Relating Well to the Familiar Stranger

Among today’s most highly acclaimed Christian writers is John Mark Comer, whose best-known – and brilliant – books of recent years include The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry and Practicing the Way. A less well-known but similarly talented author is Tyler Staton, Comer’s successor as Lead Pastor of Bridgetown Church in Portland, Oregon. I have just finished reading Staton’s most recent book: The Familiar Stranger: (Re) Introducing the Holy Spirit to those in search of an experiential spirituality. I cannot recommend it highly enough: for anyone looking to put an accessible and stimulating book on the person of the Holy Spirit into the hands of an ordinary five-eighths believer, it is a great read.

My relationship with the Holy Spirit has long been a cocktail of both allure and wariness. Around 35 years ago, in the Presbyterian congregation I was brought up in – where there had always been a small but influential charismatic grouping – a new Youth Fellowship (YF) was formed. It was the charismatic segment of the church that led it.

Right from the start, that YF was both exciting but out of control. There was no shortage of Holy Spirit pyrotechnics. The leaders played with fire, some young people got a little burnt, and I personally have some smoke damage to this day.

We stood in circles, sang that we were standing on holy ground, did ‘glory dances,’ and heard much talk of the necessity of being ‘baptised in the Spirit.’ We were once taken to an obscure Pentecostal meeting in a small meeting hall far off the beaten track, where we were kind of trapped voyeurs to more ‘far out there’ Pentecostal fireworks, with much talk as I recall of spiritual warfare and dark threats from the evil one.

There was much talk of speaking in tongues, which apparently was not a gift that some had, but mandatory. I remember one evening being placed in the middle of a circle because that was ‘my night’ to start speaking in tongues, and having my face slapped, one cheek and then the other in alternation, being prayerfully implored to ‘speak it, speak it.’ I did not speak it, but instead faked it – not terribly hard as I had heard enough by then – which had the desired effect of getting the leaders off my back.

And thus, over what was probably no more than 12 or 18 months, the person of the Trinity variously described by Jesus as the Advocate, the Comforter, and the Counsellor, became to me a risky and threatening figure to be held at a distance. Which is quite a feat, when expressed in those terms.

(In a strange parallel, I did A-level English around the same time, where I managed a B-grade, but found the entire experience so off-putting that I have barely read a poem since, and still broadly avoid fiction. It was obviously my time of life for counterproductive formation…)

Three things are worth saying for clarity at this point. The first is that I wish this had not happened, but I do not see myself as damaged or a victim. In the scale of wounding experiences, this was pretty minor, and this blog is not – as such – a piece of spiritual ‘misery-lit’ in miniature. Honestly and genuinely, no sympathy is sought or needed.

A second point is that I do not feel any need to forgive anyone. I bear no ill will towards those YF leaders, and with the wisdom and perspective of now being in my early fifties, can see that this was misguided rather than malign. People were boldly going where they believed the Spirit was leading them, and nobody wilfully set out to damage anyone.

But then my third reflection is that I do, obviously, regret this. The way I was introduced to the Holy Spirit robbed me of some freedom, and instilled a sense of fear, a feeling that those 12 to 18 months gave me enough of that sort of expression of worship to last me a lifetime, thanks very much.

Now, as I say, in my early fifties, my greatest passion is that the ultimate goal of the Christian life is fruitfulness and transformation, and I pray every day to be open to the Spirit, in step with the Spirit, and filled with the Spirit. Those prayers are heartfelt and genuine, and I seek a constancy of double listening all the time, to both the people I am talking to and the Spirit as well. And yet… I also know that there is a small, resistant part of me that is still 18 years old, who will drive with the Spirit up to around 65mph, but will be very careful never to break an imaginary speed limit, for fear of what might happen or be remembered from decades earlier.

The Spirit has, I both believe and trust, come in time to be for me the Advocate, Comforter and Counsellor. Perhaps too much the Spirit that Jesus talked about in the Upper Room, and perhaps not enough the Spirit that Paul talks about in 1 Corinthians 12 and 14, and yet I broadly have a peace that for the adult life I’ve lived and experiences that I’ve had, the Holy Spirit in his own gentle way has been all that I’ve needed for my journey of faith and following.

Tyler Staton’s book has given me a newfound sense of curiosity, even adventure, to want to go further with the Spirit. I’ve no doubt that my story is not unique, and my hope in writing this blog is that anyone who has had similarly unhelpful experiences of the Spirit, particularly when they were younger and more vulnerable, would find the space to talk to God and others about what happened, and to pray, lament and forgive as they need to.

And I pray too that all of us, whatever our denomination or stage of life, and whatever our learning or understanding of God, would have a renewed desire to be open to and filled with the mysterious power of the Familiar Stranger.