About

Spiritual experience is interesting. The christian tradition hosts lots of it, although that’s not always obvious if you pop into a local service.

But it’s there in the fabric of the biblical story, the work of God in creation, in His people, and pre-eminently, of course, in the Son.

What does this mean? What is the texture of such experience?

Now, there are different temperaments and gifting. Some are more drawn to the experiential side, to pushing the new edges of things, to promoting that current revelatory experience in the church. We might call that prophetic – focussing on the current and dynamic emphasis of the Spirit of God. Some are more given studying and proclaiming the message in it’s fullness. That is teaching.

At first glance these can seem like opposing tensions – prophetic ones know the encounter, teachers sift through the data to give an orderly account. One leaps ahead on sometimes sketchy data, to remarkable places of insight, the other advances more carefully, weighing and balancing things.

Acts, the book of the early church, reports that the second base of operation, at Antioch, in Syria. And in this place, “there were prophets and teachers.”

They didn’t just get along, and learn to work with each other’s biases. It seems they so infused each other so it’s difficult to draw a line between them, to know who was who. Prophets teach. Teacher’s prophesy. We all aim to attain to growth and fullness, as we grow up into Christ.

Thats what this about. A space that can table experience, and some reflection of what it means. Joining the two edges together.