In 1995 I wrote a short essay entitled "Killer Pews". It was a response to a pattern of behaviour I had seen frequently in church life (and continue to see), a pattern where we find some Christians agitating for a spiritual revolution that supercharges what they regard as the rather humdrum, mediocre & unempowered work of a target church. The proposed remedy is that individuals must proactively seek an experience of "the Baptism of the Spirit". Given that many people in the church may already lay claim to having had the Baptism of the Spirit, sometimes more generic and vague terms such as the touch of God, an encounter with God or an infilling may be used. However, when one analyses what is actually being promoted one finds that it has less to do with spiritual experience per se than it has in trying to cast spiritual renewal into a quasi-gnostic philosophical mold by asserting a sharp distinction between the initiates and non-initiates of some kind of inner spiritual light. As is so often the case when the target church fails to respond to the revivalist challenge it is then put down to "resisting the Spirit".
I must caution at this point that I am in no way presuming to put an unqualified denial on anyone's personal Christian experience or any epiphany they may have which takes them to a new level (which they may rightly or wrongly call the Baptism of the Spirit), anymore than I would expect them to cast doubt on my own very proprietary experience; rather my criticisms are about how such experiences are being interpreted and used to promote a philosophy which perceives Christian life in dualisms: "head vs heart", "intellect vs intuition", "reason vs faith", initiates vs non-initiates and the like.
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I'm currently following an online service where the challenge of moving onto a whole different plane of super-spirituality & blessing is being promulgated by the speakers of the latest sermon series. At the time of writing Killer Pews in 1995 I was seeing, and had seen, Christian experience being cast into a very similar dualist mold of initiates vs non-initiates. This philosophy can lead to a lot of hard feeling not least because the logic of its aficionados has maneuvered them into such a position that they can only see criticism as a form of resistance to the very Spirit of God. They therefore can do little but consider any challenge to their views as a very grave matter indeed.
I have of course written a lot more on this subject since 1995, some of which can be found in the links below. Possibly at the end of this latest episode I may say something about this particular foray into "gnostic" renewal. But let me hazard what I think will be the likely outcome of this latest sermon series: By and large the preachers will hear positive noises from the people they are preaching too, but because these preachers find difficulty taking onboard the variety, broadness and depths of the human personalities they are dealing with and moreover, the variety, broadness and depths of God's work, the outcome will fall short of the new dawn they are looking for. We might end up with some very disappointed promoters who will feel as though they have been punching at very soft foam rubber. It's happened before.
http://viewsnewsandpews.blogspot.com/search/label/Dualism
http://viewsnewsandpews.blogspot.com/search/label/Fideism
http://viewsnewsandpews.blogspot.com/search/label/Mythos%20vs%20Logos
http://norwichcentralbaptistchurch.blogspot.com/search/label/Logos%20vs%20Pneuma
http://norwichcentralbaptistchurch.blogspot.com/search/label/mythos%20vs%20logos
ADDENDUM 13/02/21
More details about the underlying philosophy of the sermon series commented on above can be found here:
http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.com/2021/02/head-vs-heart-intellect-vs-feeling.html
ADDENDUM
20/04/21: I post here my detailed comments on the online sermon series I refer to above:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OWIjP8FdaVrRYbhBJL0M9bVR3gM2kOGd/view
