The Toronto Blessing Meets The Restoration Movement

In late December 2015 I was 24 years old and sitting nestled in the corner of a Tim Horton's in Stratford Ontario, taking shelter from the blizzard that was raging outside. I was on the phone to a staff member at Alberta Bible College in Calgary, inquiring about potentially taking one of their 6-week modular courses. At this point in my story, I was still very unwell with my various mental health challenges. I said to myself 'I might not even be well enough to finish a 6-week course, but I may as well give it a go, and if it doesn't work out it is only one course.' That was 9 years ago. I am now a graduate of ABC with a Bachelor’s degree and have gone on to do much more education and ministry since then. A major reason why I was able to do this was because at ABC I found a community of faith and learning that was simultaneously a safe place for me to heal from my mental illnesses and traumas and also a place that provided me with a high-quality theological education. This is quite the feat: that such a small college was and remains able to do both of these things at the same time.

            When I first started at ABC, I had recently been involved with Catch The Fire in Ontario, first as a student in their School of Ministry, then as a youth pastoral intern and then as a youth pastor, and I was now pastoring the youth group at the Catch The Fire church in Calgary. Catch The Fire is of course the group of churches that came out of the Toronto revival, often referred to as 'The Toronto Blessing', which began in 1994. What I did not realize in my early years at ABC was that this college was a part of what is known as the Restoration Movement. Many of those associated with this movement, especially those who esteem one of their founders, Alexander Campbell, are closer to what is known as the 'Word-restrictive' view, which is that the Holy Spirit now only works through the Bible. Even if they are not Word-restrictive, very few would identify as charismatics. My point is that a young 24-year-old youth pastor, fresh from the Toronto Blessing, which is probably about as charismatic as you can get, would perhaps not normally expect to be welcomed and embraced to the extent that I was at ABC, which hails from a very, very different tradition. But, lo and behold, there are not many places on this earth where I have received a warmer or more gracious welcome than I did at ABC. There were no raised eyebrows at my obviously charismatic theology, no eye-rolls at my prayers in chapel. Instead, I found a community of faith that became like a second family for me, and that showed me just how deep it was possible to go in our study, understanding and application of the Bible. I still remember sitting in our president's (Stan Helton's) class on Acts and being flabbergasted and deeply enthused that it was possible to read the Bible and glean so much more understanding from it than I had ever thought possible. In recent years I have often wondered why God brought a charismatic youth pastor to a historically more word-restrictive college. The Toronto Blessing and the Restoration Movement do initially seem like strange bedfellows, as the archaic but humorous saying goes. What I came to discover, however, is that the two traditions are surprisingly complimentary, in the sense that what the one seriously lacks, the other has in spades. This is in essence where this entire blog comes from: I am now a proud member and product of these two traditions (although neither movement has historically liked the idea of 'tradition').

            So why am I telling you all this? Well, I want to suggest some ways in which the Restoration Movement tradition, especially the Christian Churches/Churches of Christ stream of it, has some powerful things to say to the charismatic movement when the two are brought into conversation with one another. I do not have time in this post to give an extensive history of the Restoration Movement (and I don't think I would be especially qualified to do so anyway!), but I will give a general idea. It began as a back-to-the-Bible and Christian unity movement in the 19th century in America through key individuals such as Thomas Campbell, Alexander Campbell, Walter Scott and Barton Stone. The first three of these men had emigrated to America from either Scotland or Northern Ireland. The technical word for their theology now is 'primitivism'. Essentially, this was the idea that the contemporary church had gone astray from the teachings of the New Testament, and that one of the primary things this had led to was division and disunity in the Church. What was needed was a return to the teachings of the New Testament, especially Acts and the Letters of Paul, which were to function like a kind of blueprint for the Church throughout time. They felt they needed to pattern the present-day Church after exactly how it had been done by the early church of the book of Acts, and in so doing to strip back all the layers of man-made traditions that the Church had erroneously layered on top of the New Testament and thus divided the Christian Church. Prior to the Civil War the movement was the third most well-attended church group in America.

            Nowadays not all Church of Christ/Christian Church pastors hold to every element of the movement as it was taught in the 19th century. That said, these churches (and colleges/universities like ABC) still have a strong heritage of very close attention to the Bible, both in their reading and understanding of it, and, correspondingly, in their application of it to their churches and personal lives. This just so happened to be (providentially) exactly what 24-year-old David was hungry for. I had already had several life-changing encounters with God by his Holy Spirit in the charismatic movement, e.g., experiencing how much God loved me as my perfect Father, hearing his voice, giving and receiving prophetic words, praying for healing, etc. I had all that, and I loved it. What I subconsciously knew I did not have was a depth of understanding of the Bible that can only be found through close attention to the various facets of its context: literary context, historical-cultural context, Koine Greek, and so on. And here's the kicker: if your understanding of what the Bible teaches is shallow, as mine was prior to coming to ABC, then your ability to live it out well in church and in your personal life will be substantially hindered.

            One of the popular phrases of the Restoration Movement was and is 'Where the Bible speaks, we speak. Where the Bible is silent, we are silent.' This principle may be partly why many (most) Church of Christ/Christian Church folks don't usually agree with things like the Toronto Blessing - many of the things that happened at the Toronto Blessing do not seem to have much of a parallel in the New Testament. My counter to this in favour of charismatic theology and spirituality is that just because something is extra-biblical ('extra' meaning 'outside of' - i.e. there is no exact parallel within the Bible) does not necessarily mean that it is un-biblical (in violation of the teaching of the Bible and therefore unacceptable). This is where I think the charismatic movement can really speak to the Restoration Movement - John even explicitly says in his gospel that Jesus did and said many other things than he was able to record. Presumably if Jesus did it or taught it, he is still willing to do it or teach it in his Church by the Spirit today! But this is a two-way street: Something that deeply concerns me about the contemporary charismatic movement is just how far removed from the teaching of the Bible some of our taken-for-granted practises and teachings are. There are quite a few things that happen in some charismatic churches which have no discernable link back to the teaching of the Bible. As I have already stated, I don't think there needs to be an exact parallel in the Bible for every practice or teaching. But our practices and teachings should still be tied to and rooted in the teaching of the Bible. To use my earlier language, a good number of charismatic teachings and practices have crossed the line, in my view, from extra-biblical to un-biblical.

            But what would happen if we brought some of the insights of the Christian Churches and Churches of Christ into conversation with the charismatic movement? What if we fully embraced the power of the Spirit, but under the care, direction and guidance of full, deep and contextual biblical interpretation? What would happen if we combined the charismatic desire to see broken lives sovereignly healed and restored by the power of the Spirit with the Christian Churches and Churches of Christ exacting attention to the details of Scripture?

            There is a great deal of lip service paid to the idea of combining 'Word and Spirit' in the charismatic movement. The unfortunate reality is that the charismatic movement is really only succeeding in wide-spread way with the latter. When you are moving in the Spirit, wonderful, incredible, life changing things happen: God heals, saves, forgives, reconciles, restores, sets free, and so on. And I love and seek all of this as much as any other charismatic does. My big worry is that when you are seeking the work of the Spirit but are not grounded in a more-than-surface-level engagement with Scripture (with the help of the tradition, I would add), things can and do get out of hand quickly, often with very painful repercussions. By 'out of hand' I do not mean that we need to use the Bible to restrain or dampen the work of the Spirit. But we do need the Bible to keep us grounded in how to use the gifts of the Spirit and how not to use them. As I have pointed out in other blog posts, one of the main chunks of teaching we have in the Bible about spiritual gifts is given by Paul in order to correct their misuse! Right from the start of the Church, immature human beings have used the gifts and twisted them to their own, destructive and self-glorifying ends (1 Corinthians 12-14). There is much of this in the contemporary charismatic movement, in my opinion. And this is where the Christian Churches and Churches of Christ can come in. What would happen if we as charismatics tried to learn from, even if we do not fully and literally put into practise, the maxim 'Where the Bible speaks, we speak. Where the Bible is silent, we are silent'? If the charismatic movement were to do this, I believe that some of the things that get talked about often would no longer be discussed, and some of what we hear virtually nothing about would become more central.

            My concluding exhortation to myself and my fellow charismatics is: let's put our money where our mouth is and really shoot for 'Word and Spirit together'. This doesn't mean that everyone needs to go to Bible College or Seminary, but it does mean that we need to dispense with the undercurrent of anti-intellectualism and seek to go beyond a surface-level reading of the Bible where we pay very little attention to issues of context, etc. I think that God sovereignly intended for me to have these two movements combined in my life because they are a uniquely potent mix. As charismatics, let's start to make good on our stated goal of Word and Spirit together.