:: in.a.mirror.dimly ::

As I look at where I’ve come from as an evangelical Christian the vast majority of evangelicals I read and interact with, I’ve been realizing that I generally lack a functional vocabulary of the Holy Spirit.

While I’m very much aware of the Holy Spirit’s presence, and I mention the Spirit at times, I lack the tools to speak of the Spirit’s work with other evangelicals. I’ve seen this among many colleagues online as well.

In a blog post I once critiqued one well-known speaker and author among the missional gang of Christians for his dearth of references to the Holy Spirit. A friend who knew this author shared that he knew from personal interaction with this man that he was fully committed to relying on the Holy Spirit for Christian mission.

However, we would never know this from his writings.

From blogs to sermons to books, in my travels and readings I repeatedly run into Christians who merely assume the Holy Spirit’s work or take his/her/its presence for granted. The teachings generally end with some kind of call to action, Do this. Period

If we challenge such teachers, even if I challenged myself sometimes, the reply would be something like, “Well of course the Holy Spirit is in the mix.” Somewhere. We don’t quite know how to verbally express how the Holy Spirit empowers us to holy living and generally makes the whole salvation, Christianity thing possible.

There are a few reasons for this verbal disconnect. In examining my own struggles with speaking of the Spirit there are reasons that range from the evangelical fear of sounding too “Pentecostal” and a failure to seek out the Spirit’s influence in our daily lives. I’ll touch on these reasons tomorrow.