Apostleship: Conversations with Pentecostal Churches

Receptive Ecumenism Conference - Tuesday 13 January 2009

Professor Veli-Matti Karkkainen, from the University of Helsinki spoke about receptive ecumenism and Pentecostalism.

It seems those churches usually described as Pentecostal cover a variety of theologies and many of them are currently asking what they can learn from the mainstream churches.  The professor identified three areas which might be fruitful for further exploration. 

1. Apostleship as a way into understanding ecumenical mission.  Apostleship is a dialectic and dynamic concept.  Most churches have some sense of apostleship as their case for continuity with the first century Christians. 
2. The quest for mutual recognition of ideas about apostleship.  The older churches might be able to help Pentecostal churches understand its meaning, if they are able to interpret their traditions together.
3. Ecclesiology from below.  This relates to many empirical studies of church life.  For Pentecostals the early churches were self-determining and so a congregationalist approach to ecclesiology is appropriate.

To me an Apostle is a church leader who is not present.  Paul wrote letters and John Wesley travelled around Britain on horseback.  The Apostle visits on rare occasions and their role is one of oversight, to strengthen those features which are true to the faith and to identify where local churches are departing from the faith.  This style of leadership leaves local churches with significant freedom to determine their direction.  This is an important idea and I shall return to it later in connection with how John Wesley supported early Methodism. 

The more traditional churches trace back apostolic succession to the first Apostles.  This forms a basic understanding of church and this succession for those churches is a basic requirement of ecumenism.  The Methodist Church in Britain has struggled with finding some meaningful way of accepting historic episcope.  The difficulties for the churches with a historic episcope is the danger of clouding the original vision through a mist of tradition.  For the Pentecostals and similar churches, their claim of being like the early church is undermined where such claims are received uncritically.  A dialogue in this theme might therefore help both types of church.