Dear Disciples,

First of all, thank you for your amazing response to our year-end giving appeal. It’s given us a good boost for the coming year of opportunities. Last month, I mentioned that I wanted to report on some things that came from a very special visit to a place of real historic value.

I was invited, along with leaders of ministries from around the world, to a consultation sponsored by CHARIS, the international organization tasked by the Vatican with serving the worldwide Catholic Charismatic Renewal (CCR). It was held at The Ark and the Dove, the historic retreat center near Pittsburgh that is famous for the “Duquesne Weekend” that took place there in 1967 and marked the beginning of the CCR. A few months after this outpouring began, Steve Clark (recently deceased) and I visited this group of students and professors. Very quickly, we became involved with the movement, not only in a personal way, but in national and then international leadership roles. I was tasked with serving the international renewal and we set up the International Communication Office (ICO) in Ann Arbor to deal with the flood of written inquiries and multiple international visitors seeking more information about the renewal. At that time, the Lord sent us Gary Seromik who just happened to know multiple languages to help with the task and he stayed with us serving the ministry for the next fifty plus years!

The next step was to move the ICO to Belgium at the request of Cardinal Suenens and broaden the leadership by setting up an international council with two representatives from each continent, and I was elected the first chairperson. The initials then changed to ICCRO and then ICCRS. Shortly afterwards, it moved to Rome to establish offices in one of the Vatican buildings, the Palazzo San Calisto, where it is to this day. My wife, Anne, and I visited the office last spring when we were in Rome for a week for various meetings. A few years ago, Pope Francis wanted to change the name again and establish a more formal organizational structure and status that was more directly tied to Vatican oversight. The international organization is now called CHARIS. In various talks and publications of governing documents, Pope Francis laid out three purposes for CHARIS in promoting the CCR:

1. Spreading the reality of “baptism in the Spirit” to the whole Church
2. Working for Christian unity
3. Serving the poor in their material and spiritual needs

At the recent CHARIS consultation that I attended, I was asked to offer some comments “as the Spirit led” and what follows is a short summary of what I felt led to share.

While the three purposes enunciated by the Vatican for CHARIS’ service to the renewal are admirable, what we see in the Bible concerning baptism in the Spirit is broader and more challenging. Baptism in the Spirit as it is described in the Scriptures is not just for the purpose of enlivening people’s spiritual lives but is fundamentally an empowerment for mission, bringing with it a deep contemplative grace where people now know the Lord in such a way that they are impelled to share Him with others.

 

We see this connection of baptism in the Holy Spirit and evangelization in Luke 24 and Acts 1. Jesus tells his disciples that they are to stay in the city until they receive power from on high and then they will be his witnesses throughout the world.

 

Baptism in the Spirit is also presented in the Scriptures in light of the final judgment and calls us to be accountable to the Lord in obeying the commandments empowered by the Spirit. In Matthew’s Gospel, John the Baptist says that Jesus will baptize “with the Holy Spirit and with fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the granary, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” (Mt 3:11-12)

 

In Mark 16, Jesus commissions his disciples to preach the Gospel to all creatures and baptize them. He tells them that those who believe and are baptized will be saved and those who refuse will be condemned. Understanding evangelization in light of the final judgment needs to be more clearly included in our understanding of the purpose of baptism in the Holy Spirit and the CCR.

Why am I sharing this, even in such a shortened form? Because it’s important that we do not “domesticate” or “put in a box” the mighty work of the Holy Spirit and isolate it from its evangelistic and eschatological context. Thank God for this outpouring of the Holy Spirit! May it continue. And thank God for those who are serving in the leadership structures of the renewal and for those who have made The Ark and the Dove a true place of pilgrimage, including the wonderful sisters of the Disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ who warmly welcome any visitor.

In Christ,

Ralph

P.S. For those interested in more of the history of what I’ve briefly referred to here, I highly recommend Patti Mansfield’s book As By a New Pentecost, which is the best history of the beginning of the movement. Very inspiring.

For more on my personal involvement and the drama and fascinating details that often accompanied it, I recommend my recent book, A Life in the Spirit: A Memoir.