives to make the gospel so relevant and applicable. to the, you know, suburban lifestyle that they they lose the true nature of the gospel and that it’s weird. It’s strange. It’s counterintuitive Yes. And it’s it’s in discovering the strangeness that we see the beauty of it.
Derek Vreeland: Well, I think that that’s exactly right. And I think I I I just think that the gospel has this way Like uh you said it so well, like in American evangelicalism, so often it’s like we’re plugging God into these taken for granted American lives that are upwardly mobile and the American dream, all of that, and then God winds up being the sort of the the cherry of transcendence on top of a life that’s already mostly put together, but what the gospel is doing is it’s trying to destabilize the whole thing. And it always does that, again in s in the most surprising ways. You know, it’s it’s very rarely kind of out and out revolution. It’s more like just a quiet question that gnaws at us until eventually it changes our lives. Like I think about a good example of this from the New Testament. you know, is the letter uh Philemon is such a great letter, right? So Paul has got this runaway slave that he becomes friends with. in prison and of course the slave becomes, you know, is taken into the the glory of God and develops a relationship with Jesus. And so he’s sending the slave back. And the way that he sends the slave back to this friend of his, you know, is he’s like, Hey, um, by the way, I want you to take him back no longer just as a servant, but now as a dear brother And then Paul’s like, and oh by the way, as soon as I get out of prison, I’m gonna come and hang out with you for a little bit so make sure the guest room is available. So it’s not like an out and out assault on this system, and yet it is. Isn’t it? And so there is the graciousness of God is like in that, but it’s planting a question mark against this system that it was hundreds of years in the making before the thing would fall down. But it but fall down it did. And the gospel was a big piece of why it fell down in our world. So I think those dynamics, you know, I just think that we have to especially with American Christians we have to come to grips with that. Like what is it that the gospel is challenging that we’re not letting it challenge? It is not God is not the cherry of transcendence on the top of our already put together liars. God is the question mark against the whole thing.
Narrator: I love it. I love it. And I think that strangeness makes the gospel more attractive in a very noisy world where I think some Christians just try to better up the world in that crazy chaotic noisy uh space, but then the gospel comes in as something totally other and I think it captures people’s attention. I love that you use the church calendar, the liturgical calendar to to structure the book. And uh you and I come from similar places in our spiritual journey uh where we didn’t grow up with the church calendar, but I have found it to be indispensable in spiritual formation. How is it that telling the story of Jesus via the church calendar helps us see everything in a new light? Mm. Well, that’s that’s a good question.
Derek Vreeland: Yeah, I didn’t grow up with the church calendar at all, except like most people, you know, Christmas and Easter, those were kind of the the linchpins of it. But I think it was somewhere in seminary. I was in seminary from the time three years, so twenty-two to twenty-five or so years old and coming out of the non-denominational Pentecostal charismatic world I think part of what I was trying to do was I was trying to like we had such a great like subjective experience of the Holy Spirit, which I know we’re want to talk about the Holy Spirit, but subjective experience of the Holy Spirit, but the objective side of the faith I didn’t have good foundations for that. And so being in seminary was such a treat because it was like, oh, okay, so here’s here’s like revealed truth. You can build your life on this. And the cornerstone of revealed truth is just Jesus. He is the one word that God has been speaking from all eternity and keeps speaking. So it’s Jesus, Jesus, Jesus Well it’s a short leap from there to going, okay, so how would you live in the story of Jesus and the life of Jesus all the time Oh, as it turns out, there’s a historical apparatus for this and it’s called the church calendar. And what most Christians have are a couple of the peaks of the church calendar jutting up out of the water, Christmas and Easter. So you just see that But if you go below the surface, there’s this whole landscape of the life of Jesus. And so, you know, Paul says that it’s in in God that we live and move and have our being, and Jesus is our access into God. So I think we’ve got to find as many ways as possible as just staying inside the texture of the story of Jesus. And that somehow is the good news that changes our lives. And that also gets to part of what I’m arguing for in the book is that I think as a American evangelical Christians, I just think our sense of gospel is way too small. It’s way too narrow. So it’s just kind of about the death and the resurrection of Jesus and what that achieves for us. But if death and resurrection was the only thing about Jesus that was significant as theologians have asked for centuries, why wasn’t it just sufficient for Jesus to be born? Incarnation happens, and then bang, he dies and he’s raised to life. There’s actually a life there And that life is a saving life. And the ongoing life of Jesus is a saving life. So I I think Robert Denson said it best when he said that the gospel is the story of Jesus told as a promise. Yeah. And what happens is we immerse ourselves in the Jesus story is we see all of the ways in which the story of Jesus covers the waterfront of the human experience. It gives us wisdom for how to live, it gives us insight for how to live, it challenges our take it for granted lives, it shows us what it means to be human, honestly, and the way that God would be human if God decided to be human among us, which he did as our mutual friend. Kenneth Tanner says that we’ll never be fully human until we’re human like Jesus is human. And so it’s something about watching the divine life play itself out in the human life. It helps us know, okay, so that’s what the Holy Spirit is doing in me. The Holy Spirit is making me like this man. Okay, well that changes the whole face then of how I engage with the life that God has given me to live.
Narrator: Yeah, I loved uh the chapter you did on incarnation and I love the little phrase that you used about being people. of incarnation. Let me read just a little bit from that chapter and and ask a question. This is in chapter two, you write Being a people of incarnation is about believing that since everything is shot through with the divine presence, everywhere is potentially a place of communion. And that at any time we may be gobsmacked by holiness when we least expect it. And uh that was one of the like and this is just a sampling of just your great writing. But that was one when I read it, I stopped and meditated a little bit. And I know you write this in the context of your role as a pastor. to, as you say, put people back into their lives so that they can see their ordinary lives as a place of communion, as the opportunity to encounter God’s presence. So What does it mean for us to be people of the incarnation?
Derek Vreeland: Yeah. For me, my journey with this has been, you know, I think I mean, again, growing up charismatic, we believed in the incarnation, but um I think that our spirituality was kind of disincarnate. So the m the important thing was encountering God in the interiority of the heart or encountering God in sacred times and sacred places. So worship services and prayer meetings. But we just didn’t have a very robust account of the will of God for the rest of life. Right. And how God intended to meet us in the rest of life. And I think what has been eye-opening, or was eye-opening, continues to be eye-opening for me as I read the scriptures is just how seriously God takes ordinary life outside of quote unquote sacred times and sacred spaces. And that’s written into the very earliest chapters of the Bible. I mean, God makes this whole cosmos not so that he can eventually make a worship center that he meets people in, but he makes a cosmos. So that he might walk about in the garden in the cool of the day with his people. And then explicitly he says to his people in the Old Testament, I will live among you and walk among you. And I will be your God and you will be my people. And again, that’s not just in sacred times and places, but it’s everywhere. In fact in Deuteronomy, I can’t remember if I mentioned this in the book, but at one point in Deuteronomy, Moses is giving instructions on what to do if you have to relieve yourself. And he’s like, if you should have to, you know, go number two, he’s like, do it outside the camp and bring a shovel with you so that you can cover it up so that the Lord who walks about in your camp in about in your camp will not see that and kinda be embarrassed of it and you know what I mean? Like it disrupts the relationship. Like I mean what an instruction. Like what if you gotta do your business, do it the right way so that it’s it’s not like it’s not like discourteous to the living God. in the same way that you wouldn’t want it to be discourteous to other humans. That’s how close God wants to get to us. And then of course that that is all call it culminates in the incarnation, which is translating, you can’t do better than Eugene Peterson. you know, uh John 1 14, yeah the word became flesh and blood and moved into our neighborhood. And so what that does then, and you know this because you you’re into this guy too, St. Athanasius. in his book on the incarnation, he says that when the king moves into the city, the whole city is honored. There you go. So it’s not just that we go to meet the king in the kingly hall. But then all of a sudden there’s a new kind of aura about everything. The king dignifies the city by being and I think that when you begin to appreciate that It changes the whole way that you think about your whole life. Now there’s nothing that’s incidental. Everything matters because God made it, because God loves it, because God intends to have communion with you in it. Therefore How I raise my kids, how I treat my neighbors, how I treat my body, how I handle the physical things of the environment that I’m in. All of this is the Garden of Eden given for my good pleasure and given for communion with God. And if I’m disrespectful of any piece of that then I am disrespectful of God. And to the extent that I’m disrespectful of God, I’m also disrespectful of myself. My own sense of holiness is corroding in the world. My own humanity falls apart because I’ve failed to be attentive to the living God who lives and moves about in our camp to make us holy. So what does it mean to be a people of the incarnation? It means to take seriously the fact that God lives with us. That’s right. God’s in the house. Wherever that house is, whatever we’re doing, God’s here. We’re walking with God. And that should be a source of intense pleasure And then everything about our lives should be a source of intense pleasure that we share with the living God. You know, like I go on these walks a couple of times a day around my house, and maybe it’s just a product of getting older, but I walk by the same trees down the same path around the same marsh every day.
Guest: And every day I’m like, wow.
Derek Vreeland: Yes. You did this. We’re sharing this. W existence is a thing. Yeah. You didn’t have to do this. There was no lack in you God, but out of this sheer abundance of wanting to share with something other than God, you made all of this splendor and us and invited us to know you in it? What? What and what happens is that if my spirit is kind of sagging low from the burdens of the day, all of a sudden I find that it’s like just buoyed up. By yeah, gratitude for God is with us.
Narrator: We have everything to hope for and nothing to fear, you know? Praise God. I gotta jump into this podcast episode to let you know I have a new book that’s out. Incarnation. Eight lessons on how God meets us is available now. Go order it. Link is in the show notes. And isn’t that what we all want? I mean, we want to reach. You’re describing the kind of good life that people want. Yes. And it’s found through the incarnation. I love that. Yes. I love it. I love it. And the chapter on Lent, you focus on the weakness of power and the power of weakness, and you quote uh Pope John Paul II. And again, to read from your book to get the quote, the church addresses people with full respect for their freedom. And this is the quote from John Paul II. Her mission does not restrict freedom, but rather promotes it. And then you you quote this line again when I read it, stop, meditate. chew on this, the church proposes, she imposes nothing. And this is in the context of reflecting on the suffering and death of Jesus, which is not only For our salvation, but it is also showing us how to be human, how to be fully human and fully alive. So what does it look like when the church is proposing things versus imposing things. Draw up that contrast.
Derek Vreeland: For sure. I mean I think again we’re just kind of looking at the life of Jesus and trying to figure out the patterns of humanness. And Jesus in the early part of his ministry, there are grand demonstrations of signs and wonders and miracles, and of course the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness is to more signs and wonders and miracles and grand demonstrations of power. And Jesus enters into the grand demonstrations of power here and there. But what is very noteworthy is that um very few people are actually like converted to his cause by that And as he starts pivoting towards the cross, you see that a lot of these signs and wonders, the power, the the that raw power diminishes as he starts moving towards his self-emptying. And it’s not until in several of the gospel accounts, Matthew and Mark, I think, it’s not until Jesus is exhausted, powerless on the cross, that anybody really finally gets it. And it’s a Roman centurier who’s who’s centurion who says, Oh gosh. That’s the son of God. And so God could try to coerce us into the kingdom, but I think God, I mean, he’s the maker of the human heart. He knows the human heart. So nobody was ever won over to relationship or to love by power. Um and that doesn’t mean that power is a bad thing. We need power to do certain kinds of things in the world. And of course, and I talk about this a little bit in the book, the restraining of evil in the world is like a really important thing and power is a key part of that. So if I have a madman loose on my streets brandishing a weapon, I am grateful for the police to be able to restrain. And so that’s a good thing. But what does that do for that man’s heart? Does it change his heart? Probably not. What’s gonna change his heart is somebody entering into relationship with him, figuring out what was really going on there, and if he opens his heart to that, it will change his life. And of course that encounter itself will be an encounter with the Holy Spirit. So that’s a long way of answering the question and coming around to it. I think that sometimes in culture, what the church has done is the church has said to itself, Man, if we can just get the right people in power, if we can just enact the right legislation, if we can just kind of seize the reins of you name it. one of those mountains out there, you know? The seven mountains or whatever it is. If we can just get in control of that, then we’ll really be able to turn the tide of culture for Jesus. And I think if the life of Jesus shows us anything, it’s that that’s not the way that anybody’s won over the kingdom. You’ll get power and that will be good or bad. We’ll see how that goes. But you won’t. What you won’t get is hearts That’s it. And so somehow what the church has to do, even if we’re players in a power game, and we are, because we vote and we there are things that we care about. We still have to like the absolute essence of our lives is that we’re coming to the world with open hands and we’re showing them this way and we’re saying, Would you consider this? Are you willing to take a step towards this? If it commends itself to your conscience, if you’re captivated by the beauty of the Lord in the same way that we are, won’t you take a step towards it? And I think that that to me that’s the most effective public witness. the most effective evangelism. I can’t remember if I tell the story in the book, but when I think about this, I always think about a story from my childhood where we had a traveling minister coming come through town. And my pastor took him to the mall on the Saturday before he preached and because he had to buy some new shoes. So they went to this shoe store and he picked out his shoes and he was at the cash register. And he’s checking out, you know, he gives his money and the gal gives him change and my pastor and the minister are talking with one another. And then all of a sudden the minister stops what he’s doing, talking to my pastor, and he looks at the gal behind the counter and he goes Do you have a relationship with Jesus? And she goes, well no. And he goes Well you have a lot to look forward to, don’t you? Eddie Lam.
Guest: I love that.
Derek Vreeland: So there’s no like, well, why don’t you have a relationship with Jesus? And today could be the day. And if you died in a car accident tonight. So the the utter refusal to leverage any kind of power to get her to make a decision to satisfy his own anxiety is so compelling to me. He just goes, You’ve got a lot to look forward to, and he walks away. And that’s that kind of thing is a scandal to most evangelicals Sure. But that resonates to me. I just think that that’s the truth of it. I think that uh the truth of it is that God is getting down on his knee in front of humanity and he’s proposing, Would you marry me? And that is freely accepted or freely rejected. But what he doesn’t do is he he doesn’t go, You’re gonna put this ring on your finger. But it’s not. And we shouldn’t be doing that either. We are on our knees before the culture saying, Do you see the beauty of the Lord? Would you be willing? And we let them make their decisions, you know? That’s how the world is won.
Narrator: Yeah, I I’ve said it uh uh time and again that the way of Jesus is the way of invitation, not the way of manipulation. And I think for people who want to jump into the culture wars, you know, whether it’s through legislation or just through rhetoric, again their mentality is we have to win the culture. and convince them, whether rhetorically or through legislation, that we’re right, you’re wrong, and that kind of imposition is really pushing people away. And that imposition is not the way of Jesus. You see Jesus Constantly asking the question, what do you want me to do for you? Come follow me. It’s this ongoing uh invitation. And sinners were drawn to the beauty of Jesus. And I think if we can That that’s our proposal. I love that so much. Let’s talk about the Holy Spirit. Oh, please. My my background starts in the Southern Baptist world. Uh yeah, that’s right. Yeah. I was baptized, Southern Baptist. the I was a youth group kid in the early 90s, Southern Baptist world, and my Baptist teachers taught me to read the Bible, love the Bible, be devoted to the scriptures. And I’m grateful for that because I’m still devoted to the scriptures. But I started asking questions about the Holy Spirit that they were not prepared to answer. As a teenager, I didn’t even know what cessationism was, but they were cessationists. And so As a teenager asking my questions about the Holy Spirit, they just said, Well, that doesn’t happen anymore. I’m like, well, I’m reading the book of Acts, and people are speaking in tongues, and there’s miracles, and that doesn’t happen. I’m like, what do you mean it doesn’t happen anymore? Where does the Bible say Yeah. And my entrance into the charismatic renewal was not first experiential, it was it was biblical, it was theological And so my years in the charismatic renewal I’m also forever grateful for. When we were talking about incarnation, it’s so true that in my experience in Pentecostal charismatic churches, the idea of the power presence of God It’s in those sacred places, worship services, prayer meetings, as you said, and I do miss the ordinary. I I do w want to say though, I appreciate the Pentecostal Charismatic tradition for resisting Gnostic themes because of the healing ministry, that God loves the human body Yeah. And so God wants to heal your body, and that I appreciate. But in the book, A Strange and Gracious Light, you end with Pentecost because The way the church calendar is structured is it’s telling the story of Jesus from Advent to Pentecost. And the outpouring of the Spirit is a part of telling the Jesus story right because you can’t lop off the Jesus story at resurrection or ascension because it is the spirit of Jesus poured out on the people of Jesus that completes the Jesus story because we’re the the people of Jesus. So you describe in the book that you are a charismatic all the way down. And uh all the way down. I love that you embrace that because I still do. I typically will say I’m a charismatic with a seat belt on, uh but I I I mean I still I still pray in tongues. Um I still pray for the sick and believe in miracles. But why is the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, which we will remember on the day of Pentecost, necessary for telling the story of Jesus, right? Wow, what a great question.
Derek Vreeland: Well, I think the simplest way to answer that is that you don’t get included if salvation is not just God giving a ticket, you a ticket to heaven when you die. But it’s a full inclusion in the Trinitarian life, which is made possible by Jesus. You don’t get that except by way of the Holy Spirit. So the Holy Spirit is the one who unites us to Jesus, draws us into the life of Christ So as a charismatic, you know, I’m born and raised in the movement and um and I am charismatic all the way down. I was really pretty when I got to college, I went to Oral Roberts University. Which there’s so many things about that I’m so grateful for. I was also there during its most unhe unhealthy years, like ninety nine to oh three. And there was so much stuff that happened like in our chapel services publicly. I’m in Tulsa, which is kind of the epicenter of charismatic Christianity That I was just like, if this is where this whole thing goes, um, wild prophecies, this kind of like melding of the charismatic, the gifts of the spirit with you know, the political right, the wild excesses of the prosperity gospel, blah, blah, blah. If this is where it goes, I can’t have any part of that. And what was and I was so I was really ready to let it all go. And it was being at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, a reformed seminary in the upper Midwest, where I’m reading the Bible very honestly and with fresh eyes, going, Well, okay, there’s a lot of excess in my movement, but you can’t have Christianity apart from the Holy Spirit, everything that God wants to do for us happens by way of the Holy Spirit. We’re united with Christ. We are made able to say Jesus is Lord. We’re given the Abba cry. We’re allowed to intercede. We’re given gifts that build up the body of Christ. We’re led by the Spirit. I mean, just go all the way down the thing. So why is it so important? Well, because there is no we’re still outside of God. if we don’t have the Holy Spirit. So what I want to say is rather than being like, okay, let’s say yes to the Holy Spirit, but let’s be cautious about that, I wanna say, oh heck no. Throw caution all the way to the wind, be as open to the Holy Spirit as the people in the Bible are open to the Holy Spirit Which is to say, are you ready for the Holy Spirit to rip the roof off the place and descend in tongue to fire? Yes. And create and inaugurate a movement where people are swept up into the kingdom and there’s healings and signs and wonders and all that. So if God has given it to the church, don’t say no Right to it for heaven’s sakes. So I just think that you have to have it and I think the best way to have the experience of this spirit again is to have it in a fully biblical way. Sure. And a way that’s really grounded in the norms of church teaching and church history. That to me creates that kind of container is the wrong word, but the sort of structure that ensures that that vital life of the spirit is moving about in the church in a way that’s healthy for all of us because it’s possible to misuse some of the good things that the spirit gives. So I’m a charismatic all the way down. I like to say that I’m a great tradition charismatic. There you go. So I’m reading Augustine and praying in tongues.
Narrator: Yeah, I think it’s most helpful when the uh charismatic and Pentecostal tradition recognizes the need for structure. Um Simon Chan is a Pentecostal scholar from Singapore. He wrote spiritual theology, liturgical theology, and one of his earlier books, he he says that the Pentecostal charismatic tradition. only serves to grow and mature when it’s more connected to the greater body of Christ in the great tradition Where Pentecostals have typically wanted to emphasize their distinctiveness. And so Chan argues that if Pentecostals will embrace more of their connectivity, to the greater body of Christ, they grow. And so I think it’s the best of both worlds when you can incorporate the wonderful gifts from the great tradition, like the church calendar. That does give some structure because we’ve seen historically with the Montanist movement and things that charismatic gifts can lead the church astray because ultimately what the Holy Spirit wants to do is draw our attention to Jesus. Yeah. Of the Holy Trinity because God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but Jesus gets all the attention, right? So the Father sends the Son. Mm-hmm. that the son might be the exact image and representation of the father. And then through the son, the father pours out the spirit. And Jesus said, when the spirit of truth comes, he will glorify me. He will, he will remind you of what I have said. So we forget the Holy Spirit a little bit because I think the Spirit chooses that backseat position because the attention goes to Jesus, which is not to. decrease our Trinitarian awareness, but to recognize this is what the Spirit’s doing in our midst, not leading us away to Jesus, but closer to Jesus. That way we might become fully human, the way Jesus was fully human. Yeah. And uh so we so we need that. We need Augustine and we need the gifts of the Spirit. I say I’m here for all of it.
Derek Vreeland: And I think that we need to recognize that the Holy Spirit is not just found. in the extraordinary and what we might call the supernatural or the outlandish. I think that’s I think that’s a big part of the problem. And then we wind up just chasing the extraordinary all the time. And we should long for the extraordinary and we should long for the miraculous, and we should also know that the spirit is the one who inspires perfectly boring church services too.
Narrator: That’s right.
Derek Vreeland: And the spirit is the one who inspires perfectly boring times of prayer. I mean a real a real breakthrough for me in my own spirituality was coming to grips with contemplative prayer as a form of encountering the spirit. And I was conditioned to like every time I was in my devotional time, I needed to pray in tongues until the fire fell. And I got disappointed with that so many times and eventually kind of thought, well, maybe my faith is broken and it’s not working. And it took me a while before I realized actually this is normal. Sometimes the spirit comes as the mighty rushing wind and sometimes the spirit is the quiet whisperer. Sometimes the spirit is actually the experience of the nothingness of God. Yes. And sometimes even that is its own kind of grace. Where like if I’m in the middle Of a real busy stretch where my nervous system is just shot to death. You know, and I’m just like, I’m blowing and going. And if I get into a prayer time Sometimes the last thing that I need is for a dramatic encounter with the Holy Spirit. Sometimes I feel like the grace of God is to just be like, Andrew, We’re just gonna sit here for a half an hour and I’m not gonna talk and you’re not gonna really talk. We’re just gonna be together and that in its own way is healing. So I think that so a more robust and healthy account of the Holy Spirit Is that he’s not just the spirit, the spirit is not just the spirit of the outlandish, but the spirit of the mundane. The spirit is the one who is transfiguring our ordinary lives and making them a place of communion with Jesus, you know. The whole thing is Trinitarian.
Narrator: So Yeah, yeah. So so important. I had this conversation with a church member yesterday who comes from a a charismatic background and we were talking about the days of the when we were both w in different, you know, places geographically, but in those Pentecostal prayer meetings where it’s like harp and bold, you know, and like warring tongues and all that, I remember being in those prayer meetings, but now we have learned, just as you said, the value of the contemplative tradition. Yes. And so we have a um we have a local Catholic adoration chapel. uh here in in our in our city. And I’d driven by it dozens and dozens of times, but but last year in taking a a little mini sabbatical break, I went for the first time. And I went so an adoration chapel, for those who don’t know, is a Catholic devotional space, which is made up of silence. There is there’s no there’s no verbal praying, singing, scripture reading. It’s just silence. And I went in with my Bible, because you know I’m still a good Baptist. I I’m I’m a Baptist with the seatbelt on, but I have my Bible. I have my notebook. And I thought, I’m giving this 15 minutes. Um, I’ve been growing personally in canipulative prayer, but not extended times of silence. I sat there for an hour in silence and towards the end I began to journal. Things were happening. And so I share that same experience that, yes, I have been in worship services even recently. that are powerful, loud, and transformative. And I’m here for it. But I also seek out those quiet places. Because Dallas Willard says when you practice silence and solitude The first thing you will learn is that you have a soul, that you have an interior life. And so I’m with you, brother. Let’s lead people into recognizing the power and presence of the spirit in the ordinary, in the boring, and yes, in the silence. Amen. Thanks for joining me, Andrew, for this conversation. We could go on and on. So we’ll definitely do this again, brother. But thank you for joining me for this episode. Pleasure. Thanks for having me. Well that’s all that we have for today. Go out and find and purchase a strange and gracious light. How the story of Jesus Changes the Way We See Everything by Andrew Arnt. Actually, go find this book and get All Flame and get uh Streams in the Wasteland. I love everything that Andrew writes. Go find him on social media. We’ll put links in the show notes, but that’s it for today.
Guest: Go in peace and be kind.
This transcript was generated with AI and may contain errors.