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Deconstruction and the Spirit
How Pastors Can Better Understand Deconstruction and How to Approach It from a Pentecostal Perspective
Imprint: Wipf and Stock
Deconstructive faith experiences are growing in number throughout global Christianity. Factors like globalization, individualism, education, post-colonial experiences, fundamentalism, connectivity, and others contribute to accelerate this trend and shape the environment of faith communities that find themselves amongst increasingly postmodern tendencies. Many pastors are deciding to ignore the situation by rejecting deconstruction altogether, while others are embracing it blindly. Since an overwhelming number of churches worldwide embrace Pentecostalism, Esteban Solis proposes a pastoral response from a distinctively Pentecostal perspective that engages deconstruction of faith critically while staying open to conceive it as a tool for Spirit-led discipleship that can produce a more mature faith.
The book examines six affirmations made by Jacques Derrida that explain deconstruction. Each of these is contrasted with specific examples of cultural changes taking place in Costa Rica, Peter's experience at the house of Cornelius, and a Pentecostal perspective.
By exploring a variety of authors, Solis identifies different tools that can help pastors to better understand the experience of deconstruction while engaging in discipleship practices that can produce mature believers in a postmodern era.
Esteban Solís has a DMin from Duke University and an MAGL from Fuller Theological Seminary. He has been in full time ministry for more than twenty years, and he and his wife are lead pastors of Iglesia El Centro in Costa Rica.
“I found Esteban Solís’ Pentecostal perspective on pastoral ministry to be invigorating, challenging, and genuinely new. He reminds us that we pastors don’t work alone. The Holy Spirit is busy deconstructing, reconstructing, and keeping our ministries as fresh and as dangerous, as contemporary and as vital as God means ministry to be. All of us North American church leaders will be interrogated and empowered by the unique theological insights of this Pentecostal Costa Rican pastor.”
—Will Willimon, professor of the practice of Christian ministry, Duke Divinity School
“A genuine and robust faith can never be sustained by repetitions without critical filters and an absence of analysis of our cultural, ecclesiastical, and even family heritages. That is why I am so glad that Esteban Solís has done the work of investigating this topic that is so necessary today. Far from being considered a threat, the deconstruction of our faith should be a normal part of the pastoral processes of spiritual formation so that we can build it from firm convictions, scriptural revelation, and even common sense, eliminating all the additions of prejudices, myths, and sterile traditions.”
—Lucas Leys, founder, e625.com