Introductory Note:
Next month, Chris Hall (Renovaré’s president) and Carolyn Arends (Renovaré’s director of education) will be co-teaching a course entitled “Wholistic Spiritual Formation”, as part of the summer school offerings at Regent College* in Vancouver. (It’s not too late to sign up!)
“Richard Foster has helpfully identified six great streams—contemplative, holiness, charismatic, social justice, evangelical, and incarnational—flowing through the life of Jesus and the spirituality of the Christian church,” states the course description. “We’ll explore each of these different streams, discovering the ways that they relate to one another, impact spiritual formation, and foster the possibility of real transformation.”
Many Renovaré readers will instinctively detect the inspiration for the course—Richard Foster’s seminal book, Streams of Living Water. Today, as we look towards both the Regent course next month and the celebration of the Church’s birthday (Pentecost) this Sunday, we thought it would be an excellent time to revisit the “streams.” Enjoy this vision-casting excerpt from the Introduction to Richard’s book, all about the possibility of a fully-orbed, “six stream” life in the Spirit—the kind of life modeled for us by Jesus Christ.
(*Chris Hall and Carolyn Arends are both alumni of Regent College, and look forward to returning to the community there. Check out this fun short video about Carolyn’s time at Regent.)
Renovaré Team
TODAY A MIGHTY river of the Spirit is bursting forth from the hearts of women and men, boys and girls. It is a deep river of divine intimacy, a powerful river of holy living, a dancing river of jubilation in the Spirit, and a broad river of unconditional love for all peoples. As Jesus says, “Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water” (John 7:38).
The astonishing new reality in this mighty flow of the Spirit is how sovereignly God is bringing together streams of life that have been isolated from one another for a very long time. This isolation is completely understandable from a historical perspective. Over the centuries some precious teaching or vital experience is neglected until, at the appropriate moment, a person or movement arises to correct the omission. Numbers of people come under the renewed teaching, but soon vested interests and a host of other factors come into play, producing resistance to the renewal, and the new movement is denounced. In time it forms its own structures and community life, often in isolation from other Christian communities.
This phenomenon has been repeated many times through the centuries. The result is that various streams of life — good streams, important streams — have been cut off from the rest of the Christian community, depriving us all of a balanced vision of life and faith.
But today our sovereign God is drawing many streams together that heretofore have been separated from one another. It is a little like the Mississippi River, which gains strength and volume as the Ohio and the Missouri and many other rivers flow into it. So in our day God is bringing together a mighty “Mississippi of the Spirit.”
In this book I have tried to name these great Traditions — streams of spiritual life if you will — and to note significant figures in each. The naming is not perfect, I know, but I hope it will give you the major thrust of these Traditions: The Contemplative Tradition, or the prayer-filled life; The Holiness Tradition, or the virtuous life; The Charismatic Tradition, or the Spirit-empowered life; The Social Justice Tradition, or the compassionate life; The Evangelical Tradition, or the Word-centered life; The Incarnational Tradition, or the sacramental life.
In reality these different Traditions describe various dimensions of the spiritual life. We find their emphasis throughout the teaching of Scripture — from the Pentateuch to the prophets, from the wisdom literature to the Gospels, from the Epistles to the Apocalypse. And many are the lives that illustrate these themes: Abraham, Sarah, Jacob, Moses, Ruth, David, Hannah, Samuel, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Mary, Peter, Elizabeth, Paul, Tabitha, Lydia, John . .. the list could go on and on.
But no one models these dimensions of the spiritual life more fully than Jesus Christ. If we want to see this river of life in its most complete form, it is to Jesus that we must turn.
Excepted from Richard Foster’s Streams of Living Water: Essential Practices from the Six Great Traditions of the Christian Faith (New York: HarperOne, 1998), pp. xv-xvi.
