Bishop Malcolm Harding, [then] a long-time member of the ARM board, was awarded an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree at Huron College, London Ontario, on April 22, 1993.

The following is taken from the convocation address which he delivered to the theological graduating class that day. (You might say this is his response to the question, "What's up, Doc?")

Eduard Schweiser once stated, "Long before the Holy Spirit was a theme of doctrine, He was a fact in the experience of the community."

For the apostolic community, the Holy Spirit was an experienced reality. In the early church, there was an obvious conscious awareness of the Spirit's presence. As you read of the early church in the Acts of the Apostles, you discover the element of the supernatural popping up all over the place.

In those pages we discover a church of, really, nobodies, but who were powerfully equipped with spiritual gifts and unusual power, something sorely lacking at times in the church today. I am certain of one thing, that as Christian leaders, servants and fellow-pilgrims, we need to become much more natural about the supernatural.

As I see it, much of the western Christendom has become entrenched in a cerebral, rationalistic foundation with a tendency to be hostile to the experiential dimensions of the faith, especially if things become just a little too enthusiastic, demonstrative or emotional.

Recently a young man of some intellectual stature described his Christian conversion experience, his real awakening, as a union of the cerebral and cardiac muscles - the head and the heart becoming one.

To the graduates, I know you have been pursuing wisdom for the past three years. It is my prayer that what has become very real in your head will now become more and more real in your hearts, because that is the path to effective Christian ministry.

Recently, I was in a parish setting where I asked a group of parishioners what they would be looking for in a new priest. In their own beautiful way, they said they were looking for a priest who would love them, listen to them, pray with them, lay hands upon them for divine healing, and share with them about the good news of Jesus. To me, that is the language of the heart and the essence of true servant ministry.

St. Paul reminds us in his letter to the Galatians, "Since the Spirit is our life, let us be led by the Spirit." Far too often in modern times, it seems to me that Anglican Christian leaders have offered to those they serve what one writer has described as a 'deficient pneumatology' - a rather deflated doctrine of the Holy Spirit and the charisms (gifts). If the Spirit is the source of life, both on an individual level as well as corporately, then surely all of us, especially in the decade of evangelism, need to experience what I can only call a charismatic outpouring. To be more particular, a fanning into flame of that gift of the Holy Spirit, which we all receive in the sacramental life of the church.

We do need to be cautious, however, about limiting the power and the presence and work of the Holy Spirit to a purely sacramental time-table. The Spirit, like the wind, unpredictably, follows the Spirit's own timetable. Hans Kung, in his book, The Church, says "the Spirit is the Lord of the Church and not the Church of the Lord of the Spirit." We simply can't box in the Holy Spirit into nice, ecclesiastical compartments.

The Spirit of God needs to be released in our lives more and more, with all the graces and charisms needed to build up the church as the body of Christ, and to help us, as Dr. Howard Hanchey says, to move from a maintenance mind-set to a mission mind-set. It is my firm belief that God's people today need to be helped to truly expect and enjoy a much fuller life in the Spirit, through experiencing and using all of the charisms which we find in the New Testament.

Over the years, I think I have heard most of the critical comments expressed about spiritual renewal movements, and indeed, there have been some problem areas. For some, Renewal Christianity is a tendency toward fundamentalism. Others see it as largely an expression of interior piety without much social awareness. Others see it as an endless pursuit of mountain-top experiences.

I think it must be said that while there have been some abuses in renewal movements, abuse does not invalidate use. When Dr. David Reed of Wycliffe College conducted intensive cross-Canada research of charismatic renewal in the Anglican Church of Canada, which was published [in 1992], he noted that the movement is very much alive and has tended to reintegrate with Church institutions. Dr. Reed goes on to say that 'charismatics tend to be loyal, active, committed members, not schismatics disengaged from their churches; that idea is mythic." Charismatics, as Dr. Reed reminds us, enrich the spiritual resource of the churches, and that has certainly been my experience in parish life and as a servant-leader of a diocese in which much spiritual renewal activity is daily taking place.

Twenty years of pastoral ministry has clearly revealed to me that we, as servant-leaders in God's church, need to recognize a deep hunger in the lives of parishioners. This hunger leads people to truly respond when they are offered a more personal and living relationship with Jesus, so that He is no longer only the Jesus of history, but the living Lord of their lives, and they can indeed experience the transforming presence and power of the Holy Spirit, equipping them for ministry and servanthood. God freely gives His grace, but those whom you will be serving in parish ministry need to be helped to see that an active and alive Christian faith requires a personal response to Jesus, Lord and Saviour, and an openness to the transforming, renewing power of the Holy Spirit.

To the graduating class tonight, I'm upholding renewal Christianity, in its various forms, be in charismatic renewal, be it teaching on gift reception and equipping all the parishioners for ministry, be it the restoration of the ministry of divine healing to its right and proper place in Sunday worship, be it Cursillo, Faith Alive weekends, evangelism events, Telling Your Story, Sharing Your Faith - all this I am holding up because of my own positive, enriching experiences in Anglican renewal movements for the past twenty years. I also hold it up because of a rather significant observation made by Bishop John White and Richard Kew, in their recent book entitled New Millennium, New Church. White and Kew say, "Everywhere one looks throughout the Anglican Communion, the ranks of the renewed are swelling. Reading the statistics and monitoring their vitality, there is little doubt this is the prominent trend within worldwide Anglicanism. During the 1990s, the concerns and agendas of the renewal movements will move to the forefront. Those who ignore it do so at their own and the church's peril."

In all of that, I hear echoes of St. Paul's warnings about our cautious reaction to that power from on high- don't grieve the Holy Spirit, says Paul, don't quench the Holy Spirit - no - but "be filled with the Holy Spirit."

And to that, I would add, don't fear the Holy Spirit. Far too often, clergy and laity have conveyed to me a deep fear that if they really let go and let God's Spirit move freely as the breeze, there will be total chaos and all control will be lost. To those of you about to enter parish ministry or serve our Lord in other forms of ministry, hear further predictions from Kew and White: "It is conceivable that by the next century, Renewal Christianity will be on the verge of becoming the mainstream of the Episcopal Church."

Let us all see and accept that the Holy Spirit has sovereignly chosen to move powerfully in our midst in recent times. The froth and euphoria of spiritual renewal of some years ago has been followed by a growing theological grounding. Biblical scholars are now shaping for us a renewal theology. Dr. J Rodman Williams, for example, has produced a work entitled "Renewal Theology with a subtitle, "A systematic theology from a charismatic perspective." I commend this work to the entire graduating class. Who knows, perhaps such learned reflections on the outbursts of renewal experiences in the Christian church over the past three decades may, in fact, bring about a renewal of theology.

Renewal and revival of course, are not new, and have always been the movement of God's Spirit when the church, as someone recently wrote, (whose name escapes me), has grown "overly fat and self-indulgent, or cold and sterile through formalism." It is true that most renewal movements have rather humble origins. Someone once noted that the church seems to have a peculiar practice of initially closing its doors to prophetic or revolutionary figures, but when they're dead, filling hymn books with their contributions.

Well, dear friends, the winds of the Spirit are blowing freely these days, fanning the flame in the beautiful fireplace of all that constitutes Anglicanism. It is the Spirit that gives life and revives dry bones and is helping us to see that our tremendous preoccupation with causes and issues alone, does not usually convert or empower people for servant ministry. Causes and issues are indeed extremely valid, but they must be always treated as the fruits of a living encounter with the living Lord, and an empowering to take the servant-towel, to clothe the naked, feed the hungry, take in the homeless poor, visit the sick and oppressed. We are indeed, as Michael Green reminds us "saved to serve."

To all of you who are graduating, allow me to conclude by recalling a prophetic utterance of Zechariah about another time of spiritual renewal and restoration in Jerusalem centuries ago. "In those days, when ten people from nations of every language pluck up courage, they shall pluck the robe of a Jew and say, "We will go with you, because we have seen that God is with you."

May those beyond our parish doors --- they lapsed (and there are many) the unbeliever - sense in all of us that God is truly in the midst of his people, and may they be drawn into a family of love. May our Anglican parishes become more and more warm, accepting spiritual homes alive in the Spirit, where enthusiastic preaching is the Sunday norm, where joyful worship is inspired by the Spirit, and where every activity in ministry is guided by the Spirit of God. Unless we as the people of God are experiencing in our personal lives, our parishes, our theological colleges, our dioceses, the new invigorating wine of God's Spirit, everything else we do, no matter how highly programmed or implemented, will be in vain.

We are called to be God's temple, and God's Spirit is expected to grow in us. When we allow those fresh breezes of renewal to freely move, indeed we will see signs and wonders and the hand of God at work in a mighty way. And when that does happen, the glory goes to God, whose power working within us does infinitely more than we could ever ask or imagine.

The Rt. Rev. Malcolm Harding
Bishop, Diocese of Brandon
Episcopal Visitor to ARM