The Wheels Fell Off?

Busy morning in the graphics department here, with so many Journeymates changing the look of their blogs. I managed to come up with some reasonable link graphics for the newest looks from Bob, Len, Jamie, Grace, Jason, Makeesha, Cindy, John and Pernell, but I decided to leave the Tall Skinny Kiwi as is, because he's ALWAYS changing the look of his blog, and for some reason, I really like the button I made awhile back.

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Brother Maynard emailed a few of us this morning with a picture labelled "Charismatic Movement: Then and Now", and it got me thinking.

UPDATE: The original artwork was done by Jon Birch, and his whole blog is a treasure trove of "blog art". Check it out!

Let's just go with recent history (last 30 years or so), and apply the first picture as representative of the Jesus Movement of the late 60's and early 70's. If we use that as a reference point, then the Shepherding Movement and/or the Word Faith Movement could be seen as the reason the wheel fell off and they are now metaphorically in "the desert".

This might represent what's happened, cuz I can't imagine the Spirit being stuck in the desert with us, except...

...I really don't believe that the Spirit hasn't noticed that the wheels fell off. I think He's more interested in seeing the wagon train keeping up than we are.
To take a hopeful view of the future, perhaps this graphic represents the Post-Charismatic dream: (1) recognize the genuine fruit of the move(s) of the Spirit in the last century, (2) recognize the genuine excesses and abuses that have caused -- for many -- the wheels to fall off, and (3) move into a more charis-missional direction that avoids the problems of recent years, and follows the late John Wimber's advice: "take the best and go!".

And if we take a longer view, based on the cycles of renewal, consolidation, institutionalization, and renewal that we see throughout church history -- the routinization of charisma -- perhaps it will look more like this:
Have the wheels fallen off the Charismatic Movement? I'd say you could easily argue "yes", if you take into account authoritarian leadership styles (more properly called "spiritual abuse"), aberrant theologies like Word Faith (a thinly-disguised justification for greed and consumerism), and the casualties that these have produced by the hundreds and thousands.

However, the greater problem is not the existence of these twisted views, as damaging as they have proven to be, it is the refusal to deal with the abusers, usually under the spiritually-bankrupt idea of "unity at all costs" (because "unity" is where God commands a blessing according to Psalm 133:1-3).

As long as the issues aren't dealt with by people willing to stand up and challenge the errors, choosing instead to ignore blatant abuses because of some false understanding of "unity", the Spirit will continue to move, but we may find "Ichabod" (the glory has departed) written over a few doors.