Theology questions

1. What do you think was Bird’s strongest point in his explanation of “baptism of the Holy Spirit?” What was Anderson’s strongest point?
I think Bird’s strongest point was when he brought up how it seems unlikely that that Spirit baptism is normatively a secondary experience for Christians. With the many instances in Acts of people receiving the Spirit that it’s hard to make a claim that can be same for all of those instances. Bird says it is impossible to determine what is happening whether it is regeneration, Spirit baptism, indwelling, or empowering. Since the different stories in Acts all have different accounts of how the Spirit is moving it’s hard for us to make a template of what Spirit baptism is and when it occurs. I think Anderson’s strongest claim of why all the power and gifting for ministry occur only after the baptism of the Spirit but rather gives additional power is when he talks about believers that aren’t Pentecostal. Because there are people who are doing great things for the kingdom but aren’t Pentecostal. Anderson states that if all gifts and all power for ministry follow baptism in the Spirit then these people have no power or gifts but we know that to be untrue because we can see the great things they are doing.

2. What does a spirit filled church look like?
Pg. 637
The church I grew up with was the only church experience I had before I got to IU and got plugged into Chi Alpha. Unfortunately this church did not teach on the Holy Spirit at all. They always referred to it when they would talk about the trinity and how it fueled Jesus’ ministry but they never broke it down as to what purpose it has in a Christian’s walk with Jesus. I believe this caused many people not to live Spirit filled lives and in turn meant we didn’t have a spirit filled church. Bird writes about what a Sprit filled church is like on page 637 and states that the sign of a Spirit filled church is how active it is in gospel proclamation. I agree with Bird’s statement because to me the Sprit’s chief purpose is to equip us to build up the church since we can’t on our own. I can say that I didn’t see any of this in my home church. I rarely saw people go out and proclaim the good news of Jesus. Since my home church was lacking in a relationship with the Holy Spirit there was a disconnect in their view of evangelizing and telling people the gospel. On the other hand in Chi Alpha I see strong a relationship between our ministry and the Holy Spirit. I see people urgently seeking after the Holy Spirit. This has led our ministry being filled with the presence of the Holy Spirit. I see that we are becoming more and more active in proclaiming the gospel. We have encouraged students to reach out to new students during welcome week and we have also made an outreach team so that we can help better equip our ministry to evangelize to more students everyday.

I can really relate to what you said about your home church versus Chi Alpha. I went to several churches growing up and while I was young, I don’t remember any of them teaching on the Holy Spirit beyond helping Jesus raise from the dead and empowering Jesus for His ministry. Spending time with Chi Alpha, however has taught me a lot about the Holy Spirit and His role not just in the life Jesus led here on Earth but our lives on Earth as well. I can look back at churches I attended when I was younger and they had strong programs and attendance but little growth which I now believed was linked to little understanding of the Spirit and very little Gospel proclamation.