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The author
Micael Grenholm, a Swedish charismactivist, apologist and author.
Heidi and Rolland Baker’s Extremely Inspiring Christmas Greeting!
Praise God for Heidi and Rolland Baker! These wonderful missionaries in Mozambique are so passionate about the love of the Father, the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the miraculous power of the Holy Spirit, and their missionary organization Iris Global has experienced glorious revival for the last 20 years. Their Christmas greeting above was published a few days after Christmas (probably because of the amazingly beautiful editing) but who cares about that when the video is a masterpiece when it comes to inspiration, passion and faith?
Heidi shares how 2014 has been a challenge for Iris because of the horrible floods in Mozambique, but she is amazed by how God used countless radical disciples to serve, encourage and relieve the suffering population and bring the Gospel of hope and life. As I’ve written before on this blog, Iris experiences amazing miracles like the blind seeing and the deaf hearing while helping the poor and vulnerable with good, serious development assistance.
Since I’m a monthly donor to Iris I also got a physical Christmas greeting from the Bakers, this postcard with a nice worship CD. The reason they send their supporters worship music is so that their love for Jesus may increase, they say. I love it. They’re just great. God bless them!
The Top 5 Popular Posts on Holy Spirit Activism in 2014
Possibly a new logo for Holy Spirit Activism. Tell me if you like it!
As always, the WordPress “stats monkeys” has produced a summary of the past blog year that you can find here. I thank God that the blog is growing and pray that He will lead me and others to inspire more and more people to become radical, charismatic Jesus hippies, combining miracles with evangelism and activism.
Here’s the top five viewed posts during 2014:
1. The Kundalini Myth. This post was actually written in 2013, but people keeps finding it on Google, and it’s the most commented post on this blog as well as the most viewed one. Many Christians believe in Andrew Strom’s claim that large parts of the charismatic movement are influenced by the Hindu kundalini sect, but thankfully many are also questioning this ridiculous claim, and I hope that my blog post has convinced some that Strom’s Kundalini warning is a myth.
2. Compelled by Love Movie Review. This amazing documentary on the lives of Heidi and Rolland Baker and their ministry Iris Global was released in January, and although the audience may be somewhat limited thousands have found my movie review through Google. Maybe I should do some reviews more often? 🙂
3. Pope Francis: “The Charismatic Movement is Necessary”. I’ve written about Francis a couple of times, and even though I don’t agree with Catholic doctrine on several spots I think his passion for evangelism, poverty reduction, peacemaking and Spiritual gifts is absolutely awesome, since I’m also passionate about evangelism, poverty reduction, peacemaking and Spiritual gifts. In this post I highlighted his positive words about the charismatic movement in his famous meeting with journalists on the pope plane from Rio back to Rome, and the post sparked some controversy but also excitement. (more…)
Check Out the New Holy Spirit Activism YouTube Channel!
I’ve had YouTube for five years now, during which I have uploaded 400 videos that have been viewed 130 000 times. In total, people have watched 6800 hours of footage from my YouTube channel, which is like eight months of YouTube watching nonstop. Most of the videos are sermons, Bible studies, testimonies of miracles, teaching about radical discipleship and from time to time weird stuff like this clip.
Most of it is in Swedish, though, simply because most of the footage I record is in Swedish. I’ve tried to make sure that every fifth video or so is in English, but even then I understand that people who share the vision about Holy Spirit Activism – evangelism, miracles, peace and justice combined – and aren’t interesting in learning a weird Scandinavian language will be a bit bored if they subscribe to my YouTube channel.
So I made a second one! The Holy Spirit Activism YouTube channel will from now on be the home for all my English videos, while my old channel (simply called Micael Grenholm) will be in Swedish. Since I’ve already uploaded a bunch of nice English videos on the old channel, I’ve made a playlist on the new called Holy Spirit Activism Classics where you can find some of them, including a sermon by radical missionary Heidi Baker, testimonies about healing, the solution to global inequality, and more.
I also have a lot of videos on my harddrive to upload on the new channel, like insights in the community of goods that is being practiced by the Jesus Army, and an interview with Francis Shongwe who was raised from the dead. Here’s a teaser.
So feel free to follow the Holy Spirit Activism YouTube channel! Also, check out the new video section on this site, where I also have posted videos not published by me that I find very inspiring in my quest to follow Jesus. Blessings!
Francis – the Charismatic Hippie Pope
Pope Francis, in a Brazilian favela
Who would have thought that a Jesus freak would become pope? The main focus of this blog has always been that signs and wonders need to be combined with peace and justice – charismatic Christians need to be activists and activist Christians need to be charismatic – since this is what Jesus taught to His disciples and Holy Spirit activism has the power to transform lives and bring hope in even greater ways that non-supernatural activism. Unfortunately, a lot of times charismatic and evangelical Christians are not huge fans of peace and justice – something that is painfully obvious when you see what many of them write about the Gaza war – and many Christian activists are not very charismatic or evangelical.
But there is, I believe, a growing movement within Christianity that realizes that a charismatic life in the Spirit should be combined with activism for a better world; a movement that crosses all denominations, places and cultures. And by God’s grace we have a sympathizer among the leader of the biggest church in the world: pope Francis.
Few have missed that Francis is a passionate advocate for peace and justice: he has criticized capitalism for neglecting the poor, he lives simply and promotes economic equality, he has prayed for peace in the Middle East both at the Western wall and at the West Bank wall. But what not as many know is that Francis also is a charismatic pope, who believes in Spiritual gifts and who blesses both the Catholic charismatic renewal and Pentecostals.
Resurrecting Pentecost and other Jesus Hippie Songs!
Here’s a song I wrote, it’s called Resurrecting Pentecost!
In a world where all magic is rationalized
And our skeptical doubt make us suffer and die
We need a supernatural healing fire explosion
Let’s go out on the streets with the power of God
Let us empty the prisons and hospitals
Let us birth revival and total transformation
By the power of His Name
We will never be the same
‘Cause we are
Resurrecting Pentecost
Raising up at any cost
Acts in modern times
Healing people eagerly
Sharing all things equally
Proclaiming that Jesus Christ is Lord
Jesus Christ is Lord!
Why Do I Call Myself a Jesus “Hippie”?
I took this photo just a week ago when me and some friends were preparing some evangelism at a music festival. See what we look like?
Hippies aren’t always popular among evangelical Christians. Mark Driscoll has famously said: “Some emergent types want to recast Jesus as a limp-wrist hippie in a dress with a lot of product in His hair, who drank decaf and made pithy zen statements about life while shopping for the perfect pair of shoes. […] I cannot worship the hippie, diaper, halo Christ because I cannot worship a guy I can beat up.” I do agree that Jesus wouldn’t shop shoes or be a Buddhist, but He surely would be able to beat up. In fact, that’s what they actually did with Him on Easter.
The hippie movement emerged in the 60’s and 70’s in the United States and spread quickly to Europe and other parts of the world. It was a youth movement with international influences that emphasized love, peace and understanding, freedom and environmentalism, music, sex and drugs. It was influenced by eastern religions and sparked both new age occultism and the sexual revolution. These latter bits make it understandable why Dricoll doesn’t like hippies very much.
However, in the early 70’s thousands of hippies were saved in what is simply called the Jesus Movement, or the Jesus People Revival. They protested against both drugs and occultism, saying that we should “get high on Jesus” and be baptized in the Holy Spirit instead, but they preserved the hippie passion for peace, justice and a simple lifestyle. Over 100 000 Jesus hippies lived together in communal houses, they were preaching the Gospel in the streets and on the beaches, and many miracles happened as they prayed for the sick and prophesied.
Living Liberation Through Worship
This is a contribution for reflection for the Wild Goose Festival
A lot of Christian activists detach themselves from the Bible, evangelicalism and a devoted life to God. I know of so many Christians that used to be passionate about Jesus, then after they started working for peace and justice, they started to question their faith and it grew colder. I even know of some becoming atheists. I fear that Christian activism is one of the main secularizing movements in the church today.
Of course, it is with pain I’m writing this. As you can tell from my blog title, I’m a Christian activist myself. For over five years I’ve been telling fellow Christians to love their enemies, share all they have with the poor, end oppression and care for the creation. I am very critical to the lack of activism within evangelicalism, but I’m convinced that it isn’t because they read the Bible too much or take Jesus too seriously – on the contrary, they ignore large parts of God’s Word even though they claim to believe in it. Much like the pharisees in the time of the gospels.
If we do take Jesus and the Bible seriously, we’ll sell everything we have and give the money to the poor (Mk 10:21). We’ll never fight back but turn the other cheek(Mt 5:40-48). We’ll give to everyone that asks us (Lk 6:30). And not only that, we’ll heal the sick and raise the dead (Mt 10:8), prophesy and speak in tongues (Acts 2:6-21) and preach the Gospel to the whole world (Mt 28:18-20). If you follow Jesus, you can’t separate peace and justice from miracles, evangelism, Bible study or prayer. It’s all connected.
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Kevin Daugherty: Beware the Wild Goose
My blog friend and fellow MennoNerd Kevin Daugherty wrote this excellent piece on his blog Koinonia Revolution the other day. It’s so good I simply want to repost it all here:
I come from a charismatic stream of Christianity. Most of the churches I have attended or been a member of have openly believed in the active presence of the Holy Spirit (the “Wild Goose“), a very personal relationship with Christ, faith healing, and active worship. This background developed in me a deep respect for religious experience, but unlike a stereotypical charismatic, I was quiet and contemplative, which caused me to develop a deep respect for the monastics, mystics, and Quakers. For the longest time, I had no idea I was part of the Charismatic movement (I was not really aware of the theological labels), but my background continues to influence me.
The Charismatic movement is a product of the 20th century and has its roots in Pentecostalism, but I find that Spirit-filled Christianity puts one in a large family of Christian traditions. I think Eberhard Arnold described this tradition well:
The life of love that arises from faith has been witnessed to over the centuries, especially by the Jewish prophets and later by the first Christians. We acknowledge Christ, the historical Jesus, and with him his entire message as proclaimed by his apostles and practiced by his followers. Therefore we stand as brothers and sisters together with all those who have lived in community through the long course of history: the Christians of the first century; the Montanists in the second; the monastics and Arnold of Brescia; the Waldensians; the itinerant followers of Francis of Assisi; the Bohemians and Moravians and the Brothers of the Common Life; the Beguines and Beghards; the Anabaptists of the sixteenth century; the early Quakers; the Labadists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; and many other denominations and movements down to the present day. (Eberhard Arnold: Writings Selected, pg. 158-159)
I wish I could add something more, but I really think Arnold says it perfectly. Spirit-filled faith is part of a long prophetic tradition going through many individuals and communities—the Hebrew prophets, early Christians, medieval mystics, “spiritualist” Anabaptists, Quakers, Pentecostals, and many others.
New Song: God is a Criminal
I wrote a song the other day! It goes like this:
1. God is a criminal, it isn’t hard to see
In the book of Acts He breaks the law to set the captives free
An unjust law is no law at all, compassion is the key
God is a criminal, so that’s what I want to be
2. God is a hippie, it isn’t hard to tell
He commands us to love our enemies and all our stuff to sell
Among the poor and prostitutes is where He likes to dwell
God is a hippie, and so am I as well
Contemporary Charismatic Activism in Developing Countries
Miller and Yamamori’s book
I finished my bachelor’s thesis Holy Spirit Development earlier this fall. Here’s an excerpt:
It is an interesting phenomenon that the Pentecostal and charismatic movement grows rapidly among the poor, something that has been explained with the charismatic promises of healing, prosperity and answered prayers (Togarasei 2011, Pfeiffer et al 2007). But how do charismatic churches in developing nations tackle the poverty of their members? In 2007, Donald Miller and Tetsunao Yamamori published a book called Global Pentecostalism: The New Face of Christian Social Engagement. Originally the authors wanted to write about churches in general that work with social justice in developing nations, but when they, to their surprise, discovered that the vast majority of churches that did so were Pentecostal, they decided to study this movement further.
According to the authors, the stereotype of Pentecostals being so caught up in eschatological expectations and evangelistic focus that they are not “wasting time” on social and political change (Miller & Yamamori 2007, p. 21), is not very relevant for Pentecostal and charismatic Christianity in the global south. Instead, the authors come up with the term “Progressive Pentecostals” to describe what they believe is very common: Pentecostals seriously involved in social action. Throughout the book, they give examples of how Pentecostals and charismatics run charities as well as mobilize political campaigning for social justice as a result of their faith.
My Testimony
How rude of me, I’ve let you reading my blog for 18 months without ever introducing myself! Here’s a short presentation of how and why I received my passion to combine charismatic theology with activism for peace and justice, based on an article I’m currently writing for Pax Pneuma, the journal for Pentecostals and Charismatics for Peace and Justice.
Although being raised in a Swedish Lutheran family, religion never meant very much to me until April 2006, when I was radically born again at a mass in the giant Uppsala Cathedral. I started to pray and read the Bible, and I was fascinated by how the liturgy of my church – that previously was nothing but a bunch of pointless, boring rituals for me – had ancient roots filled with holy meaning.
But I also started to spot differences between church and Scripture. I was surprised that Jesus commanded His disciples to heal the sick and raise the dead (Mt 10:8) – something I had thought were things only Jesus Himself did to prove that He was the Son of God – and I was even more surprised to realize that I was a disciple (Mt 28:19)! “Disciples” was a term that I had thought only referred to the twelve men closest to Jesus, not people today. Now I realized that I was actually supposed to do the things Jesus commanded the apostles to do (Mt 28:20a).
Yet, people weren’t prophesying or casting out demons very much in my Lutheran church, so I started to attend some charismatic and Pentecostal churches. As I grew deeper into the charismatic movement, I saw some differences between church and Scripture here as well though, specifically when it came to peace and justice.
Why I as an Activist Love the Gifts of the Holy Spirit!
This text is also published at Jesus Radicals today.
Photo: Iris Ministries
The Pentecostal and charismatic movements have a bad reputation among Christian anarchists and activists. There are too many examples of healing evangelists who control the masses through manipulation and hysteria, with promises of supernatural encounters only to gain money and status for themselves. Furthermore, many Pentecostals and charismatics support nationalism, war, discrimination and inequalities. They bless the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands, they preach a prosperity gospel where strong faith leads to great wealth, they deny climate change and don’t care about the environment.
Yet, I am totally convinced that every Christian activist should embrace the gifts of the Spirit and pursue signs and wonders. Why? Because the mess I just described is of course not genuine a fruit of the Spirit, it is a result of what I call the Corinth Syndrome, when charismatic Christians portray their own crazy ideas and practices as divinely inspired.
The Supernatural and Political Kingdom of God
I’ve written a lot about how inspired I am by the life and teaching of John Wimber, the founder of the Vineyard movement. The Kingdom of God was the most central concept in his theology, just as it also was the most central concept in the teachings of Jesus. And what Wimber showed quite clearly was that the Kingdom cannot by any means be separated from signs and wonders.
The reason for this is that miracles manifest power. When God does impossible things like raising the dead or multiplying food, it becomes evident that He is an almighty King, and that He alone can save us from sin and death. Therefore, it is not surprising that the gospels tell us how Jesus and the disciples preached about the Kingdom and healed the sick at the same time (Mt 4:23, Lk 9:2). “For the kingdom of God does not consist in talk but in power.” (1 Cor 4:20)
Wimber’s teaching got a huge impact. The Kingdom of God is central not only in the Vineyard but also in other Charismatic movements like New Wine, Bethel Church and Global Awakening. However, I’m afraid that they have missed a very important aspect of the Kingdom that is quite evident in the Scriptures. The Kingdom of God is of course also a political term, with political consequences in our lives.
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Dead Raisings and Food Miracles
One of the most amazing books I’ve read is called Voice in the Night by Surprise Sithole. It’s an autobiography where Surprise tells about how the external, audible voice of God saved his life as a young man and called him to go and preach the Gospel in his homeland Mozambique as well as other nations nearby. He healed the sick, raised the dead, fed the poor and planted churches, just as Jesus had told us to do. Later on he became a leader in Iris Ministries.
In the video above Surprise shares a few of the stories that can be found in his book. Not only has he raised eight people from the dead, he has also seen a lot of food miracles. Like many other saints, he combines signs and wonders with poverty reduction. I think he is a wonderful example of a humble and joyful leader with really strong faith and burning compassion. We need to listen more to these guys also in the Western church!
A Yankee Imperialist Pig Filled with the Spirit
Bob Ekblad
Bob Ekblad has for 30 years been a Christian activist, eagerly working for peace and justice – especially among poor immigrants, prisoners and Guatemalan and Honduran farmers. In the clip above, he shares that eight years ago, he realized that something was missing in his ministry for the poor and oppressed. Somehow nationalism and egoism seemed to be stronger than the Gospel he preached.
At this time, Bob’s younger brother got saved in the Charismatic movement, and simply told him: “You do miss something, you miss the power of the Holy Spirit!” Bob was very sceptical since republican agendas dominated among Charismatics, but eventually he went to the Catch the Fire Toronto Church to be filled with the Spirit.
And filled he was! A prophetic man said to him that he saw a vision of him sitting with men in red uniforms on blue plastic chairs. He said “I believe it’s in a prison, and that the Father says ‘I love how you love my prisoners’.” Bob was stunned. That was exactly how his prison ministry looked like! Then the man prayed for a healing anointing to be released in Bob’s life. (more…)
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