Pulled and Pushed

Last week was spent at Elim's annual conference in Prestatyn, North Wales, hence the silence from Outthere in the blogosphere.

Elim's annual bash in the land of song combines conducting charity business with some first class ministry from experienced and capable speakers.

One of the discussions in the business sessions revolved around how we should celebrate the hundredth anniversary of our birth in 2015. Our interaction generated some ideas that I think have some mileage. It will be interesting to see what emerges as our vehicles of celebration for our centenary.

What will the world look like in 2015 anyway? Will all the options of celebrating such anniversaries still be open to the church in 2015? Will we be battling for survival in the face of sustained persecution? Or riding a wave of revival and seeing the nation come back to God? Or, paradoxically, will it be a strange amalgam of both?

One of the things worth remembering is that the Pentecostal fathers and mothers didn't set out to invent pentecostalism. They set out to rediscover the dynamism of early Christianity, a dynamism that pulled them closer to God and pushed them into mission. If Elim is still experiencing the pull and the push in 2015 we'll have much to celebrate, whatever the social and political conditions.