The next generation of charismatic pastors doesn’t want authority but collaboration—and communities ready to follow the Spirit.
A lot of churches go through a stage of change when they get a new lead pastor. But Ted Kim actually wanted to change the stage.
The new leader of the Vineyard church in Evanston, Illinois, a suburb north of Chicago, wanted to get rid of it, just completely rip out the stage. Instead of the high platform at the front, he would put the stage in the middle of the sanctuary, with the seats arranged in a circle around it, so the congregation could see each other and participate with each other more in worship. The stage would also be lower, just a few inches above the ground, to reduce the elevation of the minister and the iconography of authority and power.
He’d been thinking about this for a long time—how to reorganize church. He thought about it as a kid growing up in the Korean Presbyterian congregation that his immigrant parents loved; as a college student in New York when he first experienced charismatic worship; in Chicago in seminary when he started to be discipled by the Vineyard pastor in Evanston; and when he got called back to lead that church in 2019.
Kim wondered: What would it look like for a church to be organized around the beauty of the Lord? What should church look like for a new movement of the Spirit for a new generation?
So when he had a chance to make changes in Evanston, he had a bold vision for what he could do. It was the kind of bold vision that the Vineyard, a charismatic denomination that started in the mid-1970s in Southern California, has long celebrated. People in the movement tell each other stories about leaders who didn’t wait for approval, call for a study, form a committee, or let themselves be checked by tradition or “how things are done.” They just listened to ...
from Christianity Today Magazine https://ift.tt/3o7lKHa
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