Thrive

Rev. Dr. Emilio Alvarez

Living an Integrated Faith

Overview

Today, Bishop Emilio Alvarez joins the podcast. Currently, he is an adjunct professor at Asbury Seminary and serves as the Primate of the Union of Charismatic Orthodox Churches. He is also the founder and Rector of The Cathedral at Gathering Place in the city of Rochester, New York, as well as The Institute for Paleo-Orthodox Christian Studies. Bishop Alvarez has a forthcoming book with InterVaristy Press, titled “Towards A Pentecostal Orthodoxy” (2021) and is also a contributor to the forthcoming IVP liturgical series, “The Fullness of Time: A Journey Through the Church Year” (2022).

In this conversation, we talk about his faith journey, calling, why he’s passionate about training clergy and laity to worship, believe and live our faith in integrated practical ways. And, of course, we talk about his new book.

Let’s listen!

*The views expressed in this podcast don’t necessarily reflect the views of Asbury Seminary.

Rev. Dr. Emilio Alvarez

Primate of the Union of Charismatic Orthodox Churches & Rector of The Cathedral at Gathering Place

Bishop Emilio Alvarez is one of the up-and-coming scholars and commentators on the intersection of religious education and theology in America. As a ministerial practitioner, his vast experience within the Christian Church world-wide has positioned him as a prophetic voice, especially within Afro/Latino communities of faith. Currently, he serves as the Primate of the Union of Charismatic Orthodox Churches. He is also the founder and Rector of The Cathedral at Gathering Place in the city of Rochester, New York. Bishop Alvarez holds a Bachelors in Christian Education, a Master of Arts in Religious Education from New York Theological Seminary, a Ph.D. in Religious Education from Fordham University in the Bronx, New York and is currently pursuing a second Ph.D. in Divinity at Aberdeen University under the supervision of the Very Rev. Dr. John Behr. Bishop Alvarez has a forthcoming book with InterVaristy Press “Towards A Pentecostal Orthodoxy” (2021) and is also a contributor to the forthcoming IVP liturgical series, “The Fullness of Time: A Journey Through the Church Year” (2022).

Heidi Wilcox

Host of the Thrive Podcast

Writer, podcaster, and social media manager, Heidi Wilcox shares stories of truth, justice, healing and hope. She is best known as the host of Spotlight, (especially her blooper reel) highlighting news, events, culturally relevant topics and stories of the ways alumni, current students and faculty are attempting something big for God. If you can’t find her, she’s probably cheering on her Kentucky Wildcats, enjoying a cup of coffee, reading or spending time with her husband, Wes.

Transcript

Heidi Wilcox:
Hey everyone, welcome to this week’s episode of The Thrive with Asbury Seminary podcast. I’m your host Heidi E. Wilcox bringing you conversations with authors, thought leaders and people just like you who are looking to connect where your passion meets the world’s deep needs. Today on the podcast I’m joined by Bishop Emilio Alvarez. Currently he is an adjunct professor Asbury seminary and serves as the primary of the union of charismatic Orthodox churches. He is also the founder and rector of the cathedral at Gathering Place in the city of Rochester New York. As well as president and founder of the Institute for Paleo-Orthodox Christian Studies.

Heidi Wilcox:
He has a forthcoming book with InterVarsity Press titled towards a Pentecostal orthodoxy and is also a contributor to the forthcoming InterVarsity Press liturgical series, the fullness of time a journey through the church year. In this conversation, we talk about Bishop Alvarez, his faith journey, calling, and why he’s passionate about training clergy and laity to worship, believe and live out our faith in integrated practical ways. And of course, we talk about his new book.

Heidi Wilcox:
Let’s listen. Dr. Alvarez, it is such a delight to get to talk to you today. Thank you so much for coming by.

Bishop Emilio Alvarez:
Oh, it’s my pleasure Heidi. Thank you so much for the invitation. I’m glad to be with you.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yes, yes. How’s your day going so far?

Bishop Emilio Alvarez:
Well, so far. I wake up early in the morning and write, research, do some grading and go about my day a little bit after nine and then come back to research and writing, and then I spend most of my day doing that. So I would have to say it’s a typical day.

Heidi Wilcox:
Okay. Typical days are good.

Bishop Emilio Alvarez:
Yeah.

Heidi Wilcox:
Because I’ve been trying to get up early, I think my whole life. So how do you, and I think it’s just a matter of discipline and I don’t have discipline early in the morning. But how did you establish that routine to get up early? Because from the sound of it, you’ve put in half a day’s work. By the time a lot of people are getting up.

Bishop Emilio Alvarez:
Yeah, yeah. It’s really interesting there’s kind of two answers to that. My father was a pastor in a Pentecostal denomination. And so when I was about 12 or 13 he would wake me up, we pastored a storefront church at the time and the apartment was upstairs and the church was downstairs. And every night or every morning, excuse me at 6 A.M he would pound on my door. Wake up and he would take me with him downstairs to pray. And that was right before I went to school. But when I was about 18 or 19 I ended up in Buffalo, New York as an aspiring evangelist, young man.

Bishop Emilio Alvarez:
And ended up living for a while at a pastor’s house, who for whatever reason could not keep housing me at his little apartment. It was very small with him and his family. So they made a room for me in the basement of a church there in Buffalo. And I lived there for about, I want to say close to a year in this basement of this humongous church. I remember that my bed was two pew chairs put together with baby mattresses on them. And yet it was one of the most phenomenal spiritual moments of my entire life. It’s there that I really began to learn how to pray. And it was there that I asked Lord, I said, God, if you wake me up every morning at five or six o’clock in the morning, I’ll get up to pray and I will pray at least an hour.

Bishop Emilio Alvarez:
And so I have to confess that for a while I did set my alarm. One morning I didn’t set it and I remember feeling that the pew chair where I was sleeping, rocked or shake. It shook one morning and it just so happened that it was that same time that I didn’t set my alarm. And so when I woke up and I woke and I said, oh god, there’s like some kind of earthquake. I looked at the time and it was six o’clock. And for some time after that I really didn’t have to set my alarm clock. I would just wake up and I think there’s something divine and spiritual about that.

Bishop Emilio Alvarez:
Here we are more than 20 years removed from that and it is discipline but it is also my body being accustomed to waking up at that time. I’ve done it for so long that I just wake up at five o’clock.

Heidi Wilcox:
Right. I love that because you’ve not only set the pattern because we talked about rewiring our brain to change our thought patterns from negative thoughts to positive thoughts you’ve set your body and just your pattern to seek the Lord, I love that.

Bishop Emilio Alvarez:
Yeah, yeah. To seek the Lord and get engaged immediately, I do consider my work to be part of my devotional time. And I tell my students all the time, I say, “If you bring your work with you into your devotional time, even through your work God has something to say. God will reveal something.” And so that’s what I’ve been doing for the best part of since I was what, 19-18.

Heidi Wilcox:
That’s incredible. So because you’re a pastor, a church planner, you’re the president of the Institute for Paleo Orthodox Christian studies and I’m sure I’m missing some things in there too. But your work is in and all around the church. Have you always loved the church?

Bishop Emilio Alvarez:
I don’t know if I’ve always loved the church, I just have to be very, very real, very honest about that. I think that as a PK, a preacher’s kid, you see so much and you grow up with certain concerns and certain ideas about what the church is. And I don’t know if I really loved the church until I was about maybe 27 or 28, that I began to love both the groom and the bride. I think I’ve always had a fascination for the church, if that makes any sense. It’s always been a place that’s homey, you know?

Heidi Wilcox:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Bishop Emilio Alvarez:
Yeah. Yeah.

Heidi Wilcox:
Because I’m sure a lot of people listening are preachers kids, missionary kids, grew up in some kind of Christian setting, oh and I’m sure some didn’t as well. How did you come to reconcile some of the things because I’m walking the same journey.

Bishop Emilio Alvarez:
Okay.

Heidi Wilcox:
How did you come to reconcile some of the things that you saw as a preacher’s kid, that weren’t necessarily Christ like and just reconcile those?

Bishop Emilio Alvarez:
It was years later that I was able to do that. I grew up in a very legalistic Pentecostal tradition. And you couldn’t breathe without the breath that you took being Satan or the enemy or some kind of travesty against God. And at the time, I really did not know how to deal with that and it caused me in all honesty about 15 years old, 16 after, some time with my father, to rebel against both my parents and the church and God because at that moment I could not reconcile why is it that I feel hated, I feel despised, I feel disrespected and yet you’re preaching a gospel of freedom, a gospel of liberty, a gospel of peace but I don’t feel that peace and I don’t [crosstalk 00:08:30].

Heidi Wilcox:
Yes.

Bishop Emilio Alvarez:
Loved and so it was only years later when I came into certain maturity, spiritual maturity, that I was able to understand. And I think that the other part was that my father, my parents then had a radical reconversion experience, and really began to walk differently and humbly and that was able to help me as well later on in life reconcile the two, if that makes sense.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, that does, that’s beautiful. How did you then take your parents faith and it become personal for you, so you could go on to the ministry that God was calling you?

Bishop Emilio Alvarez:
That’s very interesting as well because I grew up in a very supernatural environment. I grew up in a supernatural environment, in an environment of faith that was very tangible, in regard to miracles and signs and wonders. I’m probably maybe 10 or 12 seeing things that are so miraculous that they’re straight out of the book of Acts. We saw miracles, we saw healings, we saw all of that but I also think that with that came the discipline that was instilled in me by my father, but also particularly my grandmother who also raised us, myself and my four sisters.

Bishop Emilio Alvarez:
And so, years later, even though I have taken kind of a different journey into recovery of the great tradition, and some of the things that I now have come to in regard to faith, the basis and the foundation has been set. That foundation of prayer, that foundation of devotion, that foundation of faithfulness and service, that foundation of love for God and for others, it continued. And it allowed me then later on in life to be able to continue developing because they should have already been set.

Heidi Wilcox:
How did you experience your call to be a church cleaner to go on to do the rest of the things that you’re doing?

Bishop Emilio Alvarez:
Yeah. Robert Weber, he says there’s three categories of faith, I’ve always enjoyed his three categories of faith, there’s own faith, there’s borrowed faith, there’s then a forming developing faith. And I really think that it had to do with something around maybe 26, 27, 25 years old, where I really began to understand something about the particularity of the assignment that God had for my life. Now, I’m always going to argue that we are to serve. It wasn’t until I was 24 that someone said to me, “You are in service and it is God who decides what service when and where.”

Bishop Emilio Alvarez:
And it wasn’t until maybe 26, 27 I would say that I began to discover the particular service that God wanted me which was church planting, pastoring but in a particular type of way which was planting churches to recover the great tradition, particularly within Afro Latino Pentecostals. And so over the years, I have to confess Heidi, that I’m just now, I’m 43 and I’m just now getting to the place where I’m beginning to understand more of that call.

Heidi Wilcox:
Really?

Bishop Emilio Alvarez:
Yeah.

Heidi Wilcox:
What are you learning about that now?

Bishop Emilio Alvarez:
It’s interesting because again, I think you have this call to service but you don’t know where you fit in, you don’t know what it is. And you have to develop mental maturity as you mature, as God puts you through trials, tribulations, successes, as you go through processes of education and formation, the people that God brings into your lives. And one of the things that I’m learning particularly now at this stage of my life, is the implications of the study that I’ve put in for the last decade and how I was supposed to do that and one of my mentors is Dr. Eldin Villafane from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.

Bishop Emilio Alvarez:
And one of the things that he’s always stressed to me is, you will study things now that you will use in years to come. And I’m utilizing things now at this stage of my life that 10 years ago didn’t make sense. I was like, “Why do I have to study this? This has nothing to do with what I’m doing, I just want to preach.” Here I am 10 years later going, “Oh, my God, this fits perfectly with the background or the trajectory that I was studying 10 years ago.” And so I’m rediscovering some things and discovering some new things afresh now about my call, that I just didn’t have any idea 10 years ago or five years ago.

Bishop Emilio Alvarez:
Particularly and obviously, this last thing, particularly how, in my context as an Afro Latino Pentecostal, how I can recover the great tradition and how there is already precedent for that and how that is it has existed already in the life of the church, which is astonishing because here I am thinking, “There’s no precedents for this. I’m out here by myself and I’m drowning.” But no there’s precedence and I’m discovering that more and more each day.

Heidi Wilcox:
I love that. I love that it’s been a journey for you because I think sometimes I have, I think other people how we get hung up on Moses in the burning bush moment and it’s like a one thing and then we just know what to do for the rest of our lives. But even for him it kind of changed so I love that and I love hearing about the building blocks of the pieces that you were like, “Well, this has nothing to do with anything,” but now it just fits in like a perfect Tetris game.

Bishop Emilio Alvarez:
Yeah, yeah. I think one last thing that I would suggest and that I would say about myself Heidi, what’s really interesting is that, oh my god, I don’t know how to say this without the audience taking it the wrong way, is that I don’t want to do this.

Heidi Wilcox:
Really?

Bishop Emilio Alvarez:
Yeah, I really don’t. I think the closest people that know me know that I don’t want to do it.

Heidi Wilcox:
So why do you do it?

Bishop Emilio Alvarez:
It’s obedience to God, I love God and I love his church and I love his people. I think that in obedience to God, I will give my life to him and have given my life and will continue to give my life but if someone came in and said, “You have a choice between doing this type of ministry and having a restaurant,” I will pick the restaurant every day.

Heidi Wilcox:
Really?

Bishop Emilio Alvarez:
And twice on Sundays. When you read scripture, God loves to mess with people who are minding their own business. Moses is shepherding his father in-law sheep, he’s minding his own business. Amos is minding his own business. Noah is minding his own business. All of these people just minding their own business not looking for any of this stuff. And then in the middle of that there’s some type of crisis, that this God that introduces this call and response type of revelation. And in obedience then, this is who they become and what they do.

Heidi Wilcox:
So do you find because you obviously bring great joy, I can just tell by talking to you, do you find what you do dredgery then?

Bishop Emilio Alvarez:
I don’t know if I find it dredgery, I think there are days where I really think about the restaurant but his grace is sufficient and I know it is. And when I see the progress of the work, the expansion of the work, the importance of the work in other people’s lives, it reminds me of Christ and his sacrifice for us and I get my cues from that. And I’m like Paul, I’ve got this storm and I keep asking, “Would you please remove this for me?” My grace is sufficient, for in weakness, not in your weakness but in weakness general my strength is made perfect. So I don’t know if I get dredgery I think that I get, like everybody else moments of, “Ugh, God yeah, be over.” But then I remember that the work is significant, it’s blessing others and it’s needed.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. Well, I’m glad to know that you’re human because I think a lot of people they seldom talk about that sometimes the work is hard and sometimes they have a task or a project or a situation that they’re like, “Oh man, can I change jobs now? I don’t want to deal with this.” But I also think that God works through our interest. And so I think it’d be interesting to talk again in 10 years and see if somehow that restaurant became part of your ministry somehow, I think that’d be interesting.

Bishop Emilio Alvarez:
Yeah. I have a joke with my kids and I tell them in about 10 to 15 years you’re going to find me in a restaurant in some kind of village or town. And here I am two PhDs having taught theological seminaries and I’m in the back cooking. “Oh, it’s Dr Alvarez,” yeah, I’m in the back of some kind of bandana on and cooking away. And I do think that would probably be a happy ending. So it’ll be cool to see in 10 or 15 years where we’re at with that.

Heidi Wilcox:
So you like to cook in general then?

Bishop Emilio Alvarez:
I do. I do. As a younger man, I cooked at restaurants, I worked at restaurants and I learned how to make sauces and different dishes from scratch.

Heidi Wilcox:
That’s awesome.

Bishop Emilio Alvarez:
Yeah. It’s kind of interesting because my youngest son Lucas. That’s his passion. It is, it is and so he reminds me a lot of that segment of time in my own life.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, that’s really cool. That’s really cool. So you’re an adjunct professor when you’re not cooking or dreaming about that and doing the rest of the things that you do. You’re an adjunct professor at the seminary teaching classes in worship leadership in the church. How did you get connected to Asbury?

Bishop Emilio Alvarez:
It really is Winfield Bevin’s, Dr. Winfield Bevins was the connector there. Don’t ask me how I met Winfield. He’s a very good friend. But he and I don’t remember how we connected. And I was in connection with Winfield and he and I have been going back and forth about some projects, about the institute that we started and he put me in contact with several of the deans there, at Asbury had some wonderful conversations, they invited me to do a presentation and a talk which I did. And then from there they thought to ask if I would consider this kind of relationship of Asbury, which has turned out to be wonderful, by the way.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. As you teach your classes, what do you hope to instill in your students?

Bishop Emilio Alvarez:
As I teach, I think I hope to instill the tension between cognitive academic excellence and experiential spirituality that’s pragmatic, it’s practical. I don’t necessarily want them to have all kinds of propositional, cognitive, ideological precepts without being able to apply them pragmatically very practically. Either be in their ministries or in the contextual settings, whatever that may be. But I do strive for academic excellence. So I do think that this is the time of the pastor theologian. So I do strive for academic excellence. Yeah.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. You’re awesome. You wear many hats. You’re also the president and founding director of the Institute for Paleo-Orthodox Christian Studies. And it trains clergy and laity in Christian, classical, consensual faith and practice. So how did this institute, because you’re the founder.

Bishop Emilio Alvarez:
Yes.

Heidi Wilcox:
How did this come to be?

Bishop Emilio Alvarez:
Oh, well, the institute is a wonderful place that’s currently training men and women in the recovery of the great tradition, classical consensual Christianity. Actually, the institute started, it came about by way of a capstone project that I was doing for my Master’s in religious education. I was with an organization at that time that asked me to chair their commission on ordained ministry and education, and to kind of set up a program for forming their clergy. So I set up this program and it was about 50, 60 pages did some really good research on it, and made it my capstone for the master’s program.

Bishop Emilio Alvarez:
And then after that was in discussion with New York Theological Seminary. New York Theological Seminary ends up making it a actual certificate program at the theological seminary they made me the director of that particular certificate program. Some years later, after I got done studying my, after I got done excuse me, earning my PhD I did my dissertation at Fordham University on Paleo-orthodox encounters religious education. We established what we had learned from NYTS what we have gathered from the program, where we have gathered from the actual document and established it as its own Institute, with wonderful relationships, with theological seminaries like NYTS and Asbury, Fordham and other universities, theological studies around the country. So that’s how that came about. Yeah.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. I love that. So you just saw a need and develop something to fill that?

Bishop Emilio Alvarez:
Yeah. You know there was at least in our context, and now it’s become broader but not context at the time. We were struggling there were men and women who were saying yeah, but where do we go to recover the elements of great tradition. How do we learn sacramental and liturgical theology without having one bend or the other in terms of either Orthodox, Anglican, Roman Catholic, but an amalgamation of all of them together. We go to learn how to recover, you know St. Vincent of Lorenz everywhere always and by all. Where do we go to do all these things? And that’s what’s the purpose for the instance we get. So you have eight courses, and you can finish those in a year or two years. And then afterwards, there’s some other fun things that we can do by way of association with other schools.

Heidi Wilcox:
That’s awesome. That’s awesome. You mentioned the great tradition several times. And that may be a new term for some people listening. So could you define that for us?

Bishop Emilio Alvarez:
Yeah. So the great tradition for us is really the recovery of scripture, tradition, spirit, the great tradition that encompasses the seven councils of the church. The three Creed’s, the apostles at the nations and they see in the writings of the church fathers and church mothers, all the way up to about the eighth century. So when we talk about the great tradition, that’s what we’re really talking about is that we’re covering that type of tradition, that type of classical, consensual exegesis. That kind of harmony, the proximity that the fathers and the mothers of the church had, because they were closest to the apostles. Some would go even further in regard to the great tradition and even include the reformers which I don’t have any issue. I think that one would be right in doing so. So that’s what we mean when we say the recovery of the great tradition.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. Why is recovering our historical faith and integrating that into the 21st century so important?

Bishop Emilio Alvarez:
Oh, that’s a good question. And one that I’m really passionate about. I think in the North American context we are wrestling with post modern moralistic therapeutic deism. I don’t know if our worship is worship. I don’t know if our preaching is orthodox. It seems to me that we have kind of this construction in post-modernity, particularly in evangelicalism and Pentecostalism. That is the void of orthodox teaching and doctrine. When I say orthodox, it’s a little o not big O, right teaching. But our worship is off I think that our worship as well has become so inundated with individualism, that comes from the enlightenment.

Bishop Emilio Alvarez:
Individualism that comes from this moralistic therapeutic deism. I think our worship is geared towards kind of the sensibilities of the modern. I think we get caught up in the rat race when it comes to preaching. All of these modern constructs which all of the modernists told us that it was going to cure all. And in the church, this was supposed to be the new fad. And so we’ve got lights, we’ve got smoke, we’ve got all of these wonderful songs, but at the end of the day are we telling God’s story in worship? Are we preaching the gospel or own of cliches.

Bishop Emilio Alvarez:
And so part of recovering the great tradition is becoming rooted. And I don’t have any issue with lights, smoke, and things TVs, and projectors we have those at our churches. But I think the recovery of the great tradition roots us, brings us back to the foundation. And by recapitulation reminds us who not only the subject, but who the object of worship is. Not only the subject but who the object of preaching it. And it brings us to this christocentric place in our worship and in our preaching. That gives us rootedness that we need again.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. And I think worship kind of starts with you and with me as people as we set our minds on Jesus and so that’s what you’re teaching your students to have a practical theology. What does that look like in everyday life so that we live an integrated faith?

Bishop Emilio Alvarez:
I’ve been telling my students it really is that Latin Maxim. Oh axiom, excuse me. Lex orandi, lex credendi, lex vivendi. The law of worship or the law of prayer leads to the law of belief, it leads to the law of living. And so out of worship we have belief, and out of belief, and we live. And it’s not out of belief that we influence our worship. No, it is out of worship. That influences our belief and then our belief influences our living. And so I think that as we get the object and the subject of our worship correct, it corrects what we believe. And as it corrects what we believe, and what we believe, corrects how we live practically in our everyday way, in our everyday being, and how we live we move we have our being. One of the things that I struggle with a lot is when people say, we have Christocentric worship, or I live a Christocentric life. What does that mean?

Bishop Emilio Alvarez:
Does it mean that you just in worship, saying Jesus Christ, we love you and that is Christocentric worship? Does it mean that in life, you just acknowledge him and that’s it? No, no. I love the construction of the first clause or the first article when I see in creed. Heidi, I love it. It says, we believe, one God, the Father, the Almighty. And this is actually something that John Barrows teaches us and taught us. That I’ve taken onto my own life. John Barrows is one of my mentors. Frather John Barrow, I’m doing my second PhD with him at Aberdeen.

Heidi Wilcox:
That’s awesome.

Bishop Emilio Alvarez:
Yeah, yeah. And he mentions this passage and mentions the origin. The Church father origin, says that it’s a logical sequence, because the way that we know that God is almighty is first and foremost because he is father. The only way we know that God is almighty is because he is father. And we know that he’s almighty because he is father because through his son Jesus Christ, through his life, ministry, passion in terms of death and resurrection, he teaches us he shows us that the father is almighty. And so when I say christocentric worship or christocentric lifestyle, what I’m saying is, is that I’m seeing him as my Lord and my God. Thomas’s statement, my Lord and my God and as I worship him and pattern my life after that then I am so worshiping also in the triune economy. That’s grave implications for how I live.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. I think because I grew up and there were rules for being a Christian and so I appreciate but I really want you to be giving me like do this. But I love the beauty of the follow after Christ.

Bishop Emilio Alvarez:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s what that means to have a christocentric lifestyle. It’s to know not what God is, but who.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. You were mentioning earlier about churches, individual, people in general can think and say that they have christocentric worship, live christocentric lives. And I think sometimes we get confused about what that is. Because it’s been so integrated into our culture that we accept this to be the way it is. How can we, I’m not calling anybody out with my question, but how can we learn to recognize the truth of it of this? Does that make sense when I’m trying to ask?

Bishop Emilio Alvarez:
It does, it does it’s an incarnational reality that you got to have boots on the ground, your spirituality has to have boots on the ground. You cannot say that we have a christocentric spirituality, christocentric worship, christocentric lifestyle and not do what Christ did. It is just straight forwardly. You can’t say one thing and then not do what Christ did not love neighbor as you love yourself, not love enemy, not go an extra mile, not allow for yourself to turn the other cheek, so to speak. Not be invested in the core, not be invested in, until our whole life is worship. That needs to be christocentric. But it needs to be practical. It needs to be modeled after him. So that’s where we get from this superficial what is God to who is God.

Bishop Emilio Alvarez:
Because then Oh God, I don’t remember Oh, John, oh God, Marcion, I think it is. I’m butchering his name. But I’ll give it back to the book entitled gone without being. Gone without being. And it’s a wonderful book where he reflects upon the implications of idol worship, and iconography. And he says, the difference between the idol and the icon is that while the idol stops your gaze, you look at an idol and you say, that is God and that’s it. And you look at it, and you go that’s God and that’s it. But the icon, is the window of the soul, it’s the windows of evidence, the window of something else. So you look through it. And I think that sometimes our lifestyle, and our worship is like that. I think we do a lot, but we don’t do what’s necessary. Makes any sense?

Heidi Wilcox:
That does make a lot of sense. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Yeah. As we’ve seen throughout history, but I think a lot today in our North American context, we’ve seen celebrity Christians leaders rise and fall. And I think what you’re doing and the way you’re preparing your congregation, and the students that you teach, you’re helping them integrate theology, faith and their education. Because what we’ve seen is that they’re, that sometimes charisma outpaces your character. So how does the proper integration of all of these things keep charisma and character on the same plane?

Bishop Emilio Alvarez:
Well, you’re preaching now.

Heidi Wilcox:
I now.

Bishop Emilio Alvarez:
That can be a whole sermon. Yeah, it’s a struggle because you’re right, the personality driven context, the hoopla driven context of the church which kind of follows this rat race mentality that the Western world has. It’s driven us to build things that are literally man made. The only way that I know how to is to not allow my own charisma to compete with the character. And to compete with the version of the gospel, which is sound. I think that’s possibly the only way that I can really phrase that. If I wanted to, I know that I’m very capable of storing the gospel in such a way to make it benefit me. I know I can do this. I’m charismatic, I was trained to preach. I was trained to preach without notes. I have great discipline. I’m an orator. I have education information. So I really do have the ability to force certain things.

Bishop Emilio Alvarez:
But I understand that if I do that, that not only the thing rises and dies with me, but the pressure of having to sustain a thing. Because it is your own charisma. And I think this is where that that piece with Paul comes in with and the thorn on his side, and he says, at the storm and come as you, my grace is sufficient. When it’s something that’s not birthed out of my charisma. When it gets through moments of struggle, I can go back to God and go, excuse me, I didn’t want to do this to begin with. And this is not built on my charisma. Yes, my character is here only as kind of this buffer but it is your gospel. It is your work. It is your ministry. And so I think that the proper integration would be levels of humility,

Bishop Emilio Alvarez:
That you’ve come to this place with levels of humility, that you come to a place of intentional and constant checking of your own charisma. I think you need to check your own charisma. And again, there are times where you need to dwindle down, you need to enact more humility, which is not trying to hide who I am or trying to discount who I am. No humility is knowing exactly who I am, what I can do, and yet at moments in ministry or life you know when to scale back. And so I think that you have to check that charisma. And then the last thing that I would say is you have to be convinced and convicted of the very fact that this belongs to God.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yes, yeah. You make it sound easy. It’s not always easy to live that out.

Bishop Emilio Alvarez:
No it is not. It is not.

Heidi Wilcox:
No, no. So you are also a church planner you founded and pastor the Gathering Place where love meets in New York.

Bishop Emilio Alvarez:
Yes.

Heidi Wilcox:
Why church planning?

Bishop Emilio Alvarez:
Oh man, I’ve been church planning ever since I was 19.

Heidi Wilcox:
Really?

Bishop Emilio Alvarez:
Yeah, yeah. Ever since I was 19, 20 years old. I’ve been church planning. Oh, Heidi, I’m getting tired. I’m getting tired of church planning. I actually love church planning more than I like pastoring.

Heidi Wilcox:
Really why?

Bishop Emilio Alvarez:
I love the excitement of building. I do, I do. I love the excitement of building. I think I am actually more efficient church planting than I am pastor. And yeah, at times, and even here now I have to surround myself around true day to day pastors who can shepherd the flock and provide pastoral to the flock, because I love building I love bringing together, developing together, bringing about identity, vision casting, setting mission, or raising leaders, developing leaders. So it’s always been something I think it’s entrepreneurial I’ve loved doing. But then knowing what I’m building and how I’m building, and then knowing the particularity of what I’m building. The gathering sphere.

Bishop Emilio Alvarez:
If you come to a service for Sunday, for the first 10, 15 minutes, you’ll think we’re Catholic. It’s the procession, and we’re swinging incense, and the deacon with the book of the gospel comes out, and we’re on investment. And you have a collect of the reading of the song, and we’re doing the sign of the cross. And praise and worship will start and it’s like, wait a minute these people are kind of costals they’re charismatics, they’re raising their hands, and they’re very expressive, and they’re moving, and you’re dancing. And then you hear me preach, and you’re like, wait, they’re just another Baptist. You have this word, and you have this call and response. And then the end is the celebration of the Eucharist. So we go back to being Catholic. So, wow, building that has given me such excitement over the years. I mean, who wouldn’t be excited building something like that in the Pentecostal charismatic context?

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, that’s really awesome. And I love how it weaves unity within your congregation of the different kind of faith traditions.

Bishop Emilio Alvarez:
Yeah. It’s really this amalgamation. And it is really the recovery of a great tradition of the three major streams that we see this liturgical sacramental stream that runs throughout the history of the church, this evangelical gospel stream preaching stream that runs and then this charismatic, experiential spiritual stream that runs throughout as well. You amalgamate those and then it makes really fun building. Yeah.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah It like it. That sounds awesome.

Bishop Emilio Alvarez:
Thank you. Bless you.

Heidi Wilcox:
That sounds awesome. Yeah. I would be for miss if I didn’t ask you about your book that you have coming out next year. Is that right?

Bishop Emilio Alvarez:
Yes. Next year with InterVarsity Press. Yeah.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yes. And it’s called total pentecostal orthodoxy. Is that right?

Bishop Emilio Alvarez:
That is correct. Yeah.

Heidi Wilcox:
All right. Tell us a little bit about the book, what and what led you to write it?

Bishop Emilio Alvarez:
So total pentecostal orthodoxy, it’s coming out next fall with InterVarsity Press. I’m very excited. It really had to do with both the building of the union of charismatic Orthodox churches. I’m currently the Archbishop and the primate of the union, that’s glamory federation of churches that come together and it has to do with building that coming out of the PhD dissertation that I was writing at Fordham University, and my father my biological father, having conversations with him. And so in doing my research I discovered that there was no place for Pentecostals recovering the great tradition for their voices to be heard. There’s a large segment now that I’m being introduced to, of Pentecostals that are recovering either base element of the great tradition, or more foundational, more in depth elements of the great tradition, and yet there was nothing that was really telling their story.

Bishop Emilio Alvarez:
There was nothing that was really hearing their voices. And so I came out of the PhD dissertation saying to myself, somebody has to write on this. And begin to have these conversations with my father and others around the country. And it was one day my father and I were talking about orthodoxy middle old in terms of right teaching, and the recovery of the Eucharist every week, and liturgy, and the sacraments of the church, and the writings of the fathers and the mothers and all of these other things in terms of tradition. And he looked at me, and he said, “Do you think I’m orthodox?” And I looked at this kind of costal asking me if I thought he was orthodox. And I remember getting into my vehicle saying, man, am I orthodox?

Bishop Emilio Alvarez:
And so it really began this wonderful dialectical conversation with various people around the country. And I started putting pieces together of research to tell the story of various pentecostals all over the world, but particularly in North America, they’re recovering the great tradition in their own way. Again, but their voices weren’t being told. But it was also to set correctives Heidi, and to bring about some type of correction in some segments of Pentecostalism that sees the recovery of the great tradition is only wearing investments.

Heidi Wilcox:
Oh, okay. Yes.

Bishop Emilio Alvarez:
Yeah. So it also has broader implications, for example as relates to how do we go from here? What did kind of constables do? Who are recovering the great tradition. Where do we go from here? What are the broader ecumenical implications for Pentecostal for example that believes 98% of what Roman Catholics believe. 98% of what Eastern Orthodox believe, 98% of what Anglicans believe, what are the ramifications and implications for Pentecostals recover a real presence and believe that this is really the body and the blood of Jesus Christ and celebrating the Eucharist every week. Do we go into canonical church or do we remain Pentecostals? And one of the pet peeves was, for me, is that when the charismatic movement came in the 1960s 1970s, really, a lot of the Anglicans, Episcopalians, charismatic Roman Catholics, they were a part of this charismatic renewal movement.

Bishop Emilio Alvarez:
But they didn’t go into charismatic churches, they didn’t go into Pentecostal churches, they remained Roman Catholics, they remained Episcopalians, they remained Anglicans, they remained orthodox. And so I’m saying, hey, I think that just as the charismatic renewal movement, I think that now this renewal movement of Pentecostals recovering the great tradition, I don’t think that we necessarily have to go to the canonical churches. I think we can remain Pentecostals but still recover all these elements. That’s what the book is about.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. We’ll be looking for that fall when it comes out. That’s awesome. That’s awesome. And kind of led me into my next question. As the church has been through a lot, especially with COVID. And even before that. Where do you see us going from here?

Bishop Emilio Alvarez:
Well, we’re never going back to what it used to be. If church and ministry and spirituality at all had changed in the last decade, it has changed in the last two years, even more so. I think that if there’s anything good that really came out of COVID, and other some other good things, but I’m looking as a bishop now. An overseer generalization. I think it got us back to our monastic roots in the monastic reality of Christianity and spirituality. I think it re-established home worship. I think it re-established to some degree, to some degree, the familial responsibility of spirituality. I think it got us back in touch with a sense of wonder. Holy one.

Bishop Emilio Alvarez:
But I think it also really helped us to see the prophetic in such a way, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen it before. And when I say the prophetic I’m really looking at the prophets in the Old Testament. And it got us to see the polarization of what it looks like when the church and the State are either in cahoots together are in opposites. And the need for a real prophetic move of God for revival. And not revival just in the experiential sense, but revival of the heart.

Bishop Emilio Alvarez:
The reform of the heart. So I think that and I’m hoping that, particularly in segments of evangelicalism, Pentecostalism, where I come from in my context, I think that that’s taken to heart. I hope that it will be a wake up call. But we are definitely now burdened to do ministry differently. I think burden and blessed to do ministry differently. We now know that the internet is and can be sacred space, it can be sacred space. That can be utilized for more than just going online and saying hello to friends. And so I’m hoping that these changes in our own psyche in our own spirituality would lead to an even greater wave of the gospel being proclaimed.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah for sure. For sure. We’ve talked about a lot of things, Dr. Alvarez. And but we have one question that we ask everyone. But before we do, is there anything else you want to talk about that we haven’t already discussed?

Bishop Emilio Alvarez:
No, no, I think we’ve discussed everything. I appreciate. Thank you for giving me my book plug in there. I really [inaudible 00:51:53] did that. I’m really excited about it. But no, I think we’ve covered everything. Yeah.

Heidi Wilcox:
All right. We’ve done it then. Well, the one question we ask everyone because the show is called The Thrive with Asbury Seminary podcast. What is one practice that is helping you thrive in your life right now?

Bishop Emilio Alvarez:
Coffee.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yes.

Bishop Emilio Alvarez:
Coffee, coffee. I think one of the, okay, well. This is going to be really weird. But okay.

Heidi Wilcox:
Go for it.

Bishop Emilio Alvarez:
Because I thought about this and late night cartoons.

Heidi Wilcox:
Really? What’s your favorite cartoon?

Bishop Emilio Alvarez:
Family Guy. I know it’s bad. I know it’s horrible. Because I know people are like this is a bishop. But Family Guy, American Dad, Rick and Morty. I can’t go to bed without watching them.

Heidi Wilcox:
Wow.

Bishop Emilio Alvarez:
Yeah, yeah. And it’s been puzzling to me why I watch them Heidi. And I finally figured out talking to a friend of mine who’s a psychologist. I finally figured it out. And it is that at night, those three cartoons they literally tear apart what I’ve been building all day.

Heidi Wilcox:
Interesting. Yeah.

Bishop Emilio Alvarez:
Yeah. They literally tear it apart. I mean, Family Guy, Rick and Morty, American Dad and sometimes Robot Chicken if I stay up that late. But I’m here building propositional theological disciplines and doing all this other stuff and thinking about God in a certain way. And all of a sudden, here comes these three shows and they’re so irreverent and so funny and so comical, that they’re actually allowing me to relax. But they’re also deconstructing, at least when that moment what I’m building all day. And in that I feel senses of refreshing. So that the next day and I’m not as burdened, my mind is not as burdened. My spirit, my emotionality is not as burdened. Yeah.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Thank you. Thank you so much for being part of the podcast today. I found our conversation so fascinating. And just a gift. So thank you so very much.

Bishop Emilio Alvarez:
Well, thank you for the invitation Heidi. It was great to be with you.

Heidi Wilcox:
Thank you. Hey, everyone, thank you so much for joining me for today’s conversation with Bishop Alvarez. Isn’t he great you guys. What a gift his work is to the world. Bishop Alvarez will be speaking in chapel at Asbury Seminary in Estes Chapel on October 21 at 11 A.M. If you can’t join in person, you can join live online @asbury.to/live. That’s Asbury dot T-O slash live. And if you see him, be sure to thank him for being part of the podcast today. As always, you can follow Asbury seminarian and all the places on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram at @Asburyseminary. Until next time, I hope you’ll go do something that helps you thrive.

 

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