Bapticost: At the Crossroads

Bapticost:

At the Crossroads

(Act I)

Jesse Steele

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Copyright © 2012 Jesse Steele

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Jesse Steele on Smashwords

ISBN: 978-147-619-397-7

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For Joe, Scott, and Michi

Table of Contents

For Joe, Scott, and Michi

Introduction

Note to Thespians and Theologians

Scene 1: I Met Jesus Before I Got to Class

Scene 2: Denumeration

Scene 3: Second Focus of Wesley

Scene 4: Greek to Me

Scene 5: Three

Scene 6: Soul Food

Scene 7: Relationship Works

Scene 8: Revelate

Theatrical Permissions

About the Author

Introduction

A Charismatic friend and I were standing in his kitchen a few years back, nearly drowning in repartee. I was leaning towards the notion that Christians may see an increase in opposition before Jesus returns. My friend couldn’t even consider the idea. Suddenly I realized that it wasn’t the opposition he had a problem with, but that I hadn’t mentioned prosperity. The word prosper is in Joshua 1:8, so he is right to believe in it. I finally interjected, I wouldn’t say that Christians won’t prosper, but I won’t say we won’t face opposition either. As God’s people face difficulty, all the more will He grace us with power to overcome and have prosperity and victory even in the midst of the struggle. We both agreed and at that point felt our kinship in the Lord grow deeper.

This was merely one of hundreds of conversations I’ve had with many people in the Body of Christ. We know the importance of valuing the human heart simply from the fact that God loves us all. He knows our deep desires and inner passions. Perhaps we can have close fellowship with each other as we know more about each other’s questions behind the questions and see past what may not always be the best choice of words.

Especially since the Promise Keepers movement in the 1990’s, our desire for reconciliation across Christian denominational lines has ever increased. Many Christian leaders have tried to achieve such reconciliation by way of simple doctrine agreements. Some of them may say, more or less, We do not agree on all five of these issues, but we agree on three of them, so let’s sign a statement of faith with three points between us. Then we can each keep our separate statements of faith for all the other issues. Many discussions followed that model and were all in a good spirit, but it didn’t lead to any lasting reconciliation. Least common denominator is still about less and division (denominator.) The solution is to spend enough fellowship time together, not just debating time, no matter how friendly the debating time may be. In fellowship we can understand each other’s hearts. It is in co-discovery of the heart-motives behind our beliefs where we find unity. Inner motives for our Christian beliefs rarely conflict. When they do, it exposes a need for repentance which is much easier to admit.

Two general perspectives orbit the topic of Christian denominational reconciliation. On the one hand, we have our desire for unity, while on the other is the pressing obligation to be responsible. If different doctrines are to be reconciled then they must be changed on some level. Such a change could easily be exploited by someone with a bad agenda. In the midst of the increasing atmosphere of a reconciling/reevaluating attitude, many Christians have fallen away from core beliefs that don’t even need to be reconsidered. Those who are hesitant to engage in reconciliation dialogue often want to prevent more people from falling away in the wake of the shift. We must understand each other, even in reconciling our approaches to reconciliation itself: those who are hesitant merely want to avoid heresy, they aren’t in favor of division; those who are eager to reconcile aren’t interested in abandoning the truth, they merely want to obey the truth which also commands unity. Rushing to one perspective or the other will not achieve the desired results for either. The only way to have either full unity or preventing truth-seeking people from falling away is to have both together. Neither can be achieved alone. Our need is to be responsible and persistent in reconciliation with as much understanding of each other as we give attention to detail. To do that, we will need to begin with understanding each other insomuch as that we have responsible reconciliation as our common goal. This begins with respectful fellowship.

The aim of this book is to help Christians from different parts of the American Church understand each other enough to have friendly dialogue. Rather than writing a mentally-constipated treatment of different issues, I wanted to pen a routine in the style of friendly, British banter. Anyone can read this book, but a pastor could also have selections performed in his services or colleges may use a small reenactment to provoke discussion. Reconciliation is for everyone, not just professors—seminaries most of all, I believe, would concur. Pastors and theologians write and speak because of their love for people. Though the vocabulary is simple and few chapter and verse references are cited in this particular work, I hope that Christian leaders can see the thought processes and deeper implications of vernacular expression. Seeing past a choice of words to what people mean, after all, is necessary for reconciliation—something I learned from Black-America.

In this book, we don’t dive into questions that relate to non-Christians, nor other questions concerning a deeper walk with Christ. As much as I could write about these things, and in the future, the purpose of this work is Christian reconciliation specifically. In this process, however, many deep questions surface. Christians are passionate about questions that relate to their walk with the Lord and evangelism, even when in disagreement. Our motives are almost always rooted in love. The trouble is with expressing that love. I hope this book can give a little help in that direction.

This work does not pretend to solve every issue addressed. I wanted to stay big picture and introduce some different approaches on a broad level. Some of these debates are centuries old and should not be treated as if they can be resolved with the flick of a wrist, but we can at least turn the discussion into a friendly journey. Perhaps, with a few considerations, we will discover some missing pieces that bridge the way to the solutions we all are seeking.

Note to Thespians and Theologians

There are a few key ideas which, from an author’s perspective, contributed to the completion of this script.

First, I have been through many such conversations myself. Some times I have been on one end, sometimes I’ve been on the other.

Second, I’ve done my homework. I’ve actually spoken with people and made close friends from different parts of the Body of Christ. I speak with as many pastors as I can to understand what they think and why they think it. I’ll never forget the day that a Pentecostal pastor was aghast and shocked that any Evangelical might think that Baptism of the Holy Spirit meant that new Christians didn’t have indwelling right from the point of salvation. It took a while for that pastor to even understand my question. The kind answer finally came, No. Certainly not. All God’s people have the Holy Spirit, baptized in Him or not.

Third, by using Jesus as a character, I feel a burden as the author not to put my own words in God’s mouth. It would cause a lot of problems if I did. Like the other characters, the Jesus character is a composite. Rather than being a Frankenstein hodge-podge of different theological beliefs, Jesus is a voice of: 1. The obvious, 2. referenced Scripture (usually without chapter-verse for the sake of genre,) 3. even-Steven calm-everyone-down moderator, 4. defending and delivering messages between opposing sides in the debate, and 5. as a comic-relief teaching-device using tongue-in-cheek sarcasm and plays on words to remind us of truths we already know yet somehow just have trouble applying to our daily lives. It is easy to develop a view of Jesus as always calm and even-Steven. however, His steady-temper in this work is not to play on our religious superstitions of what we might think His personality to be. Instead, I gave the Jesus character in this set of stories a calming nature as a device to calm the raging storms of petty Christian quarreling. Most of what Jesus says here is stuff that all of us know He would say. Sorting-out our differences is often a matter of acknowledging the obvious. At other times, the Jesus in this story is my own voice preaching to myself… we’ve all done that at times: preached to ourselves. In formal arbitration, a mediator provides a way to relay a message from one party to another "to explain what the other guy actually thinks". Jesus is like a mediator in this way, not just between us and God, but, in this story, a mediator