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4.5 Is there still place in the heart of Pentecostal liturgies for the notion of a simple
“encounter with God”?
Warrington subtitles his work A theology of encounter. The spread of the movement in the
developing world redounds with narratives of the ongoing encounter with God that changes
lives and communities. However, in the west, where Pentecostalism is at best moribund, it is a
notion (in liturgy at least) that rarely seems to find expression. Where once no-one had to be
told in a Pentecostal gathering that “God is here”, in recent years it seems that it requires
powerful orators and charismatic celebrities to assure the audience that “what is happening
shows that God is here.” Previously Pentecostal worshippers were loathe to leave the service
and go home, because they could feel the presence of God. Today it seems more likely that,
despite the best efforts of musicians and “worship leaders” to programmatically lead the
congregation into the presence of God, and despite the assurances of “anointed” leaders that
“God is truly doing something here today”, at the end of the service there is a mass exodus to
get away as rapidly as possible and return home to more exciting and fulfilling pursuits and
experiences than one has in church. Rarely, too. does one encounter recent Pentecostal
research that discusses the previous ideal of “preaching the Word in the power of the Spirit.”
This seems to have been abandoned by the wider pastorate in the west to the “great men of God”, the media-sponsored icons of Pentecostal ministry, or to seeker-sensitive conversational
“tips for living.”
In this area too a conversation between non-western and western Pentecostals might be
fruitful in directing the movement back to its experiential roots.
5. Conclusion:
22 years after What is distinctive about Pentecostal theology? was written it may well be that
not only is there a need and a hope for articulating a unifying Pentecostal worldview, a “family
likeness” that transcends the movement’s diversity, but that some of the old itches might still
need to be scratched.
Varnel Watson
Until Pentecostal scholarship is able to clearly define a Pentecostal worldview that successfully illustrates the core of the “family likeness” of global Pentecostalism, the two worlds of Pentecostalism may continue to drift on in isolation from each other, each thinking it’s a priori realm of ideas is the only (or at least most important) one.