I was raised in a culturally diverse, beautifully blended Christian environment of classical Pentecostalism. More than just school and childhood activities, life at a young age was immersed in altar calls, strange languages, clapping hands, stomping feet, and hours upon hours of church services. While people were undergoing a range of dynamic events at church, from processing trauma to mystical encounters, I was playing with my toys in the front row. It was an extraordinary form of mysticism but ordinary to my childhood experiences. Pentecostalism was the background and foreground of my everyday life. Like most raised in these types of spaces, there’s much I could critique about it. There is also a lot to praise and admire. For one, Pentecostals (from the beginning) were a reconciling bunch. You could make the case that true integration in the United States began in 1906 (Azusa), significantly preceding the Civil Rights Movement. “White Pentecostals received their ordination from the hands of black Pentecostal bishops; a white eye-witness, Frank Bartleman, related that in the Los Angeles revival, ‘the color line was washed away in the blood.’” (Walter J. Hollenweger, “Pentecostalism and Black Power.” Theology Today (30:3), October 1973.)

Being a preacher’s kid was and continues to be a good and expansive encounter with the human condition that teaches you so much. It’s also a very complicated, difficult thing at times. I heard the analogy, “If your mother or father works for an organization and gets treated inhumanly or poorly, how will you feel about that organization?” It’s very similar to the church. I have PK friends who have seen their parents go through extraordinary mistreatment by the church. There’s also the difficult experience when a parent struggles publicly as a pastor through a troublesome circumstance. It’s painful and almost inevitable to see both. A close friend, who’s now an amazing priest, once told me, “It’s a miracle we’re still in the church.” I believe those words deeply (on an ontological level) for every single one of us still gathering. This occurrence is not unique to PKs; it’s at the center of so many who are processing these experiences as they deconstruct/remodel their faith or leave the church altogether. I can relate on a very personal level.

Around 2013 Diana and I entered a neomonastic community and joined the convergent movement that had long existed. Some call it Ancient-Future faith. It’s the convergence of the sacramental (historical), Pentecostal (charismatic), and Evangelical (loving-liberating gospel). The best way I’ve heard it described is “the elimination of false choices…that a Christian can only be Pentecostal, or sacramental, or an evangelical. Convergence says you can be all three: a full-spectrum, broad-band approach to the faith.” The Church has always been convergent, and we cut ourselves off from the rich inheritance and accumulated wisdom of the body of Christ when we fragment our tradition. It’s ancient because modernity is too small and has fostered an entire Christian industry predicated upon a romance with novelty. It’s future because tradition is living and open to creativity and fresh expression. Ancient-future faith is more of an orientation - like a guiding north star above the flux of our 24-hour news cycle, which can be exhausting. It bears witness that there are things that are going to last longer than the present. Like a boatman rowing in one direction, while facing another, he keeps himself straight by looking back. The point isn't nostalgia but to move forward with the wisdom and strength of the gifts that have preceded us. We can be anchored with wings and appreciate the knowledge from the past for the sake of the future.