Our Life Together Vol. 3 Nr. 29 July 22, 1975

This issue starts with the article by Larry Clark. As we have discussed elsewhere, one of the important ministries of First Baptist Church of Chula Vista was the ministry to other churches. Larry and his team are ministering at a church in Alliance, Nebraska. His description of the suspicion that people had about the Charismatic Renewal is an accurate picture throughout our denomination. I can certainly remember when I was quite suspicious of the movement. In the middle of this meeting, Kevin Cope had a message in tongues with an interpretation by Brian Gire. If there was anything that scared the uninitiated person it was tongues -- this sounded crazy -- yet God used (and still uses) this gift.


Ken's article is a reprint form 1974. I have written about it earlier and also pointed out that it drew a number of comments in Face book. Of course, the direction of the article is that God is calling his people to a radical commitment -- such as the life we were living in community. The comments on this were basically two-fold; 1) Ken was advocating (and saying that the scriptures advocated) some kind of socialism and 2) that Ken thought that theological correctness was a bad thing. I don't think that Ken was really saying either of these.

Ken does put forward his thought that as the church became accepted under Constantine and began to deal with theological issues, that they lost their radical focus. History tells us that this wasn't the case. There were bad leaders in the church, there were very Godly leaders in the church. There were people still leading radical lives, there were people living more "normal" lives. From earliest times the church had been grappling with major theological issues, but, until Constantine, had not had the luxury of calling the bishops together to really settle some of the major theological disputes. Major understandings on issues like the divinity of Jesus came forth from these councils. Ken doesn't dispute this, but he looks back with a great deal of longing to what he sees in Acts 2:42ff.

Later in the article Ken discusses the Magnificat which is a great song of praise attributed to Mary in the gospel of Luke. In it the greatness of God is praised. God is the champion of those who are oppressed. Some read into this an incipient socialism. As Ken state further, the Sermon on the Mount calls us to a radical belief, but this is not calling for a new government, but for radically committed followers.

I have also mentioned before that Ken really believed that community was THE way for Christians to live. I personally believe that community was an expression that the Holy Spirit renewed in the 70s. I was glad to be a part of that movement at that time.
I wish that I could identify all of the members of Shiloh household. Dolan Wolford and his wife headed the household. Some of the members were Mike Sandez (we have talked of him elsewhere), Vernon Crismor, Coit and Barbara Valentine and. . . Dolan was a CPO in the Navy. After he left the Navy in the late 70s, he and his family moved to West Virginia. Linda and I bought the house (for the community -- and never lived in it).