J. E. Stiles (1890—1959)
Country of Origin
-
United States
Countries/Regions of Ministry
- United States
- Canada
Traditions
- Pentecostal
Ministries
- evangelist
For J. E. (Jack) Stiles, the question was never whether the Bible taught a genuine, distinct infilling of the Holy Spirit. It was rather how to guide Christians into that dimension. For his approach, he stirred up more than a little controversy.
Stiles had always been an innovator. Following his graduation from the University of California-Berkeley in 1916, with a bachelor’s degree in agriculture, he went to work for the extension department. He taught farmers throughout the Central Valley how to obtain bigger fruit and vegetable harvests. He taught so many about building silos to store their crops that they gave him the nickname “Silo Jack.”
In the evenings, Stiles would often hold evangelistic meetings for the same people he had been instructing all day in the sun. He matched their social level, sometimes preaching in overalls. He was not bombastic behind the pulpit either, but conveyed the gospel in a steady voice. After marrying, he took a job with a large nursery company, where he ran a farm in Porterville that grew seedlings for California orchards. He believed that if he saved enough money, he could afford to become a pastor in a poorer area that could not pay him.
However, the Great Depression came in 1929, and his company went bankrupt. Without a job, Stiles decided he might as well risk joining the ministry. Through the tulmultuous '30s, he led Bethel Full Gospel Church in Hayward, California, part of a Pentecostal denomination. Ever the visionary, he built a chapel-on-wheels to be pulled behind a vehicle so that his youth group could hold services for those who could not get to town. It had a pulpit, small organ, and pews for up to forty people—even a generator to power the lights.
At the time, an assumption was that the baptism in the Holy Spirit often involved "tarrying"--a lengthy time of praying or even pleading at the altar. The name came from Jesus’ words in the King James rendition of Luke 24:49, “Behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you: but tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from on high.” Sincere saints sometimes spent years in this quest without realizing their hope or breaking through to speak in tongues like the Acts believers did. A common explanation was that they may not have put in enough effort, or perhaps a hidden sin in their lives was obstructing their entire sanctification. On the other hand, revival experiences showed that sometimes those with sinful pasts attended a service, got saved, and received the Holy Spirit with tongues! The dissonance was unexplainable.
Jack Stiles began searching the Scriptures diligently, paying special attention to the texts on the gift of the Spirit and what efforts were involved in the reception. His understanding was stretched when British Bible school leader Howard Carter came to hold meetings in Oakland, California. There, Stiles watched as people quickly received the Holy Spirit in response to the laying on of hands. Carter spent time talking with Stiles and invited him to help in the services. This opened the floodgates; within weeks, back at Bethel Full Gospel Church, twenty-two members were filled with the Spirit as their pastor provided simple instructions and laid hands on them.
Stiles taught that this approach was not new; it followed the Samaria revival (Acts 8), the ministry of Ananias to the newly converted Saul of Tarsus (Acts 9), and Paul's account in Ephesus (Acts 19). He declared, “It is illogical and unscriptural to tell a Christian that he has to do this or that in order to be worthy to receive the Holy Spirit." Rather, “The people who tell seekers that they must clean up and get more righteous before they can receive the Holy Spirit are defeating the very thing they are trying to promote.”
Stiles encouraged believers to focus on God's pouring out his Spirit as a gift so that they had only to welcome it. He taught that the Spirit is like breath or wind, and that Jesus used this metaphor with the inquiring Nicodemus in John 3:8; on Easter night with the eleven disciples when “he breathed on them and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit’” (John 20:22); and when the Day of Pentecost described the “sound like the blowing of a violent wind [that] came from heaven” (Acts 2:2). At the end of a teaching session, Stiles would invite people to sit quietly on the front pew and open their mouths to breathe in the Spirit of God. He would say, “Don’t utter a word in English. Don’t say ‘Jesus!’ or ‘Hallelujah!’ or any other religious term; after all, you can’t speak two languages at once. Just breathe in, and when the Spirit begins to put syllables upon your tongue, go ahead and give voice to them.” He would then go down the row, laying hands on each head, and find the church filled with praises in new vocabularies.
Decades earlier, Smith Wigglesworth had also refused to call “tarrying meetings” as others did, preferring the term "receiving meetings." The receptive approach became a centerpiece of Stiles’s ministry to the point that he resigned his pastorate in 1946 to accept invitations to minister as an itinerant. He published a book of his teachings entitled The Gift of the Holy Spirit. His wife said she tried to keep track of how many people received the Holy Spirit in his meetings until she passed 10,000 and gave up.
Defenders of the “tarrying” tradition at times disputed with Stiles. His denomination brought him up for disciplinary hearings more than once. In early 1951, he traveled to Texas to speak to his nephew's class at a denominational ministry school. Curiously, the nephew’s teaching contract for the next year was not renewed. But Stiles never criticized his roots. He kept his credentials up-to-date, and leaders chose not to disfellowship him. He crossed coasts in the US and Canada, going wherever the doors opened, whether denominational or independent churches. He and his wife purchased a simple travel trailer and stayed on the road until a stroke in 1957 forced him to retire. He passed away two years later, in 1959.
Stiles’s approach, though radical at the time, became mainstream as the Charismatic movement swelled after his death. The laying on of hands brought the Spirit’s reception to vast numbers of Christians around the world in many different traditions. The bigger picture comes clear in Stiles' emphasis that “We are here to receive a Person, and not just an experience. The receiving of the Holy Spirit is only learning the first simple lesson in cooperating with the moving of the Holy Spirit in our lives.”
Further Reading
- The Gift of the Holy Spirit.