Deviation

Last week Lisbeth and I together with the rest of our team went for a New Wine conference. It has nothing to do with Wine, apart from the kind you cannot pour into old wineskins. It is a renewal network primarily in the Anglican Church, but not excluded to it. I had stumbled over the network while looking for partners to the Transforming Churches process NCD UK is hoping to launch next year and when I read they had a leaders' conference under the title of Kingdom Ministry Training Day and with a speaker from the Vineyard in Ohio I decided I wanted to go.

Did not know what to expect, but certainly came with expectations. Just the chance to sit and listen, to be in an environment where there is an expectation of the Holy Spirit's ministry and maybe even to experience a bit of His touch oneself, these were some of the thoughts I came with, but I was in no way prepared for what I did experience.

The conference was in Stockport, where we live, but in a part where we never have been. We told Jane to take us straight to the church, but for once she let us down and took us down a quite street where there were lots of houses, but unless it was an underground church we were looking for, certainly no church (Jane is the voice in our navigation system, just in case you are wondering). Unfortunately I had only written the postcode down, not the address, so it took us a while, but we finally arrived at the right church, late, but not too much. The worship had started, but Lizzy, our youth leader, had arrived on time and secured us places towards the back so we could slip in without making a nuisance of ourselves.

It was not during the worship, nor during the ministry time later, that I had this new experience. It was actually during the first teaching session. The teaching was good, not revolutionary, but good and interesting. The first session was about how we should not aim for either/or but both/and and was especially about evangelism and/or social action. I couldn't help thinking how it would make the teaching perfect if put into a Trinitarian understanding, so it was not a matter of keeping balance between evangelism and social action, but of aiming for radical balance between evangelism, social action and spiritual power. The teacher actually meant that. With his background in Vineyard evangelism is understood as what John Wimber coined Power Evangelism. It was implied, but not said explicit and therefore, unless you understood the background, not comprehensive.

Sitting listening to the teaching, delivered with some degree of humour, I let my eyes pass over the congregation of a couple of hundred people and there I beheld it, a practice which was unusual, I would even consider calling it unbiblical. You have to understand I am fairly open minded to spiritual manifestations, a bit of laughing or crying, falling or shaking can not in any way upset me, but this was more than that. I know during the height of the Toronto Blessing people would be roaring as lions or barking as dogs, but this was more than that; this was.......a dog!

Sitting just across the aisle was a man who had brought his dog to the conference and not only his dog, but a dog basket as well for it to sleep in. I have to say it was a very well behaved dog. It did not say a word (which of course would have been very strange) or make any other noises at all during the whole day (It did stand up for worship and even wanted to go forward for ministry, but was stopped by a foot on its leash). It might be well behaved, but it was still strange. It was not a guide dog, just a normal, medium sized black dog. Nothing strange about the dog, apart from bringing it to a conference in a church. There was only one so I did not feel like the Psalmist (Ps. 22:16), but still it was not right. Did Jesus himself not say we should not give what is sacred to the dogs? And Revelation 22:15 clearly states that the dogs shall be outside. And yet there it was, in the middle of the aisle, it was strange, but as it is written at least better than a dead lion (Eccl. 9:4).

After reflecting over it I decided there was nothing spiritual or un-biblical about it, just another proof of the eccentricity of the English!