It’s a Dance: Moving with the Holy Spirit
By Patrick Oden

It’s a Dance: Moving with the Holy Spirit, written by Patrick Oden, is a book pertaining to the subject of pneumatology, the study of the Holy Spirit. I found this novel to be quite helpful, since it confirmed many thoughts I had about how the Holy Spirit works. It breaks down the teaching into easy-to-read chapters and the teaching is, in fact, simply a conversation in a coffee shop. Within that conversation, many spiritual truths are taught. The two main characters in this book are Luke and Nate, a reporter and a pastor, respectively. Luke is a reporter for a local newspaper. Nate is the pastor of the Upper Room, a church that meets in the upper room of a coffee shop. This is the primary place in which the conversation occurs.
Luke was assigned by his editor to “visit different churches” and “s what religion is like in our neck of the woods.” (page 2) He visits many churches and synagogues in the area and finds that most of their theology is very much the same. Discouraged, he then visits and the Upper Room and his perspective on religion is changed forever.

Our conversation starts out as an interview between Luke and Nate. The two cover many topics, including leadership, community, welcoming strangers, and focusing on Jesus. During Luke and Nate’s talk, other members from the church stop by and interject their thoughts; one about creativity, another about life in the spirit. Everyone Luke encounters in the Upper Room is full of the Spirit, as evident by their insights on the matters of Spirituality.
One the interesting points that I learned from the book is that “The real evidence of the Spirit is community” (page 70) The way that the Spirit manifests itself is through the unity of the church.

While Luke and Nate are talking, a young woman enters the Upper Room. She is apparently a member of the church since Nate recognizes her immediately and introduces her to Luke. Her name is Melissa, and she is an artist. She and Luke begin talking, and they arrive on the topic of creativity, of which Melissa had some excellent insight on the issue. Melissa was convinced that creativity came from the Spirit. She believed that in order to complete the work the Spirit needs you to do; you must be willing to step out of your own traditions.

Melissa told Luke that she became disenchanted because of tradition. She disliked the repetition of church. She wasn’t herself when she was at church, and she became tired of it. She had a large falling-out with church with church and her family and she went off on her own to be an artist. When she decided to come to the Upper Room, she found that to be herself, she had to be with God.

Luke and Nate began conversing again, and as they draw to a close, Nate invited Luke and his wife to come and visit during one of their services. We can infer from the text that Luke is having marital problems; they even had a tough time showing up to church together. As they arrive, everyone Luke had met earlier that week came up and welcomed them. Everyone was friendly and cordial, making the two feel at home. The service was a life changing moment for Luke. He and his wife resolved their greed and selfishness and they became regular attendees to the Upper Room.

I originally came up to this book expecting it to be dry and unexciting because of the topic, but as I read it, I became enthused. The chapters are full of great insight to the Spiritual world, and the movement of the Holy Spirit makes the book to be appropriately deemed “A Dance.” I find the section about Community inspiring because our church, although small, has community in excess. I thoroughly enjoyed the book and recommend It’s a Dance to anyone mature enough to understand the messages included.

One of the fun things about It’s a Dance since its release has been the absolute diversity in those who resonate with it. I love, love, love hearing what people from totally different backgrounds, ages, experiences, churches think about the book. When I wrote it I wrote out of my experiences, out of what I have seen and understood, hoping that what I wrote wasn’t just about me, or wasn’t me telling others what to think, but was in fact a telling of what a lot of us have experienced and feel deep within. If the Spirit is truly working in the ways I noted, there shouldn’t be lines drawn of who experiences these aspects and drives. Brian’s thoughts were both fun and encouraging to me.

O Holy Spirit of Love
In us, round us, above;
Holy Spirit we pray
Send, sweet Jesus, this day.

Holy Spirit to win
Body and Soul within,
To guide us that we be
From ills and illness free.

From sin and demons’ snare,
From hell and evils there,
O holy Spirit, come!
Hallow our heart, Thy Home.

This alone is religion as it is truly so-called. This alone is of value in the sight of God. Paul summarized religion in three particulars: righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit.

~John Wesley, “The Way to God”

I know. I need to practice some more.

Let me know what you think. Oh, and the bird sounds are thrown in, no extra charge.

cheers

So posting excerpts would be a way to open up the conversation, giving you a chance to respond and ask your own questions or make your own points. I figure I can substitute for Nate if stays quiet.

The key, though, is having people join in on the conversation. I’ve already written the excerpts and pursued the interaction on paper. That’s what the book is about. So, I guess I’m curious if there are folks out there who would participate, and if not then I’m going to hold off on this bit of the blog until there’s a few more folks around here.

Truth be told I’ve not been around here myself regularly, so hopefully getting back into the habit of posts will stir things up a bit and encourage folks to swing by more often.

Here’s the end:

“Life in the Spirit is a life in the ‘broad place where there is no cramping’ (Job 36:16). So in the new life we experience the Spirit as a ‘broad place’—as the free space for our freedom, as the living space for our lives, as the horizon inviting us to discover life.” Yet, in the history of the church there have been again and again restrictions placed upon this ‘broad place’ some for reasons that make sense in attempts to deter heresy, other times for reasons that can only be characterized as anti-Christ as they assert personal or corporate power for reasons of individual gain. Most often, and consistently through the last two thousand years, the restricted place of the church has not been due to some kind of intentional nefarious rejection of God, but rather due to uncritical assumptions of the broader culture in each era, leading to wholly non-Spiritual boundaries. Churches in which racism or sexism dominate are restricted places. Churches in which the rich dominate poor, or the powerful dominate the powerless are restricted places. Restricted not for those who are the aggrieved, restricted for the aggressors and for the whole society, unable to take up the whole work of the Spirit because of these inherent, societal, restrictions.

As Moltmann writes “‘The broad place’ is the most hidden and silent presence of God’s Spirit in us and round about us. But how else could ‘life in the Spirit’ be understood, if the Spirit were not the space ‘in’ which this life can grow and unfurl.” The dismantling of institutional racism, the new emphasis on equality between men and women, the growing awareness of first world responsibility to the third world, and the increasing concern for the environment have all broken the bonds of restriction that have silently fought against the constant mission of the Spirit. So it is no surprise that now, in this era of new openness, we can see new movements that in their freedom reflect the freedom that is God’s kingdom, movements that echo in practice what Moltmann emphasizes as traits of the broad place of the Spirit. “We explore the depths of this space through the trust of the heart. We search out the length of this space through the extravagant hope. We discover the breadth of this place through the torrents of love which we receive and give.” Only those contexts which freely open themselves to this continual discovery can expect to learn and to express a holistic pneumatology.

This is not a new reality of the Spirit or a new movement of the Spirit but is, in essence, the heart of what was spoken of by the Prophets and then experienced in the early church beginning on Pentecost. In this way, we could call the movement described by Gibbs and Bolger not only the emerging church, but indeed a form of neo-Pentecostalism in which a holistic pneumatology is embraced through a new, liberating freedom for living. “God’s Spirit encompasses us from all sides and wherever we are (Ps. 139). Christ’s Spirit is our immanent power to live—God’s Spirit is our transcendent power for living.” In embracing this reality in full, individually and communally, in unity and in diversity, the church emerges into the comprehensive vision of the kingdom of God.

I’m not going to post it here, for various reasons, but if you’d like to see a copy of it let me know: patrickoden at gmail dot com.

It took a week and a half to write but it’s been on my mind since the middle of December. I had to really get back into the mindset of the topic and that meant a lot of re-reading and some new reading, expanding a little bit of my Moltmannia.

This all involves a little bit of a trick that I’ve yet to sort out but really need to learn how to do so. In writing that I had to get very academic again, but I didn’t want to post in that kind of style and I didn’t want to let go that style in order to find a more approachable cadence. So I stopped posting while I was getting my mind back in shape. It was hard this time, I think, because it’s been so long since I had to get myself academically focused. As I keep my feet a little bit more in that world, hopefully I’ll find it easier to pop back and forth.

As it seems a lot of doors are opening in the academic direction, more than the pastoral (though there’s a wee conversation about that too I need to bring up), my goal is never to dwell in the ivory tower but really to keep writing what I’ve been writing, and focus on books that can engage the broadest possible audience.

Thanks for all your encouragement as I keep at this.

Cheers, Patrick

Such an evidence as this gained traction. More people prayed in such the way the Topeka students prayed, more people began speaking in tongues, some indeed recognizable as regular languages it is claimed. Then such a thing as this had a trip down route 66, to Los Angeles where on Azusa Street, it is known, this claim to the evidence of the Holy Spirit began to do a curious thing. It exploded. It was given a name, Pentecostalism, and this name has traveled from the dusty streets of the City of Angels to all corners of the world.

So there must be something to Charles Parham’s discovery. And there certainly is. For instance read Numbers 11:22-24:

So Moses went out and told the people the words of the LORD; and he gathered seventy elders of the people, and placed them all around the tent. Then the LORD came down in the cloud and spoke to him, and took some of the spirit that was on him and put it on the seventy elders; and when the spirit rested upon them, they prophesied. But they did not do so again.

Two men remained in the camp, one named Eldad, and the other named Medad, and the spirit rested on them; they were among those registered, but they had not gone out to the tent, and so they prophesied in the camp.

And a young man ran and told Moses, “Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp.”

And Joshua son of Nun, the assistant of Moses, one of his chosen men, said, “My lord Moses, stop them!”

But Moses said to him, “Are you jealous for my sake? Would that all the LORD’s people were prophets, and that the LORD would put his spirit on them!”

And Moses and the elders of Israel returned to the camp.

Would that all the LORD’s people were prophets. The story of this passage isn’t about all the people becoming prophets, however, it’s not even about a small number of people becoming prophets. Moses, you see, was rather overworked. He was the man who went up the mountain and came down with a bright face and a lot of authority. All of it. Question his authority and you might, like Miriam, get a spot of leprosy. Moses, even with all of his honors, was still but a man, and not a man superempowered to do all the work that authority must do in a group this big. He was spending a lot of his time on minutiae. A man such as Moses should not be immersed in minutiae. He had things to do, like keep everyone’s eyes on the prize.

Keeping their eyes on the prize was a particular problem as the people tended to be rather grumbly. And what with all of Moses work, and his devotion, and whatnot, he got fairly fed up with being between the rock of God and the hard place of Israel. He felt trapped and asked God to kill him. God said he’d rather not, but that he would show him a thing or two. So he had Moses call 70 elders and God spread the wealth a little bit. The Spirit was poured out over the whole bunch. And when the Spirit came, well these men got a bit filled up. Overfilled really. They weren’t enough in themselves and the Spirit overwhelmed them. It was like walking out into a bright day after spending years in a dark cave. The eyes get overwhelmed and they squint. When the Spirit comes, the soul gets overwhelmed and things begin to happen.

That’s the sign of the Spirit being poured out on a person. But, that’s not the reason for the Spirit. God sent the Spirit here so that Israel would have a bit more leadership variety, all while knowing everyone is on the same page. This is important as having leaders turned to different pages often means a whole mess in the making. Take Korah for instance. The earth sure did.

The Spirit is the only way of the work of God, and without the Spirit there is only a muddle. But that’s really the key point. The Spirit is about the work of God, not giving us the goods to put on a show for ourselves or for anyone else.

Which brings us back to the gift of Tongues and Acts 2. Now, it’s certainly not the case as some authoritarian people might suggest that the gift of tongues is gone. It’s in the lists, and it serves a purpose. So did prophecy in the old days, and today. But, the ecstatic overwhelming quality in which the souls becomes filled and overfilled into a frenzy is a sign of the Spirit’s coming, but it’s not a sign of the Spirit’s staying. Tongues is not the goal of God. Neither is prophecy.

What is? Well, the quick response from many is salvation. Which is true in a way. But that’s not really it either. That’s just a beginning of the beginning. Salvation is sort of like, if I can engage in a terrible analogy, buying a ticket at Disneyland. It costs a lot, usually children are more eager for it and pay less, but the payoffs are nice because there’s the Jungle Cruise, Indiana Jones, and Star Tours inside. The payoff, you might be surprised to know, is not in buying the ticket. I mean there are Disney themed pictures and even the occasional Mickey Mouse or Goofy wandering about. That’s not why anyone would want to go to Disneyland and if you suggested going to Disneyland soley to buy a ticket that would be silly, what with the hassle of parking and driving all the way there. No, you buy a ticket to do something more, and salvation is a ticket to something more.

That something more is what the Spirit is really about.

God is in the restoration business. He has created us in his image, but we’ve gone and distorted his likeness. As Mark Twain once said, “I was made merely in the image of God, but not resembling Him enough to be mistaken for Him by anyone except a very near-sighted person.” Yet God is wanting to renew that resemblance. The Spirit comes for that very purpose, to lift us up, and guide us into becoming wholly sanctified. Jesus opened the door to this process. The Spirit presses it forward in our very lives, taking our salvation and making into a whole lot more. Wesley called this sanctification. The Eastern Orthodox call it theosis. These are but words to describe the fact God thinks we are worth quite a bit, and able to be quite a bit more than our present wallowing selves.

He once walked in the evening breeze with a man and a woman. He’d like to do so again. The Spirit makes us pleasant and inviting company for such a thing as this, restoring our souls towards real wholeness so that we think right, feel right, listen right, and feel joy right. Our wan selves can’t handle the fullness of the Spirit, so we’re given time to change. Part of what we have to learn, part of the extensive remodeling of the Spirit is our learning how to relate. God, you see, values relationship, being in eternal relationship and creating in terms of relationship. We have lost this, becoming selfish, isolated, indulgent people who are always gunning for our rights or expectations. Always seeking to fulfill our desires by using other people. The way of the Spirit, however, is in mutual giving and mutual receiving so that we live for others as they live for us.

That’s what we see at the end of Acts 2. The Spirit poured out. There were tongues. There was evangelism. It is only at the end of the chapter we get to the heart of it all. The Spirit comes, and people begin to instinctively respond in the fullness of community. They interact with one spirit for they are filled with the One Spirit who unites and shares and values all equally while expressing divine qualities diversely in each.

Of course saying that Acts 2 is a fine community is a common thing. That’s the goal of every shameless idealistic group of people who leave their churches to live in a commune and do things “right”. Only that’s not quite it either. See, the thing at Acts 2 isn’t about this group of people who decided to be selfless and share. They were simply expressing the continuation of the fullness of the work of the Spirit in their lives. In other words, they didn’t think about it, they were just doing it. It was as natural to them as such as thing is unnatural to most of us. Natural in the fullest sense of the term, being part of our truest nature. But, we don’t do this, and we don’t see this. But we don’t see a lot of things. That doesn’t make it untrue, that just goes to show our present status on the ladder of God’s restoration.

Should we see the fullness of the power of the Spirit in our own lives. Should we experience the kind of renewal and the kind of enlightenment we read about, then its not a matter of our choosing then to sell our property and give a great deal to the poor. We just will do those sorts of things. It’s a reflection of the Spirit, not a working towards the Spirit.

That’s what Charles Parham had wrong. He thought it was about the tongues. He thought it was about the fireworks and the parade, when really there’s a lot more to it. Inasmuch as he got it wrong, inasmuch as many of those who came after him missed reading to the end of the chapter and so cut off, or grieved the Spirit in whatever way, they missed out on seeing in their own lives the fullness of the Spirit, the fullness of themselves, in a gathered community that reflects the ultimate reality of God among us.

We miss out on such things for much the same reason. But, there’s no reason to make an artificial attempt. There’s only to do those sorts of things the earliest church did and pray the Spirit comes upon us in power, and then not get distracted by the shiny things but press on in the Spirit so as to see the real work. It’s not something we do. It’s something we become. That’s the gift of the Spirit, to us and to this world.

I suspect William Seymour got a lot more of this than did Charles Parham. Not all of it. He was entranced by the initial works as well. But, there was a freedom to press on and see what happened, a freedom which too many denied to him. Sad. But that’s the topic of another post.

And so it is in reading Scripture that the themes of this book were validated as real Scriptural themes, not just the emphases thought up by postmodern church planters. When I tested these emphases against Scripture I found they resonated, far too often covered up by other church emphases that I found little or no actual Scripture about.

That’s why I made it a point to use Scripture as the foundation of the conversations and why in most cases I included the full passage of the text rather than just a reference. I want people to get into Scripture and see the themes for themselves, to look at whole passages. Often looking at whole passages for the first time.

This is part of my fundamentalist heritage. I value Scripture and think it is indeed the canon by which we gauge everything else. Only so many of those who hold up the Bible and proclaim inerrancy or other kind of authority often don’t really take that authority holistically or seriously. The Bible becomes a tool and a weapon, instead of a source and guide and gauge.

I noticed the other day that it would have been nice to have an index where I posted the verses I used or referred to in the book.

And that’s the nice thing about having this blog. It’s not too late. Here are the portions of Scripture I specifically used, categorized according to chapter.

Chapter 2 - Focusing on Jesus
Acts 2:1-13
John 15:26-16:16
Titus 3:3-8
Ephesians 1:13-14
Ephesian 3:4-5
1 Peter 3:8
Matthew 1:1-25

Chapter 3 - Breaking the Boundary Between Sacred and Secular
Acts 10:1-48
Luke 10:30-37
Acts 8:26-39
Acts 6:1-7
Acts 7:44-50
Romans 7:6

Chapter 4 - Drawing us into Community
Matthew 8:18-22
Luke 18:18-30
Acts 2:42-27
Matthew 14:25-33
Acts 4:31-37
Luke 15:11-32
Acts 5:1-11

Chapter 5 -Empowering for Right Living
Romans 7:14-25
Acts 19:11-16
Romans 8:2-4
Romans 8:5-17

Chapter 6 - Welcoming Strangers
Luke 19:2-9
John 4:1-30
Acts 8:13
Acts 9:10-31
Acts 15
Acts 9:31
Acts 11:17

Chapter 7 - Spurring Us to Give
Isaiah 61:1-11
Matthew 2:2-5
Galatians 5:22-25
Matthew 25:31-46
Hebrews 12:15

Chapter 8 - Provoking Participation
John 7:-39
Luke 11:13
Acts 2:4
1 Corinthians 12
2 Corinthians 3:4-6
Acts 11:28-30
Acts 21:10-14

Chapter 9 - Inciting Creativity
Exodus 31:1-11
Exodus 35:30-36:7
1 Kings 18:7-16

Chapter 10 - Leading as a Body
1 Kings 22:17-28
Romans 7:6
1 Samuel 16:3
Hebrews 5:12
Acts 10
1 Corinthians 12

Chapter 11 - United us through Worship
Philippians 2:1-13
Ezekiel 36:24-27
Song of Solomon 3:1-4
Ephesians 5:25-32
Isaiah 63:11-14
2 Corinthians 13:14