Editorial

T. M. SUFFIELD & JONATHAN BLACK

Eucharisma 1, (Spring 2024), 2-3.

Charismatics and Pentecostals have a reputation for being anti-intellectual. Although we’d love to say this was a myth, the reason it’s so often repeated is that it, unfortunately, does have some grounding in reality. We Pentecostals and Charismatics aren’t well known for being thinkers. 

But we think that’s a problem. In many parts of the charismatic and Pentecostal world, it’s common for pastors to be largely untrained. Sometimes that’s off-set by careful and rigorous self-study; sometimes it’s not. Too often in our churches we shrug our shoulders at difficult questions. Too often (to borrow an expression from Rick M. Nañez) we can end up with ‘full gospel, fractured minds.’¹

Yet the sad result is ‘thin’ discipleship for many in our churches. Or, perhaps more accurately, a discipleship of the affections but not the intellect. The Lord loves our minds too and wants to conform them to his likeness. In order to grow churches where heads are better discipled, alongside hearts—holding onto our vital love of the Spirit’s presence and our emphasis on the affections—we need to disciple the minds of those who teach us. We need to encourage one another to think hard and think carefully as an act of worship in the presence of God.

This is where Eucharisma comes in. We hope this journal will serve the church. Our contributors are a mixture of academics, church leaders, and church members, who share the vision that a ‘thinking charismatic’ is not a paradox. We write primarily for pastors and church leaders, hoping to resource the church. 

The idea, cooked up on a summer’s walk in the Malvern hills, initially came when Tim had written an article on the state of the British charismatic church’s mind and had nowhere to publish it.² Jonathan, in turn, fleshed out what the reality could look like. Our hope in the pages of Eucharisma is to resource the church, but we are also aware that the opportunity to write, and have your writing read, is one of the ways that thinkers develop. That’s how some of the great thinkers of early Pentecostalism honed their powers of thought. Donald Gee, one of the most influential voices around the world of that first generation, began by writing an essay every morning in the back room of his little church in Leith, outside Edinburgh. From those essays written for his eyes only, he went on to write in Pentecostal magazines, before writing the books and editing the journals which had such an impact on Pentecostal (and later, Charismatic) thought (whether we remember his name or not!). Gee’s careful thought, developed through writing, won him the nickname ‘the apostle of balance’. But it also helped raise up thoughtful and balanced disciples in churches not only across the United Kingdom, but the world. 

The time has come for a new outlet for a new generation of Charismatic and Pentecostal thinkers. Today, we need publications like Eucharisma to help develop the thinkers and teachers who will help us all grow. For too long, we have had to outsource too much of our thinking and writing to the wider evangelical world. 

These articles represent a wide range of divergent viewpoints, from across the Pentecostal and charismatic worlds within the UK. And that’s an important aspect of our vision for Eucharisma. The Charismatic and Pentecostal world in the UK is much wider and more varied than probably any of us realise. Very often we don’t really know much about other parts of the movement and have few opportunities to hear voices from beyond our own networks. We want Eucharisma to be a bridge between these different spheres. In this issue, you’ll find contributions from writers who are part of the Pentecostal churches, the charismatic renewal in the historic denominations, and the new churches or apostolic networks.

You will also sense disagreement among our contributors. We suspect that none of the contributors will be in 100% agreement with every article in the issue; the editors certainly aren’t. That’s a feature, rather than a bug. Disagreement is how our thinking grows. It makes us think very carefully about what we’re reading and how we’d respond. And we’d invite you to contribute to that: if you would like to take a different stance to one of these articles and can sign our forms of unity, please consider submitting a reply for a future issue. It’s in the faith which we share—the faith set out in our forms of unity—that our unity is found, not in our agreement on every opinion. We commend these articles to you in that vein.

1. Rick M. Nañez, Full Gospel, Fractured Minds? A Call to Use God’s Gift of the Intellect (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005). ↩︎
2. This ended up being published as T. M. Suffield, ‘It’s Time to Build Counter-Institutions’, Mere Orthodoxy, 03/08/22. https://mereorthodoxy.com/its-time-to-build-counter-institutions. ↩︎