Dear friends,

Last week I spoke about a dream someone had had for me. Strapped in a dentist chair, hidden in a basement, being operated on by powerful suited men who I came to understand represented the institutional church and charismatic networks each trying to modify me for their own purposes. We looked briefly at the Joseph story, where he was thrown underground (twice), first by his natural family network and then by the institution he is serving when his words were not accepted. Today I want to broaden this more widely to gently offer a warning to brothers and sisters in the charismatic movement. It is the metaphor of standing in a swamp. It may be in a lush forest. It may be in beautiful surroundings, but that crusty surface we’ve been relying on can’t hold us much longer, and for many, the reality is we are already sinking.

I’m drawing on our experiences in the Church of England for this, but am sure that there will be parallels wherever you have been relying on the world for promotion, position or prosperity. There can be little doubt that the Church of England is a worldly church, rebirthed in the reformation era out of one man’s desire to commit adultery, and ladled with all the trappings of wealth and access to power that Jesus himself regularly warned could corrupt a soul. 

It reminds me of a visitor to the Vatican who was apparently shown around the treasure-filled vaults and proudly told by a Cardinal: “No longer do we have to say ‘silver and gold have I none’” [like St Peter to a cripple in the book of Acts]. To which the visitor (perhaps in a Scottish accent) rejoined: “Aye, but can you still say, ‘In the name of Jesus of Nazareth, Rise up and Walk.’”

Two Dreams

I take the idea of the swamp from an intercessor at the large conference I attended this summer. I’d felt the need to get up early and pray after a challenge from a mentor over the previous couple of days. As I walked around the still quiet campsiteI heard a voice call, ‘Richard, I thought I’d see you here’. There was my friend and ministry colleague also out walking. She is a bit like Joseph in that she has a ministry of prophetic dreams and interpretation. As we carried on walking and praying she described how she had been disturbed in the night by two dreams.  One of a swamp and the other of a meat market. I later asked her to give a summary of the meaning of those dreams. The meat market was in part a warning against ‘transactional spirituality’ where you expect God to do things because you have shown up in a certain way and asked/demanded that he does it. I’ll come back to that another time, not least as it begs lots of questions about who might be treated as the meat, but I want to focus this chapter on the swamp. 

The swamp

The swamp was the ground that looks solid, until you step on it and find yourself up to your neck in swamp water. The foundation were wobbly – it looked alright on the surface, but underneath something was wrong. There’s a bit in a Terry Pratchett book (youthful reading!), where the witches (don’t groan) land in a swamp, thinking it’s solid ground – “”But even you couldn’t tell it was water, said Magrat,”It looks so…so grassy” “

To explore this image I want to think of three reasons (perhaps there are many) whereby you might have ended up standing in a swamp when you thought you were on solid ground, before asking how a swamp might get formed in the first place when we think of ourselves a movement that embraces the ‘River of Life’.  These reasons resonate with Jesus’ three warnings in the parable of the sower: “the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desire for other things,” [Mk 4:19] all have the potential to choke the life right out of us.  

1. The Emotional Handbrake Turn (Exit) Swamp

As we have explored in earlier chapters, charismatics have lived with unprecedented favour for a season in the institutional church. Whereas our forefathers, like John Collins, found themselves ostracised and pitied for their enthusiasms, a declining and desperate Church of England has slowly embraced a tame form of charismatic endeavour, mainly because it is the part of the church where the kids, youth and ordinands have tended to come from. This embrace has included institutional roles and institutional monies. The palace is the limit for today’s charismatic Anglicans. 

So when HTB church leaders, New Wine church leaders, and older Renewal church leaders suddenly find themselves at odds with the institution it is an emotional handbrake turn. When ‘we can trust Justin’ becomes a ‘he is not listening to me’ in a few short months it’s a sudden departure from easy street. You can stay on that easy street if you’re prepared to bow the knee to the ‘newspeak’ that doctrine has not changed while doctrine has changed, but if you challenge that BAM! One minute you’re running a successful church plant, the next minute a bishop is hauling your staff team into their office to ‘talk about their jobs’. One minute you are interviewing for a diocesan role, the next minute you’re being attacked in an orchestrated social media campaign. All of which may in fact be doing us a favour. 

In 1 Corinthians 10:12 St Paul issues the memorable line: “Be careful when you think you are standing lest you fall”. 

When we’ve been standing on the edge of a swamp, sirened in by worries about life, the allure of Queen Anne’s bounty and the desire for position and promotion, it’s actually a gift to see the swamp for what it is. To take a step back and try to remember that the ‘solid ground’ is God’s word – reserved as Jesus puts it for the one who “hears these words of mine and puts them into practice”. [Mt 7:24] It is possible to amass power, influence and possibilities in this life and in the next life find you have been building very little. It may look ‘so grassy’ but if it’s neither a ‘green pasture’ to be lead through nor a ‘river of life’ to revive the soul then why head into the swamp? It will slowly suffocate the spiritual life out of you. The worst of it is, you may not realise what it was until you sink.

2. History Maker? Swamps

There is a swamp in the John Bunyan classic: Pilgrim’s Progress. He imagines the swamp represents despondency. A despondency that can stop you on your journey before you really start. He calls it the ‘slough of despond.’ 

There is a despondency that seems to hit people on a journey out of charismatic experience and identity. It is a sense of despondency captured well by the proverb: ‘hope deferred makes the heart grow cold.’ 

As we explored in the last chapter there was a generation that grew up ‘Delirious’ in the UK. Our anthem, from Martin Smith’s band Deliriou5 (where the final ’s’ was replaced with a very cool ‘5’), heralded the truth that when people pray, cloudless skies will break and Kings and Queens will shake. It announced that we’ll see dead men rise and the blind set free. It proclaims that we’ll see miracles, we’ll see angels sing, we’ll see broken hearts making history. And all of these statements are verifiable truths in a global and historical church. People have and do still received all of these things. But… 

But… and it is a huge BUT for many… 

But… few of those who chanted the words ‘I want to be a history maker’ in the 1990s have lived to see anything like that reality in their personal, family, church or national contexts. 

Few have seen God’s power like that. 

Few have seen God heal

Those closest to them

Let

Alone

Heal

A nation 

Most have lived with tragedy.  This world is full of sorrows. 

In a Harry Potter era where a wand can fix most things temporal, the history makers have seemed like history observers. In a world that seems on a trajectory to out of control, we don’t get to break cloudless skies at our every whim. And we don’t get to heal all cancer, hurt, pain, childlessness, and sorrow. 

(And we’re no longer expecting revival either, because how long can we live in ‘pre-revival days’ anyway, when our friends and family are still not en masse entering the Kingdom). 

We feel impotent, spiritually speaking. 

  • Did we confuse signing up to being miracle makers with taking up our cross? 
  • Did we sign up to be a history maker or a disciple of Christ? 
  • Was the miracles/purpose what we really wanted in the first place? 

And when we didn’t get the gifts, (however age inappropriate they may have been for our underdeveloped spiritual persona), what do we do with the giver? Do we leave Him too? Probably easier not to leave Him per se, but definitely avoid His family, and then just meet with Him less often as He’s always hanging out with them anyway and then maybe relegate him to an emergency contact on our smart phone which is more reliable at giving me a spiritual/emotional hit anyway as it meets my dopamine needs in a way Jesus just can’t anymore. 

We sink into the swamp. 

3. ‘Relationship with Jesus’ Swamps

There’s another way into despondency too. Another well cut path into the slough of despond. And it is a surprising one. 

It’s the (misunderstood) marketing of a ‘relationship with Jesus’. A tempting diving board into the swamp. 

The consistent invitation of the charismatic church has been to have a ‘relationship with Jesus’. 

It is good marketing as if there is one thing that people long for more than a purpose, or power, it is the Bridget Jones mantra: ‘to be loved just the way I am’. The problem is that this relationship has been sold to a consumer generation as a satisfaction for their deepest needs. 

But this is a ‘swipe-left / swipe-right’ generation, who have come to understand relationships in disposable terms.

If the relationship with Jesus fails to meet whatever I feel my deepest needs are, my instinct is to quickly desert Him. 

If he is not numbing my pain, or incomprehensibly starts leading me in the valley of the shadow of death I shout out that this is not the ‘desire of my heart’ and stop delighting in him – if I ever did in the first place. 

‘My Jesus, my saviour’ gets the boot as my surrogate boyfriend/lover/friend. 

He failed to ‘complete me’ (as I understood ‘complete’). 

So two years in, or at the ‘seven year itch’, or when the kids have grown up/got into church school and I’m not doing it for them anymore, I slowly and unthinkingly (or dramatically and decisively) find myself separate from him. 

Jesus and his family become just another in a string of relationships that did not last the course. Another failure. Another way back into the swamp. 

This is the tragic legacy of a church inviting a profoundly egalitarian generation to ‘a relationship with Jesus’ without explaining the parameters. A generation thinking we were entering a relationship with Jesus as equals/individuals. Aren’t all relationships supposed to be like that?  A generation not implicitly understand that He is the Master, the Lord, the one to be obeyed, the author and perfecter of our faith. A relationship that we easily forget is a corporate invitation to belong to the bride of Christ – the church – not a one to one for an individual. A relationship that we forget requires us to be ‘born again’ to enter. To be baptised into a new life, having died to an old one. To an ongoing commitment to ‘put to death whatever remains of that old way of life’. 

And this is an invitation into a relationship that can tragically removes us from remembering the first person of the Trinity. The Father. The Almighty. The Maker of Heaven and Earth who disciplines those he loves. 

All in all a very different proposition to asking ‘would you like to have a relationship with the only man who will never let you down?’ 

There is a whole level of despondency that comes when you realise Jesus didn’t come to earth to be your ideal lover or to satisfy your need for purpose.

How does the swamp form? 

If you are a charismatic the chances are it is because you, your church, your movement or your family have had a good long swim in the spiritual ‘river of life’ at some point in your history.

You may still be splashing and swimming, going deeper into that river Ezekiel prophesied and Jesus fulfilled. The trees growing near you may be for the healing of the nations. You may be refreshed, revived and released in ministry by the Spirit’s ministry. You may have an ongoing encounter with the Spirit of Holiness that envisions, enables, equips and energises you for evangelism. 

Praise God if you are. 

You’ve avoided the swamp.

But what happens when a river gets blocked, or spreads out widely in its final sedentary phases, or changes course over time and and stops flowing into an area it once brought life and vitality to? 

Quite often it becomes a swamp. 

If the swamp is what happens when a life-giving river runs out of energy in a wide flat plain. It happens when the river runs aground and doesn’t have anywhere to flow. It happens when the river has changed course. It happens when the river ceases to get rejuvenated by fresh rains. 

The swamp is where we get stuck when conditions have changed and we have not changed with it. 

There are those in the swamp who really should know better. 

In the swamp are those with ‘too much to lose’ to move on. They’re part of the machine. They’re making a monument out of what was once a movement. The river may no longer be flowing but they have invested too much in the status quo to move now. The river may have moved, but the town they built on its banks still sustains them. 

They are often those who find themselves employed in the charismatic industry. They are pastors, song-writers, speakers, writers, and church workers. Or perhaps they are those who have simply given so much they can’t turn back. 

Some, if they’re honest, had their ‘hope deferred one’ too many times years ago. But they still head up their institution/their church/their network. 

So they keep going until retirement. 

Or they’ve invested all their social capital in friendship groups in those circles.

So they keep on keeping on. 

They sing ‘find me in the river’ but are up to their neck in the swamp. 

If they are lucky they are balanced, head out of water, on long hidden stepping stones – stones that were once key rocks in an earlier spiritual adventure. 

But if they lose their step a swampy baptism can be fatal. A final self-indulgence upsets their footing. The despondency they had been standing in having finally given way to sin. And the murky mud cakes them in shame even when if they eventually stumble out and leave the site where the river once flowed and head off into the spiritual barren lands. 

But while they’re in the mire they’ll still hawk the swamp as ‘living water’ to anyone who will listen. With the zeal of a used-car salesman they promise purpose, miracles and relationship with Jesus, but they know almost nothing of any of the above. When their sins finally catch them out their sales pitch is over. They lose everything… or perhaps worse still, they gain ‘freedom’ from selling something that they stopped believing in. 

Dear reader, I hope you are not in the swamp, or if you’ve got a toe, a foot or a leg in you can quickly pull it out. You may need help to do so, and you may need to help a friend, a church, a network or a movement to do the same. 

Of course I am delighted that there are always those who have never believed these half-truths, those who have a mature reflection on disappointment, suffering and pain, those who have found miraculous events have punctuated their journey. Those who knew that Jesus was Lord because He told them. 

But let justice flow like rivers. Let history makers awaken from slumber. Let those sold a relationship with Jesus be born again and know Him and His Father in all their glory as Lord, and Saviour as well as friend… Let those in the swamp see the prophets at the edges holding up signs saying ‘Ichabod’ [‘the glory has departed’] and come to their senses. Let them hear the words of the faithful bible teachers reminding them of the pilgrimage they are to go on. Let them take the hands of the pastors who get a foot into the swamp with them to help them out again. Let them heed the evangelists cry: ‘repent and believe the good news’. Let them see where the apostles are building new paths to where the river is now flowing, paths of juice and transformation, paths that irrigate new deserts that need conquering. 

The swamp is not our past and it is not our destination. 

When we are stuck in it it is time to move. 

Previous Posts in this series: Foreword | introduction | Remember The Baby | The Bathwater Needs Flushing | Driven to Distraction by Success | Whoever Pays the Piper | Losing My Religion | Spiralling Out of Control | Look to the rock | Here Come the Generals | You Will Receive Power

HTB Network Thesis in 30 Parts: Featuring: Origins | Renewal | Success Culture | Managerialism | Theology | Trajectories.