Christian to begin to know in the present life the reality of the supernatural… We do not need a dark room; we do not need to be under the influence of a hallucinatory drug; we do not need to be listening to a certain kind of music; we can know the reality of the supernatural here and now.”
to embrace spirituality (no matter how mystical) from any and every Christian tradition and to accept practices and spiritual disciplines (no matter how different from Scriptural spirituality).
CONNECTING WITH CULTURE No doubt by stressing the need for spirituality to be clearly rooted in Holy Scripture and This is a very different spirituality from that promoted grounded in evangelical doctrinal truth, some will by some within the Emergent Church. First, Schaeffer accuse me of being a theological reactionary out of saw spirituality not in terms of an inner personal touch with current cultural and social trends. Some experience providing self-fulfilment but rather in dying may wish to suggest I am just locked into a modernist to Self and living for Christ. In practice this meant a mind-set and unable to grasp how my understanding life of servant-hood and for Francis and Edith, as they opened their home to all visitors with the establishment of truth is shaped and controlled by the Enlightenment. They will want to depict the Emergent church as merely of L’Abri in 1955, it meant considerable sacrifice. I have attempting to engage not found the same call to with contemporary self-denial, to service or to WE MUST JUMP THE FENCE culture and present the sacrifice in the literature of FROM WHERE WE ARE, IF WE Christian message in a the Emergent movement. Nor have I heard about HAVE ONLY BELIEVED THESE way that resonates with those influenced by posttoo many of their leading THINGS AS A SORT OF MENmodernism. However, writers and conference I myself am very keen TAL ASSENT, INTO THE EXspeakers living such a life of sacrificial love. Second, PERIENCE AND PRACTICE OF that as Evangelicals we do not fear change nor Schaeffer maintained that begin to worship our own we could have this spiritual IT, AND THEN WE GET HOLD traditions. I am also very experience “with all the OF THE REALITY OF IT. keen that as Evangelicals intellectual doors and we do not become prisoners of Enlightenment windows open.” In other words, God in his Sovereign power could bring forth his fruit in us without us having rationalism (albeit in an evangelical lite version). Above all, I am very keen that we in the evangelical church firstly to undergo certain emotional experiences which have been induced by certain types of sustained worship do indeed reach out with the gospel of Jesus Christ in or from meeting in a darkened room illuminated only by culturally sensitive ways which connect with a new candles as we sit around on bean-bags and drink coffee. generation. And that is why I believe the spirituality of Francis Schaeffer has much to commend to us in this Third, Schaeffer has clearly drawn directly upon Holy present time. Scripture for his renewed emphasis on the importance of a present time spiritual reality. Although Schaeffer, as he himself acknowledged, was also greatly influenced by Given the significant shift within the West towards the evangelical devotional writers from previous generations mystical and the experiential and a marked distrust within our society of exclusive truth-claims, there are (such as Andrew Murray and Amy Carmichael), he many within the Emergent Church who feel that a tested their writings against Scripture and it remained utterly supreme in all matters of faith. By contrast, I find Christianity which has no place for the mystical and the the writers in the Emergent movement a little too quick numinous will not create a relevant gospel. Thus 40 | Credo Magazine | October 2012