In January I began teaching a series of evening Bible studies on the early Christian church as depicted in the book of Acts. Each week we began by re-reading Acts 2:41-47 as the focal point of our ongoing study. Over the course of our time, we dissected the practices, rituals, structures, and leadership patterns of the early church. Most of our study was free from debate and controversy. However, when we finally came to the

The Insufficiency of Spontaneous Prayer  “Now if we imagine that we can sustain spontaneous prayer throughout our life, we are in childish delusion.” – Anthony Bloom1 In the Charismatic Tradition there are generally two ways of prayer echoing the words of St. Paul in I Corinthians 14:15: praying with the Spirit and praying with the understanding (or mind). Praying with the Spirit is understood as praying in tongues, or as praying in a private prayer

I grew up in a small, quiet, unnoticed town in Michigan. Tucked in a corner of that town, hidden in the hills and woods, is a small, quiet, unnoticed church. You probably wouldn’t find it unless you were looking for it or happened to live on the humble, residential road that hosts it. On a crowded Sunday, it might boast about fifty attendees. Compared with the mega-churches, the televised multimedia worship experiences, and the intrepid