A brief history: the vision of The Way of the Spirit
What is it? What is it all about?
But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code. (Romans 7:6)
'The Way of the Spirit' is far more than just the title given to a Bible Reading Course, for it has to do with life and freedom and everything that Christ came to give us in the Church through the working of his Holy Spirit. Bible reading and study often seems dry and academic, but this course is designed to bring the Word of God alive for you in a new way and draw you into the same richness of life that men of Bible times enjoyed. Its wide ranging purpose is quickly illustrated by a brief glance at the history of the Bible in the West.
Reformers, Evangelicals, Pentecostals and the Bible
The story starts in England in the fourteenth century, when John Wycliffe, Bible teacher and translator, sent out his students armed with their new English Bibles to teach and preach the Word of God. It was largely due to their continuous expounding of the gospel that the English Reformation took the course it did in the sixteenth century.
Since then faithful Bible reading and teaching has greatly influenced Western society - until our own age, which has seen a massive erosion of Scripture knowledge, and so also of faith in God. More than a century of liberal teaching has wrought havoc in our churches, schools and society at large. Never since Wycliffe's time has the Bible been so little read and taught. The cry of Hosea, 'My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge' (4:6), is as true today as it was in his time.
We may thank God for evangelicals who have kept up a good flow of Bible teaching down the long decades of arid rationalism, but in today's church, where the Spirit is powerfully reviving believers, their older form of exposition often itself seems rather dry and irrelevant. That is because it is not geared to the revival flow of the Spirit's working in our times, and so a new thrust is called for - urgently.
Pentecostalism, born in the early part of this century, discovered basically the same dynamic of revival life as we know today. However, it did not develop a form of Bible teaching to match its experience, but adopted the nearest thing available at the time, namely the evangelical. That served well in many ways, but it has always fallen short of the needs of Holy Spirit inspired ministry and living.
Today's Revival Needs and the Bible
The church worldwide is experiencing a fresh awakening in our time and something new and encouraging is also emerging on the Bible teaching front. The Way of the Spirit is part of that. It is wonderfully blessing those who use it, but more than that it is proving an excellent tool for training people to become lively Bible teachers and preachers - to lay hold of the living, life-transforming dynamic of Scripture, to apply it to themselves, and then go and introduce others to it, much as Wycliffe's men did in their day.
For too long it has been thought that proper Bible training is only for those who have the opportunity to attend Bible school or university, but such thinking has spoiled our love for the Word of God itself. Jesus never required his disciples to get degrees, but he did teach them from the Scriptures and they loved it. And they became excellent teachers.
Theological study can be enriching, but it can also undermine our appreciation and proclamation of the Word. I do believe that anyone who is prepared to sit down with the Bible and be taught where and how to find its living flow can become an effective teacher at some level. I know that is true, because I see it happening.
