A Fresh Anointing, with Kenneth C. Ulmer

Jerome Blanco: There are many conversations these days about the change the church needs to undergo amidst the changes the world is undergoing. I’m curious about what you—with all of your experience—have witnessed and might consider the most impactful changes the church is engaging with. What do you think the biggest matters are that the church needs to reckon with today?

Kenneth C. Ulmer: I think about a couple of things. I think we’re in a season that the church has been in many times before. That’s the first thing. It’s nothing new historically. If I were to try to gather a biblical picture, it’s like when the gospel went from Jerusalem to the uttermost parts of the world—a time very similar to the Book of Acts, to the growth of the church in the first century. We have come into a new culture, and that’s my point.

When Jesus said, “Go. You shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the uttermost parts of the world,” each one of those assignments crosses boundaries. You’re going to get out of your comfort zone. Crossing geographical boundaries, crossing ethnic and racial boundaries. You’re going to go from the homogeneous context of Jerusalem into a land that is not only geographically different but sociologically different and ethnically different. And then to the remote parts of the world—which means there are no boundaries. So, we’re in a biblical pattern. The culture has shifted. We’ve shifted from a “Judeo-Christian culture”—in quotes, and that’s a whole other conversation—to a more ecumenical, a more global, a more multidimensional culture.

So, first of all, this is nothing new. But I don’t know if we know how to do it. I think the jury’s still out as to what degree the church is prepared to expand its assignment—to go beyond a culture of homogeneity. When Paul comes along, he takes the gospel to what many call pagan cultures and others call world cultures or global cultures. That’s where the church is right now. But I don’t know if we know how to do it.

You know, Paul didn’t have the Internet. Paul didn’t have, as my friend calls it, the TGIF culture—Twitter, Google, Instagram, Facebook. That’s new. And then you add the COVID dimension. There’s a learning curve we’re going to have to get on. How do we make disciples in this new global culture?

JB: On one hand, we’ve been through this before, and on the other hand, we face these new challenges. If the trajectory we’re on isn’t new to the church, are there lessons we’re able to draw from the past that can help us meet these new issues?

KU: There’s a passage in Psalm 92 that says “I shall be anointed with fresh oil.” I think that there is a fresh anointing that God is releasing into the church today. God is going to do something new and do something fresh. I think for us, contemporarily, God is pouring out a fresh anointing on his body. And this fresh anointing does not mean that the old anointing was a bad anointing. The old anointing was the right anointing for the old assignment. But in this new assignment, in this new culture, our assignment is different and the dimensions of our call are different. The message stays the same, but the techniques and methods that we use are totally, totally new. And that’s the connection—things are changing, yet God has not changed. God is still equipping this church. The power of the Holy Spirit is in his church. Therein lies the continuity.

In Isaiah, God says, “Behold, I’m doing a new thing.” Then he says—and I love the way Eugene Peterson says it in The Message—“Don’t you see it?” What God is doing in this fresh anointing is saying, “I’m going to call you to a new level of imagination, a new level of creativity. Don’t miss this thing.” There’s a phrase in the African American tradition, in an old song, that says, “Now let us all go back to the old landmark.” In this new season, God is saying, “No, we’re not going back to the landmark.” Nobody is going back. If you go back there, you’ll miss it. You never want to be where God was. For those of us who want to go back, we’re going to miss him.

JB: I’m curious how you’ve witnessed this new anointing. You questioned earlier how prepared the church is. Yet I imagine that you’ve also seen this new thing that God is doing—moments of breakthrough, where the church is following the Spirit’s lead. Can you share some ways you’ve seen this?

KU:  I know there have been so-called “liberal” theologies and so-called “liberal” churches that have been “accused”—I’m using these terms in quotes—of being more justice-minded and liberation-minded. And I get all that. But I see God doing some things now in the so-called evangelical, the so-called nondenominational, the so-called charismatic groupings, where God is showing us and equipping us to be more inclusive. But what we are including has been there all along—it’s a shift in emphasis. For example: I’m 74 years old now. I didn’t know until I was about 31 that there were people of color in the Bible. And no, it’s like I tell my White friends, we’re not talking about putting us in there. We’ve been in there all along. Nobody told us. Everybody thought it was okay not to tell us. So, I think that there is a reexamining of the text that reveals both a broader appeal and a broader inclusion. That’s a part of this new thing that God is doing.

I don’t know that we will ever be effective in this new season—this new generation, new culture—until we do even more of what Paul says, when he says, “I have not shunned to declare to you the whole counsel of God.” There’s that justice dynamic, an inclusive dynamic, a diversity dynamic that the church has not historically emphasized in what God is doing. How do we go into all the world and make disciples? It really means all areas of the world, all areas of the culture and society.

I’ve been amazed at how many young people have also said, “Wow, I didn’t know we were in there. I didn’t know we were included.” I’m seeing generations of younger kids in our church who are saying, “Wow, that’s me. That includes me.” Look at the power of God—the identity, the inclusion, the affirmation.

I’ve been in ministry now for over 40 years. I’ll bet I preached for 30 years without having any significant emphasis on things like justice and diversity. My tradition, my theological position, my ecclesiastical position just did not include that. I never heard it. I grew up in the Black Baptist church and I never heard it. Yet now, going forward, I don’t know how we can proclaim the whole counsel of God without issues of justice, diversity, and inclusion. And that’s new.

I’ll tell you what the most encouraging thing I’ve seen is in the last ten years. I was invited to speak at a conference four months ago. And I almost wept. There must have been 500 or 600 pastors and leaders, and if there were 20 people in there under 50, I’ll eat my hat. These were seniors. These were people who were my age and older. It looked like an AARP convention. And you know what they were saying? They were saying, “Hey, look, we’re not done yet. How can we have a fresh approach to the gospel? Why don’t we have a fresh approach to the church?” And that blessed me. Here’s a generation who says, “We’re not done yet, but we realize we’ve got to retool some things. We’ve got to restructure some things. We’ve got to reimagine some things.” It blew my mind. There were a couple of walkers in there and a couple of canes in there. And I’m saying, “Wow, these people are limping their way right into the power of God.”

JB: What would you say to folks who might affirm this idea of a new movement tied to the same lasting mission of God, who might ask, “How do we know whether we’re being swept away by the new way God is moving or by the movement of the wider culture?” How do we discern that? And how do we hold on to the things of God we have to hold on to while opening up our hands enough for God to change us?

KU: I think we must stand in the tension of authenticity and attraction. Remember when Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life”? And then he said this: “If I be lifted up
…I will draw all people unto me.” If we put emphasis on I—on Jesus—that’s the authenticity of the gospel. In this new culture, in this new dimension, we cannot back off from the authenticity of the gospel—a Christocentric declaration of the gospel. We can’t back off of that. We can’t be ashamed of that.

But Jesus says, “I will draw.” You lift me up, and I will draw them unto me. Look at our role. We’re not the one being lifted up, and we’re not the one doing the drawing. We must present Christ in the authenticity and majesty of who he is, and do it in such a way that he becomes the magnet. Here’s the temptation, going back to your question: I think most of us will struggle with the tension of leaning more one way or the other. On the one hand, many of us will lean to being so authentic, so orthodox, so dogmatic in our declaration that we are unattractive to this crazy, changing, shifting world. We’re almost drawing our little circle, and the marginalized are marginalized. We package Jesus, the gospel, the church, salvation, in such a way that they become exclusive. If our orthodoxy is overemphasized beyond our orthopraxy, we will be minimally successful.

The other tension will be if we lean too much to the attraction side, and we look for gimmicks and fleeting trends, and we want to commercialize it. We get bells and whistles, so much that the very Christ we speak of is camouflaged and the authenticity of the gospel is missed. We send Christ, the church, the gospel into the dressing room, and we call hair and makeup and wardrobe. We dress them up so much that nobody can see Jesus. The challenge is how we remain in the tension of being authentic and attractive that we don’t lean so much on commercialism and hype, that somebody will say “Where’s Jesus in this thing?”

JB: It’s work that involves ongoing discernment—something we have to help each other with as the church.

KU: It’s ongoing. And again, I don’t know how we can go forward without a broader, inclusive, diverse, and global emphasis of the power of the gospel. If we stay in our little cultures, we’re going to miss it.

JB: I also appreciate what you said about Jesus being the one to draw people to himself. I think of how, in the imagery of the fresh anointing, it’s God doing the anointing. The church is the one being anointed. It’s God acting.

KU: Right, right. And in Psalm 133, it’s a picture of the oil being poured over the head of Aaron. It flows down past his beard—symbolizing wisdom. I think God’s going to pour out a fresh anointing of wisdom and discernment. But watch this, it flows down, down, down “to the hem of the garment.”
The lowest part of the garment. And it gathers.

This anointing is like oil that flows down over the head—over the leaders—but it’s dynamic. It flows down. Therein lies the appeal to the least, the lost, the marginalized, the ostracized. And at the lowest point, that’s where the power gathers. That’s where God releases that power. The oil starts at the top, and it’s not like you wipe it off with a rag. You let it flow to the humblest parts. Therein lies the concentration of the gospel, the concentration of the power of God.

JB: What’s a prayer then that you might have for the church today, as it engages in the work of the gospel? In light of all this and in light of what is before us?

KU: I pray that we would be as Jesus prays in John 17—that there would be a brand new oneness. And I pray that this oneness is not necessarily uniformity, but that it is unanimity. I think that oneness is a declaration and affirmation of the power of God. I also pray that we would recognize that God is doing a new thing. And that God wants to use you. I’m seeking a fresh outpouring of God. I would pray for this fresh outpouring, this fresh anointing.