Archive: UM Charismatics Flourish

With spirited music, enthusiastic singing and uplifted hands, more than 1,700 charismatic United Methodists gathered in Oklahoma City for the Aldersgate ’92 conference on the Holy Spirit. The mid-August meeting is sponsored by the United Methodist Renewal Service Fellowship (UMRSF), also known as Manna.

“One of the great tragedies has been the UM Church’s failure to recognize and embrace the phenomenon of the charismatic renewal,” Gary Moore, executive director of the UMRSF, told Good News. Because of that alienation, he believes, “tens of thousand of joyful, grace-gifted Christians have wound up in other denominations and independent churches.”

Despite that member hip drain, Moore says the charismatic movement within the UM Church has continued to grow, flourish and influence our worship through contemporary music styles, liturgies of healing and “programs that call for the charisms [spiritual gifts] of vision, intercessory prayer, discernment, healing, faith and evangelism.”

Moore also believes that if the UM Church is to “turn the tide of membership loss” it will have to “embrace a ‘non-boring’ charismatic style of worship. Worship that is exciting and full of the energy and power of the Holy Spirit, worship that lifts up and glorifies Jesus Christ.”

“Congregations that experience that kind of worship,” he says, “are generally full of baby boomers, and busters, and are growing.”

Moore, like many charismatics in attendance, senses a “growing interest and openness to spiritual gifts in the church. Churches that discover and function according to spiritual gifts will look and act more like the body of Christ, practice lifestyle evangelism and place a greater emphasis on ministry to the poor and disenfranchised.”

As for the future, Moore says that “churches that want to become vital congregations of faithful disciples will recognize the need to embrace the good fruit of the charismatic movement.”

“We will continue to pray for a revival among Methodists that exceeds the power and vitality of the Wesleyan movement of the 18th and 19th centuries,” Moore said. “We will continue to evangelize in the power of the Holy Spirit and produce numerical growth until the additions exceed the exodus.”

“We will not go away, we will stay and pray and work for renewal in the UM Church by the power of the Holy Spirit.”

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