I am excited about the launch of my latest book, Transformational Groups with Ed Stetzer. Ed and I are both big believers in small groups because we are both big believers in Christian community—community that is rooted in Christ.

The Christian life is meant to be interdependent and interconnected, believers in partnership and fellowship together. In our sinfulness, we tend to drift away from interdependence and toward either dependence or independence.

Independence is often a badge of honor in our culture. The man who can stand alone, who is resourceful, who does not need anyone else, is often held in high esteem. Some of us drift toward foolish attempts to walk the Christian life alone, to be a Christian in isolation. When we drift toward independence, we reject transparency, confession, openness, and receiving encouragement from the body of believers.

Instead of drifting toward standing alone, some of us drift toward an unhealthy over-reliance on another person. When we drift toward dependence, we run to relationships because we find our ultimate worth and meaning in someone else. Our security and identity are connected deeply to another person instead of Christ.

I am not writing on this topic because I have the final answer on spiritual gifts, for the matter is difficult and Christians who love God and the Bible disagree. Readers should know that Sam Storms and I are friends. We love one another, even though we differ on a secondary or tertiary issue, while at the same time upholding the importance of truth. Over the years I've become convinced that some of the so-called charismatic gifts are no longer given and that they aren't a regular feature of life in the church. I am thinking particularly of the the gifts of apostleship, prophecy, tongues, healing, and miracles (and perhaps discernment of spirits).

Why would anyone think that some of the gifts have been withdrawn? I will argue that such a reading fits best with Scripture and experience. Scripture takes priority over experience, for it is the final authority, but Scripture must also correlate with life, and our experiences should provoke us to re-examine afresh whether we've read the Bible rightly. None of us reads the Bible in a vacuum, and hence we must return to the Scriptures repeatedly to ensure we've read them faithfully.

Paul says the church is "built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets" (Eph. 2:20). I conclude that all we need to know for salvation and sanctification has been given to us through the teaching of the apostles and prophets, and that this teaching is now found in the Scriptures. Now that God has spoken in the last days through his Son (Heb. 1:2), we don't need further words from him to explain what Jesus Christ has accomplished in his ministry, death, and resurrection. Instead, we are "to contend for the faith that was delivered to the saints once for all" through the apostles and prophets (Jude 3).

So, why am I a continuationist? My reasons follow. (Please note that I've written several articles that provide more extensive evidence for the points I make, but space limitations permit me only to mention them by name. All of them are found at my website.)

Let me begin with the consistent, indeed pervasive, and altogether positive presence throughout the New Testament (NT) of all spiritual gifts. The problems that emerged in the church at Corinth were not due to spiritual gifts, but to immature people. It wasn't the gifts of God but the childish, ambitious, and prideful distortion of gifts on the part of some that accounts for Paul's corrective comments.

Furthermore, beginning with Pentecost and continuing throughout the book of Acts, whenever the Spirit is poured out on new believers they experience his charismata. There is nothing to indicate these phenomena were restricted to them and then. Such appear to be both widespread and common in the NT church. Christians in Rome (Rom. 12), Corinth (1 Cor. 12-14), Samaria (Acts 8), Caesarea (Acts 10), Antioch (Acts 13), Ephesus (Acts 19), Thessalonica (1 Thess. 5), and Galatia (Gal. 3) experience the miraculous and revelatory gifts. It's difficult to imagine how the NT authors could have spoken any more clearly about what new covenant Christianity is supposed to look like. In other words, the burden of proof rests with the cessationist. If certain gifts of a special class have ceased, the responsibility is his or hers to prove it.

I'd also point to the extensive NT evidence of so-called miraculous gifts among Christians who are not apostles. In other words, numerous non-apostolic men and women, young and old, across the breadth of the Roman Empire consistently exercised these gifts of the Spirit (and Stephen and Philip ministered in the power of signs and wonders). Others aside from the apostles who exercised miraculous gifts include (1) the 70 who were commissioned in Luke 10:9, 19-20; (2) at least 108 people among the 120 who were gathered in the upper room on the day of Pentecost; (3) Stephen (Acts 6-7); (4) Philip (Acts 8); (5) Ananias (Acts 9); (6) church members in Antioch (Acts 13); (7) anonymous converts in Ephesus (Acts 19:6); (8) women at Caesarea (Acts 21:8-9); (9) the unnamed brethren of Galatians 3:5; (10) believers in Rome (Rom. 12:6-8); (11) believers in Corinth (1 Cor. 12-14); and (12) Christians in Thessalonica (1 Thess. 5:19-20).