As this post hits your inbox or social media pages, I should be attending my first SPS annual meeting in several decades. What’s SPS, you ask? Why, the Society for Pentecostal Studies! For most of you, this being a Saturday, you have a much different to do list for your day than sitting in lectures. But, for me these three days – starting Thursday – are all about listening to scholars and students present papers on all things Pentecostal.
Now before you doze off or whack me with a traffic fine for driving too slowly on the highway of your inbox, let me explain.
SPS is holding its annual meeting this year on the campus of Northwest University in Kirkland, Washington. That’s sort of in my neighborhood, at least globally speaking. Still 230 miles from where I live, but far closer than these conferences usually get. I’m grateful for the free housing my son, Robert, is providing me – his driveway puts me only 50 miles and a mega traffic jam away.
Northwest University holds special memories for our family. It’s the school my daughter, Hannah, graduated from a decade or so ago. And where my son-in-law, Michael, earned his master’s degree – through the university’s distance learning program.
Seahawks fans may know the campus as former home to the NFL team’s practice fields. But that is now only a talking point for guides showing prospective students around. That and the state-of-the-art workout gyms the Hawks endowed the school with!
What these guides won’t tell you is that Kim and I were married on that campus nearly 38 years ago. Stroll across campus and you’ll find the Pecota Student Center, named after Professor Dan and Esther Pecota.
Esther, who ran the school’s bookstore back in the day, took pity on Kim and me in our penniless campus ministry days. She arranged for us to hold our wedding in the Butterfield Chapel and our reception in the dining hall, all for free. Since then, both those buildings and I have aged. The buildings have been renovated. Kim is as youthful as ever.
I haven’t been on the campus since Hannah graduated. I’m enjoying strolling down memory lane these three days, but really my focus is on the SPS plenary speakers, interest group sessions, panel discussions, presentations, and conversations during breaks and over meals.
We live in an advanced world that has benefited vastly from a dizzying array of expertise. Yet all too often our society takes a skeptical view of anything that smacks of elitist knowledge. Sure, certain experts have acted like jerks over the years and educational and research institutions and organizations have had their share of scandals. But by far most of the academics and scholars I have met or read have lived humble and faithful lives of service to humanity and, for so many of them, to God.
When I was working on my graduate degrees, I met lots of people who thought higher education was a waste of time or worse. One dear saint even told me not to bother going to college because Jesus was coming back right away. That was 60 years and 3 degrees ago. But there were a few, none more so than my dad, who cheered me all the way to that terminal degree.
Not that having a Ph.D. after your name makes you a better person. But when people devote themselves to learning, investigating, researching, writing, publishing, teaching, and applying, they demonstrate their gratefulness to the Giver of all gifts.
As the Apostle Paul admonished and my mother recited every morning of the Vacation Bible Schools she directed, “Study to show yourself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.” (2 Timothy 2:15, KJV)
Now I know Paul is talking specifically about the Scriptures in that passage. But as Saint Augustine said, “A person who is a good and true Christian should realize that truth belongs to [God], wherever it is found, gathering and acknowledging it even in pagan literature.” Or as the wording is often condensed, “All truth is God’s truth.”
As we avail ourselves of all God’s truth, we show our thanks to the Creator. Whatever you do in life, make the most of what God has given you!
Fortunately, I have found some good role models along the way.
What an honor it was as a grad student to encounter Pentecostal scholars such as William Menzies, Edith Blumhofer, and Murray Dempster. I’ve written elsewhere how Dr. Blumhofer mentored me as I worked my way through endless microfilms, microfiches, and yellowing papers doing my doctoral research. So, too, Dr. Menzies gave me great advice and Dr. Dempster helped shape my dissertation focus.
The modern Pentecostal movement wasn’t even 80 years old when I was writing my master’s thesis. But time was running out on finding primary source materials from those earliest pioneers. Various scholars, especially Bill Menzies, began calling for such materials to be collected and archived in safe and accessible centers.
Archives were a new concept in such circles when I enrolled in grad school in 1976. A year later the Assemblies of God Archives was established in Springfield, Missouri. By the early ‘80s, I discovered how much that Archives, now known as the Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center (FPHC), was already becoming a valuable treasure trove. As I did my own research, I gleaned from and added to that wealth of materials.
When Wayne Warner, FPHC’s first fulltime director, passed away recently, I wrote about how much help he had been to me during my years of combing through the Archives. I am hoping to finally meet his successor, Darren Rodgers, this week. Darren was one of three people who kept hounding me to turn my dissertation into a book.
Back in the 80s, such scholarly examples as Warner, Menzies, and Blumhofer were few and far between in the Pentecostal movement. Dempster was, I believe, the first person in the Assemblies of God with a doctorate in ethics; he became a role model for me as I entered the same field.
In the 1980s, I attended a couple of SPS Annual Conferences. I presented a paper related to my doctoral research at one held at Southern California College (now Vanguard University), Dempster’s school. There he was on the front row encouraging me with his probing critiques.
Such assessments were intimidating to me as a student wearing Dockers and a blazer. But as the Good Book says: “As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.” (Proverbs 27:17, NIV) I guarantee you the iron sharpening iron kicked into high gear that day for me!
As much as I have loved the academic world, my life took me in other directions – serving in on-the-ground ministry and direct services in US campus ministry, in Asia, and finally here in Oregon. Along the way, I discovered the value of my Ph.D. quite apart from the bits of academic research and publishing it produced.
Still, I’ve continued to read the academic writings of others, to connect with various scholars long distance, and to use my training in ethics to benefit the church and the nonprofit world. And I’ve served on dissertation committees and coached doctoral students. So, I look forward to reconnecting with the community that SPS embodies.
SPS describes itself as the “home of an international community of scholars working within the Pentecostal and Charismatic traditions” – the second largest block of Christian believers in the world, by the way. Not that the SPS itself is anywhere near that large. But ever since 1970, SPS has been bringing together theologians, historians, sociologists, missiologists, ecumenists, ethicists and others to sharpen one another.
How I enjoy seeing students and professors, academics and practitioners, scholars and newbies – and hobbyists like me – mix and mingle at these gatherings as they wrestle with ancient texts, contemporary concerns, and all things in between. Although responses and questions in the various sessions can be quite intimidating to the uninitiated, there is always a sense of camaraderie marinated in the fruit of the Spirit. And a firm commitment by all to ensure that the next generation of scholars are established on solid footing.
I’m particularly looking forward to seeing old friends. Paul Lewis, my co-laborer from way back, will be there, presenting a new book he has co-authored with Jacqueline Gray on Introduction to Biblical Interpretation: Participating in God’s Story of Redemption (2024).
And I’m excited to meet people I’ve only connected with through books or social media. Such as Marty Mittlestadt, who wrote the forward for my book, Ethics in the Age of the Spirit. Together with Darren Rodgers, Marty chased me down to get my book published. And as with Darren, this is my first opportunity to meet Marty.
I’m really looking forward to connecting faces with names I have admired and sharpened iron with from a distance. Such as Lois Olena, SPS’s current president. She’ll be giving her presidential address this afternoon on the topic “Pentecostals on the Move.” Recently she stepped away from teaching to serve in the nonprofit world. I look forward to hearing how she’s applying her expertise and life experiences to resettling refugees. In this passion, we are kindred spirits.
Olena, Daniel Isgrigg, and other members of SPS such as Cecil Robeck have engaged with my own writings, plugging holes in my research on race relations in the Pentecostal movement and moving that field of study forward. Joy Qualls has done the same on the topic of women in ministry, taking it to a whole new level. Right now, I’m enjoying reading her book God Forgive Us for Being Women: Rhetoric, Theology, and the Pentecostal Tradition (2018).
I love seeing how the work of God around the world is advanced through the efforts of these and many other scholars. Their efforts do much to strengthen the cause of missions, justice, compassion, and community. During this meeting, a whole range of topics are being presented and dissected, from Biblical studies to religion & culture, from missions & intercultural studies to theology, and from ethics to worship & the arts.
This year’s theme for the conference is “More than a Song: Scholarship as Worship in the Church, the Academy, and the Public Square.” I’m hoping to come away with a fresh vision that will infuse my writing, preaching, advising, coaching, and caring in this next chapter in my life. My prayer is that my own work will truly be nothing less than an act of worship.
Likewise, may Jesus Christ be praised in all you say and do!
Check back on earlier posts I’ve written about Daniel Isgrigg’s writings or Edith Blumhofer’s influence or the value of archival research as seen in this investigative study by Ruthie Oberg. Click here for more information on the Society of Pentecostal Studies.
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Photo set includes Dr. Murray Dempster, Society for Pentecostal Studies heading