 Image: freepik.com Every Pentecost I return to the same question that has shaped my ministry for more than twenty years: does the Holy Spirit still distribute extraordinary gifts to the Church — healing, prophecy, words of knowledge — or did those things end with the New Testament era?
Most Lutherans don't formally deny it. They just don't expect it. I've spent a long time with that assumption. What does Scripture teach? There is no kill switch in the New Testament. No moment where the promises are marked temporary. No sunset clause on the gifts of the Spirit. Cessationism is not derived from careful exegesis followed by a reluctant conclusion. It is constructed after the fact, to explain an absence already present in the church's experience — and then the inference passages are recruited to provide the biblical rationale. It is not primarily an exegetical position. It is an apologetic one. Which raises the uncomfortable prior question: what kind of church life produces that absence in the first place? A congregation whose calendar is organized around activities requiring no particular intervention from the Holy Spirit is unlikely to encounter such intervention. You don't need a word of knowledge for a bake sale or discernment of spirits for a car wash. The absence of the gifts and the absence of expectation are not independent phenomena. They produce each other. Here's the Lutheran angle that I find most compelling: we confess that Jesus is genuinely, bodily present in the bread and wine of communion — not symbolically, not in memory, but actually. If Jesus is genuinely present in the bread, we should be slow to argue that He is absent from the suffering body brought in prayer before that same altar. Real Presence, properly understood, is not a fence. It is a door. I've had almost thirty years of parish experience pressing on this question — three Alpha courses a year at Good Shepherd Lutheran in Pasadena back in the mid- 2000’s, a traveling team that went from Houston to Canada, a trip to Uganda in 2007 where deliverance ministry looked exactly like Mark 1:21-28 on an ordinary day in an ordinary place, and a recent healing evening at Light of Christ Lutheran a person's impaired vision was restored to 20/20 and has remained so. I'm not building doctrine on experience. I'm arguing that cessationism provides the least adequate theological account of what the Church continues to witness — and that what Lutherans already believe about Real Presence points somewhere more interesting than we usually follow it. None of this is an argument for religious enthusiasm. The gifts are for the neighbor, not for spiritual self-promotion. Not everyone is healed — suffering is a real participation in Jesus, not a failure of faith. Word and Sacrament remain the Church's sure and certain means of grace, and nothing supersedes them. A direct word to preachers: on Pentecost Sunday you will read 1 Corinthians 12:3-13 from the lectern. Someone in your congregation will hear that passage and feel something move — a recognition, a hope they've been carrying quietly for years. They will look at you to find out whether it means anything. You don't have to have all the answers. You do have to have thought it through. "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor… to set at liberty those who are oppressed." (Luke 4:18) Come, Holy Spirit. The full version of this argument — with exegesis, Lutheran theological framework, global witness, and parish testimony — is available at The Marginal Note on Substack. Look for “There is No ‘Kill Switch.’” Rev. Dr. Steve Stutz is an ordained ELCA minister, spiritual director, and intentional interim specialist based in the greater Houston area. [Contact] · [LinkedIn] · [The Marginal Note on Substack]
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