Amos Yong's formative moments
Six hours at a summer church camp altar in 1977 set the trajectory
for my life. It was then, at the age of 12, that over the course of
three nights I experienced what Pentecostals call the baptism of the
Holy Spirit. Responding to the invitation at the end of the evening to
receive more of God, my friends and I encountered God in such a palpable
way that I think we caught a glimpse of what the Gospel writer said
would happen when the Spirit is given and received: "Out of the
believer's heart shall flow rivers of living water" (John 7:37). We
prayed, cried, worshiped, spoke in unknown tongues and simply soaked in
the presence of God. I have never been the same.
Later, when I was
going through theological seminary and encountering all kinds of
doctrines and ideas that challenged my Pentecostal worldview, I was
tempted to leave the church that had nurtured me in the faith. But
unlike previous generations of Pentecostals, I had mentors who suggested
that it was possible to be something that was once considered an
oxymoron—a Pentecostal scholar!—and that I could do so precisely by
pursuing the vocation of the mind as an authentic expression of a
Spirit-filled life.
This doesn't mean that I have since parroted
what I learned growing up. But everything I have written and published
has been part of a quest to understand at a deeper theological level
this encounter with the Spirit of the living God, undeniably registered
in my preteen years.
