The Charismatic Renewal Movement (CRM)

Dear Pastors

Three months ago, 20 of us met for a weekend in Wellington to reflect on the CRM. It was a marvellous occasion as we shared memories and experiences during the early days of the CRM, namely the 60’s, 70’s and much of the 80’s and mostly in and around Wellington. We talked about the (many) high’s and the (few) low’s of the CRM and what we would say to a younger generation of Pastors who know very little of this life transforming, church transforming and mission transforming movement. Murray (and Marj) Robertson were with us. Murray was the Senior Pastor of Spreydon Baptist Church (now South West) for over 40 years, a church and Pastor that has been hugely influential in NZ and very much at the forefront of the CRM.

I asked Murray (now semi-retired) if he would write a ‘guest’ blog for me on the CRM. Here it is:

On Easter Sunday 1960 Dennis Bennett the Episcopal Rector of fashionable Van Nuys parish in Southern California stepped into the pulpit and told his congregation that he had been baptised in the Holy Spirit and spoken in tongues. Most commentators date that event as the beginning of what was to become known as the charismatic movement.

At Easter 1960 I had been a follower of Jesus for one year since the Billy Graham Crusade in Wellington. I had been invited by some friends to a Baptist Easter camp where I joined in a prayer meeting with some young people from Titahi Bay whose pastor was Trevor Chandler. They were a passionate bunch speaking in tongues and displaying other signs of the Spirit’s presence. I week later I was prayed for and experienced my own encounter with the Holy Spirit. So in a very real sense I was in on the start of this global movement.

The global Pentecostal movement is generally thought to have begun in the Asuza Street awakening in East Los Angeles in 1906. Up till then it had generally been believed for many centuries that the more spectacular gifts of the Holy Spirit that had been present in the early church had died out with the apostles. But now they were occurring in the 20th century. The problem was that Azusa Street was on the wrong side of the tracks for most main stream churches, so for the next half century although the Pentecostal movement grew rapidly it was mostly a phenomenon among churches of the less well off and normally looked on with distain by mainline churches. But now the same things were starting to happen in these same main line churches.

There were differences with the Pentecostals in the way they understood the nature of spiritual gifts and expressed themselves in worship, but there was a great deal of commonality of experience too. Within a few years Catholics in the US also began to have charismatic experiences and this rapidly spread around the world leading to some remarkable grassroots gatherings of Pentecostal, Protestants and Catholics together in ways that a few years before no one could have imagined.

One of the most obvious signs of the impact of the renewal was its impact on worship. Those who have arrived on the scene in the last couple of decades could not appreciate the remarkable changes that have happened to the nature of our worship. The previous pattern was affectionately known as the ‘hymn sandwich’. Hymn-prayer-hymn-reading-hymn-sermon-hymn. In New Zealand Scripture in Song was formed, with scripture passages set to music expressing praise directly to God, and the impact of this spread around the world.

Some remarkable missional movements developed as part of the overall movement. The Jesus movement began in the early 70’s also in Southern California when hippies started coming to Jesus in significant numbers. This movement was also to spread around the Western world. New mission societies formed like YWAM, Pioneers and Frontiers reaching people groups that had previously been unreached with the gospel. Then in the last few decades Christians have begun hearing stories of people in the Islamic world having dreams and visions of Jesus resulting in them coming to faith in him.

But now we face a new situation in the West. Some churches and denominations that grew rapidly during the years of the charismatic movement have plateaued or gone into decline. What went wrong? Partly it is in the nature of movements of the Holy Spirit, none of them last forever, and need to be constantly renewed. Partly it may have been because after the few heady years together at the start of the renewal denominational groups tended to retreat into themselves. Institutional structures will soon smother a work of the Holy Spirit. Partly also it might have been that the vision of the movement was too limited. When Jesus announced the manifesto for his ministry he said that the Spirit of the Lord had anointed him to bring good news to the poor, open the eyes of the blind and bring release to the oppressed. I wonder if too many churches that were touched by the Spirit thought that it was just about the renewal of the church. But that was for a purpose, that the poor might become a focus for the good news, the sick and needy might receive healing and the oppressed and victims of injustice might find release.

Murray Robertson

Blessings

Alan

Announcement

Raising Resilient Kids mini-seminar with Kathryn Berkett, M.Ed.Psyc in partnership with Hope Chapel in Hamilton. All details are here.

FYI. Back in June this year Kathryn did a TEDx talk in Tauranga titled ‘Neuroscience of Device Zombies’. You can see it here.

Alan Vink is currently the Executive Director for LeadershipWorx. Prior to this role he has been the Executive Director of Willow Creek Association NZ (WillowNZ), a Baptist pastor (23 years), Bible College teacher, and church consultant.