Three Streams: The Spirit-Filled Church

Missio Mosaic finds itself within the three streams of the evangelical, the liturgical, and the Spirit-filled (often referred to as "Convergence"). This article seeks to offer three basic reflections on our commitment to live out of and into the Spirit-filled stream as the church.

First, the Spirit-filled church is committed to the Word of God. This is not simply a commitment to Scripture as word of God (it is that but not only that), but to the word as living and active in our midst. It is a commitment to the Word as enfleshed in the body of the virgin Mary who himself is the very Word of God and is God. Further, the Spirit still speaks and is speaking not as replacement or supplement to Scripture (or even as if Scripture were replacement or supplement to the Lord Jesus).  The Spirit speaks as the church listens in attunement to the enscripturated word and bearing faithful witness in conformity to the enfleshed Word. The church full of the Spirit has “ears to hear what the Spirit is saying”. The church full of the Spirit also then speaks what the Spirit is saying. Such a church must speak what the Spirit is saying both to the church and to the world.

Second, the Spirit-filled church expresses the life of the Spirit as grace-filled. That is, the church calls for, engenders, nurtures all manner of expressions of the grace of the Spirit in diversities of gifts (vocal, ecclesial, demonstrative, service, etc.) all given by the one Spirit. These gifts find expression in the churches gathered worship, private prayer, in work and home. The church speaks in tongues, administers sacraments, prays for the sick, prophesies, feeds the hungry, abounds in compassion, has faith against the impossible, discerns the spirits to cast out the unclean, sings psalms and spiritual songs to each other, writes, preaches, prays, serves. These gifts are for the building up of the others with all pointing to the Lord Jesus as God’s gift for all creation.

Third, the Spirit-filled church expresses the life of the Spirit as fruitful. Such a church is in step with the Spirit who bears the fruit of the Spirit’s own life in love as expressed in such ways as faithfulness, kindness, mercy, long-suffering, goodness, etc. Saint Augustine likened the Spirit to the love shared between the Father and Son and it is that love to which the church is filled (even when we must be called again and again back to it). It is the life of the Spirit to bear with others, to suffer, to endure wrong, to be numbered among the poor, the sinners and the sick, to groan with creation…and through this all to move all things toward the Day that the Spirit fills all and God’s kingdom comes in the reign of God on earth as in heaven. This is the Spirit’s life lived before the world (as God’s love in Christ Jesus) and for the sake of the world even as the world rejects that crucified, risen, exalted, and coming-again life. This is the fruit of the Spirit. This is the church filled with the love that is the very life of God the Spirit.

—Rev. Rick Wadholm Jr, PhD, Canon Theologian of Missio Mosaic and the Anglican Mission, Associate Professor of Old Testament at AGTS