“I’m pretty sure which church I’ll start going to – it’s the place where most wounded ex-charismatics tend to end up.”

The friend who uttered these words had just come to a crossroads in his journey. Like me, he had been involved in the Vineyard for many years; he was a deeply thoughtful and learned leader, and was as committed to the Vineyard as a movement as anyone I knew. My wife Wendy and I had not been attending a Vineyard for a number of years by this point, but my friend was big-time Vineyard to the core. For him to finally “pull the plug” and leave was – initially – a huge shock.

In the days that followed, as I thought about it, his departure became a kind of “straw that broke the camel’s back” that set me on a year-long journey of research and writing on a fast-growing segment of the emerging church: Post-Charismatics.

Initially, the LAST thing I wanted to call the project was “post”-anything, as I’m about as sick of hearing post-this and post-that as anyone. The first time that I came across the term “post-charismatic” was about twenty years ago when reading the late John Wimber’s Power Evangelism. Wimber had been speculating as early as 1980 that the Charismatic Renewal was perhaps running out of steam and that a new era – post-charismatic – was perhaps beginning in the 80’s.

J. Lee Grady, editor of Charisma magazine, also used the term in his 1994 book What Happened to the Fire? Grady estimated that by 1990, there were as many as 92 million people who described themselves as post-charismatic. Grady writes:

“Burned out on hype and pulpit showmanship, weary of learning 95 ways to use spiritual gifts when they recognize more basic needs, these believers are in search of a deeper spirituality that emphasizes the fruit of the Spirit as much or more than the gifts.”

In some ways they are very akin to the postmodern people I meet who are open to God but indifferent or hostile to church. These self-described post-charismatics are open to the working of the Holy Spirit, but due to excesses and abuses that they have seen or experienced, they are skeptical and even wary of ministries that are charismatic. Further, there are some who have come to a place where they overtly reject – or passively neglect – the more obvious supernatural workings of the Spirit.

It would probably be more accurate to call these people “post-HYPE”. They are tired of hearing great stories about the good old days, jaded from hearing too many prophecies about the great move of God that seems to always be just around the corner, fed up with exaggerated or even fabricated stories of healings and miracles, and disillusioned with a view of spiritual formation that is lived through a weekly crisis moment at the front of the church.

Broadly speaking, there are four major areas that come up repeatedly as reasons for post-charismatics pulling away from their Pentecostal, Charismatic, or Third Wave roots. The four areas are:

1. Abuses and elitism in prophetic ministry, coupled with a “carrot and stick” approach to holiness that many find legalistic, manipulative, and repressive
2. The excesses of Word Faith teachings (health and wealth, prosperity doctrine) which clash with the emerging generations’ concern for a biblical approach to justice and ministry with the poor
3. Authoritarianism and hierarchical leadership structures that exist more to control people than to equip the saints for works of service
4. An approach to spiritual formation (discipleship) that depends on crisis events – whether at “the altar” in a church service, or in a large conference setting – but either neglects or deliberately belittles other means of spiritual maturation (ie. spiritual disciplines)

A saying that I have come to use a great deal in recent years is: “We only deconstruct in order to reconstruct”. As much as postmodernism is a critique of modernism, and the emerging church is a critique, but hopefully much more, of the modern church, I am hoping that a post-charismatic understanding of how the Holy Spirit works in individuals and communities of faith will serve as a critique of charismania excesses and questionable teachings, and lead ultimately to a more mature and balanced understanding, expectation, and functioning in the Spirit of Christ.

In Brethren, Hang Loose (can you tell this book was written in the 70’s?), Bob Girard voiced this lament:

“This idea persisted that much about (Bob’s church) with all its early marks of success was no miracle at all. It wasn’t Acts. It was a monument to the kind of good things man can do... all by themselves.” (emphasis in original)

Will post-charismatics end up creating communities of faith that will ultimately become testimonies to the things that people can do without the Spirit’s inspiration, input, and empowering? This is the danger for post-charismatics. Out of their understandable reaction against the excesses and abuses, there is still a very real possibility that they will end up passively neglecting or deliberately suppressing what the Spirit may be saying in their midst.

The major premise behind writing Post-Charismatic, my year-long research project, is that while we need to examine the theological and historical roots that have led to some of the excesses and abuses, we also need to re-construct what it means to be Post-Charismatic, but not post-Spirit.