Throughout the centuries, Christians have debated about the proper role of charismatic gifts in the church. Are gifts such as tongues, prophecy, and supernatural healing operative and available to Christians in the modern day, or did they cease with the first-century church?
People disagree, and strongly so.
For my part, I remain mostly agnostic about the question. I am what has often been described as “open but cautious.”
In other words, I have never had a personal experience with these charismatic gifts, but I believe that we serve a supernatural God who is not timid about the miraculous.
So, as long as charismatic church leaders are careful to disciple their people in the proper use of these gifts as outlined by the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians, I tend not to question it.
There is one practice that is more common in charismatic circles that I do question, however. And that is when a Christian, whether a church leader or not, begins a sentence with the phrase, “Well, the…
