Mark Driscoll (looking slightly worn out in the photo) spoke to a bunch of Anglicans in Australia recently. He listed 18 obstacles to evangelism in Australia - as he saw it. One of them stood out to me:
8. Many of you are afraid of the Holy Spirit. You don't know what to do with Him, so the trinity is Father, Son and Holy Bible. You are so reactionary to pentecostalism that you do not have a robust theology of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit calls people into ministry. He also empowers people for ministry. You don't have to be charismatic but you should be a little charismatic, enough at least to worship God with more than just all of your mind. The word charismatic here means prosperity, excessive, bizarre. In London, it means you're not a liberal. Don't get hung up on all the terminology. Do you love the Holy Spirit? Jesus says the Holy Spirit is a ‘He' and not an ‘it'." Ministry cannot be done apart from the Holy Spirit - I think that is in part leading to the lack of entrepreneurialism and innovation, because if it's not already done and written down, you're suspicious of it.
I don't think the Aussie Anglicans are alone in being afraid of the Spirit. Even Pentecostal churches in NZ don't seem to have quite the life they had back in the 70s and 80s, when there seemed to be a real Holy Spirit move.
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