I was saved in 1969, aged just 21 years, when a colleague where I was employed told me about Jesus. In my new life as a Christian, I was totally new to the Christian world and very excited, having lived only as an unbeliever in an unbelieving world up to this time. It was only a matter of a few weeks in this new, Christian way of life, before I encountered my first Pentecostal Christian. His name was Peter, a young man my own age, and I met him at our Anglican church after the worship service. I remember greeting him with the usual “How are you?” to which he replied “Praising the Lord, brother, praising the Lord!”
He was also sporting a black eye, and he told me that he had been in the pub the night before, witnessing to the drinkers. One of them had punched him in the face; hence, his shiner. But he was rejoicing because he had been “punched for Jesus”; and as he told me this, he had an angelic look on his face which, to me, was rather comical, despite the fact that he was serious. I also admired him for his courage in facing a pub full of drunken Aussie beer swillers.
At that time (late 1960s to early 1970s), the churches were still the same as they had always been, the mainstream denominations being riddled with liberals and Freemasons. But the Spirit of God had started to move, resulting in a growing swell of agitation from many quarters to modernise and re-energise the Church.
Anglicanism
The Sydney Diocese of the Anglican Church began a revision of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. The Charismatic Renewal was also under way and was attracting large numbers of Christians; there was even a mid-week Healing Service held in the Anglican cathedral in Sydney which was headed by its canon, a Charismatic Christian named Jim Glennon. This heralded the change which was coming to Anglicanism, whether Evangelical (low church), Liberalism (broad church) or Anglo-Catholicism (high church); the wing which was the most greatly affected due to its fundamentalist view of Scripture was evangelicalism. I remember meeting an Anglican evangelical Christian woman at the time, who wryly commented on their narrow conservatism as “Father, Son and Holy Bible”. I had to laugh.
Charismatic movement
The difference between Charismatic and Pentecostal, I was told much later, was that while they were both distinguished by the experience the Baptism of the Holy Spirit, the Pentecostals were those Christians who had separated well before from the mainstream denominations, with a large part of their focus on healing, and formed their own denominations; whereas, the Charismatic Christians remained in their churches and denominations so that they could bring about change from within. However, that difference doesn’t seem to exist anymore as the Charismatics’ strategy has been so successful that nearly the whole of evangelicalism now has been influenced both in theology and worship; so the two terms are now probably used interchangeably.
I don’t think anybody outside the Charismatic movement at that time would have dreamt how influential it would become. But people were getting restless due to the tired old worship services, the sameness and repetitiveness of the liturgy, the same old hymns, and the general “deadness” of church worship, preaching, and church life generally, as many saw the situation. “Charismania” quickly permeated the whole church. As the hippy drug culture spread amongst the youth, the “Jesus Movement”, itself a Charismatic movement, also spread, countering the drug culture, becoming a sub-culture itself, and bringing huge numbers of young people into salvation and the churches.
But it wasn’t limited to youth, for many adults were seeking and receiving the baptism of the Holy Spirit, their lives being radically changed as they experienced once again the joy of salvation and their newfound freedom in worship; in other instances, unconverted members of liberal- and Freemason-controlled churches were brought under the sound of the Gospel and were born again by the Holy Spirit.
The numbers of Charismatics within mainstream churches grew rapidly, and they started gathering together as groups of Christians having in common the Baptism of the Holy Spirit, worshipping together on Sunday afternoons in rented buildings. These meetings offered excitement, joy, and passion in a setting where they could exercise their new-found ability to speak in tongues, sing in the Spirit, dance in worship, and other manifestations of the Holy Spirit.
Some Pentecostal publications of the time
There also appeared a large corpus of new songs to sing in worship, using the words of the King James Bible set to catchy tunes entitled “Scripture in Song”; and Christians from traditional churches were moving en masse to these Charismatic groups to be baptized in the Spirit, and share in the joy and freedom of worship. Even the mainstream churches started using their songs.
This was the scene in Sydney where I lived, but the same thing seemed to be happening throughout Western Christianity. Not only had the Charismatics produced “Scripture in Song”, they also produced study bibles which brought out the hitherto ignored role and activity of the Holy Spirit.
In 1963, “The Dake Study Bible” was published. It is said to be the most comprehensive and thorough Pentecostal study bible of all, and is still in publication, serving the Pentecostal community by providing sound theological comments, notes, articles, Hebrew and Greek explanations, and so on.
In 1972, the “Logos International Study Bible” emphasising the Holy Spirit, published by a Pentecostal publisher called Logos, was also meant to highlight the work of the Holy Spirit. It is based on The Cross-Reference Bible, which was published in 1910. The Logos Bible was also very thorough, detailed, and soundly theological. It was an excellent study bible by all accounts, but unfortunately it was not reprinted because the original publisher collapsed and failed.
“whole lotta shakin’ goin’ on”
Over the next decade or two, many of the Sunday afternoon worship groups joined traditional Pentecostal denominations, such as Assemblies of God and Four Square, while others formed their own denominations or remained as independent churches. For a few years, many of these independent church groups which attached themselves to the larger Pentecostal denominations or groups changed their allegiance and attachment frequently; and even in the country town where I lived, it’s hard to keep up with them. The local telephone directory, although updated each year, was often out of date soon after publication because of the frequent changes of these small Charismatic churches to Assemblies of God to Christian City Church to Harvest Church to Christian Outreach Centre, etc. Other Charismatic churches, mushroom-like, appeared overnight, and within a few months had disappeared.
Pentecostals come of age
Anthony Venn-Brown was a very gifted young Australian Christian from an Anglo-Catholic background. But, like so many of the Christians of the 60s, he saw his church as being irrelevant due to the rituals and archaic language, and abandoned it. He was converted in 1969 and became Baptist. From there he became interested in the Charismatic Renewal in the hope that God would deliver him from his homosexuality.
He became a very successful evangelist and church planter for the Assemblies of God, and because of his ministry, the AOG was brought from the backwater of Australian Christianity to become a major force under the leadership of another talented man, Brian Houston. Anthony’s effect on the AOG was huge, and this had the knock-on effect of influencing the whole church scene in Australia. The prayers, the aims, the goals, of the earlier Charismatic Christians to influence the churches were all, at once, answered in this man. The first Hillsong church was because of Anthony, although I don’t know if it was one of his church plants, and it became Australia’s first megachurch.
Anthony Venn-Brown founded NSW Youth Alive, a ministry for young people essentially through its amazing music, but he handed it over to his assistant, Pat Mesiti, another capable and talented leader, who took it to the heights.
Hillsong became the huge success it was because of these three gifted, Spirit-filled men, Anthony Venn-Brown, Brian Houston, and Pat Mesiti. Tragically, as seems to be common with mega-church leaders and successful televangelists, they were each disgraced and humbled by God because of their sin in their personal lives. “Be sure your sin will find you out” (Num 32:23 KJV).
Although Anthony’s calling and career, were so incredibly successful and influential, his personal life was desperately unhappy and complicated due to his same-sex orientation and desire to be authentic, instead of living a lie in the church. He and his wife were treated cruelly by his peers in the church after he “came out” at a public meeting. He wrote his autobiography “A Life of Unlearning” after leaving the church. It is a book well worth reading.
Lastly, in 1980, Phil Pringle and his wife Chris founded Christian City Church (now C3 Church). After a failed attempt at starting a church shortly before this, Christian City Church began life in a surf club building at a popular Sydney surfing beach. Phil tells us that every week he would get to the building well before everybody else arrived, and pray for the meeting and for the growth of the church. He says he would stand at the front of the empty building and greet imaginary figures in each seat, believing that God would fill these seats.
This was the humble beginning of Christian City Church (C3), and in a very short time, it became a mega-church, with branches national and internationally. It also has its own international music ministry and has been a force for good in the Church and the world.
Furthermore, Pastor Phil continues in influential positions, not only in C3, but Singapore. He has been able to navigate power, authority, influence and wealth without falling into sin and thus being exposed and humbled.
Finally, and speaking personally, my life has been shaped by the churches and individuals I met or whose ministry I experienced in this article; in particular, some of the evangelical ministers who took time to mentor me. Decades later, the music ministry of NSW Youth Alive impacted and revived my spirit as I was trying to recover and find my identity after a long period of spiritual abuse in a Reformed church. During this time, I listened to Phil Pringles sermons while in my car, either at lunch time or driving home. I also had many Christian City music tapes and CDs, which I loved.
Unfortunately, I’ve found that spiritual abuse has its insidious presence in many of the evangelical churches in NSW, and, judging by the number of the books on the market which deal with spiritual abuse, it must be so throughout the world.
More decades later, as I was being inwardly tormented again with a renewal of feelings resulting from my years of church abuse, I was consequently suffering an identity crisis – at least, that’s what I think it must have been. I came across Anthony Venn Brown’s book seemingly by accident. I knew nothing of him but was struck by the fact that he lived in a Sydney suburb very close to where I had been raised, he being three years younger than me. When I saw that close connection, and that he was gay, I thought that he could have something to say to me because he had suffered at the hands of his church, just as I had in mine but for different reasons. But Anthony’s story is much too painful and sordid for me to be comforted by it. I was grateful to be able to read it, but it doesn’t lift my spirit now, just by virtue of his being a fellow sufferer.
So, in my mind, I’ve now gone back in my mind to the period when, through NSW Youth Alive and Christian City worship music, and Pastor Phil Pringle were so encouraging to me, and virtually brought me into the presence of Jesus every day; not to relive the past with them, but to re-read the books which helped bring me out of my torment – books such as “When the Spirit Comes with Power” by John White; a Pentecostal bible called “Full Life Study Bible” (this is the NIV version; there is also a KJV equivalent called “Life in the Spirit Study Bible” – the bible version which underlies them is different but the notes are the same); and I have others which I will also be reading.
Obviously, the best and most important to read is the bible itself – there is no substitute for it. During that period when I was trying to find myself and find God following my years of abuse (1990s), and at the same period I’ve been speaking about, even though I was reading as many books about the Holy Spirit and associated manifestations as I could find, I realised that I was reading more books than I was the bible. So I made a promise to God that I wouldn’t read any books for 3 months (I soon after changed this to 1 month, in case I couldn’t see it through), and instead spend an hour every day reading just the bible. My mother had just bought me a copy of the New Living Translation, so I used that.
After a month, I could tell I’d been changed. Instead of sadness and grief, I now had a deep-seated joy and manifested itself physically as a gentle tingling of excitement in my stomach. This lasted for some years and it was an answer to my prayers, but not in the way I had expected. But I was glad of this because if God had answered my prayer to be filled with his Spirit in a “slaying in the Spirit and falling to the ground” kind of way, I might have been afraid of it or wary. But what God gave me instead assured me that it was Him.
“Do not fret because of those who are evil….Trust in the LORD and do good….Take delight in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart” (Ps v37:1, 3-4 NIV).
“I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten…” (Joel 2:25 NIV).
Anthony Venn-Brown – Wikipedia