» Those mind boggling Pentecostals

April 9, 2006 marks 100 years since the Azusa Street Revival. Here’s Grant McClung’s summary of the mind boggling expansion of Pentecostalism as a global church planting movement:

With more than 580 million adherents (growing by 19 million per year and 54,000 per day), the Pentecostal/charismatic movement has become, in just 100 years, the fastest growing and most globally diverse expression of worldwide Christianity. At the current rate of growth, some researchers predict there will be 1 billion Pentecostals by 2025, most located in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

The mind-boggling research by David Barrett and Todd Johnson reveals some surprising statistics about the movement:

• Pentecostals comprise 3 major streams and 59 diverse categories of worldwide Christianity.
• Pentecostals can be found within all 150 non-charismatic Christian traditions.
• Pentecostals come from 9,000 ethnolinguistic cultures and speak 8,000 languages.
• Pentecostalism is more urban than rural, more female than male, more majority world (66%) than Western world (34%), more poor (87%) than affluent (13%), more family-related than individualist, and more young than old.
• Pentecostals are an active presence in 80% of the world’s 3,300 largest metropolises.

Barrett and Johnson conclude that “the sheer magnitude and diversity of the numbers involved beggar the imagination.”

Grant McClung, Pentecostals: The Sequel

Thanks to Alan Hirsch for sending me the link. The world is waiting for your blog.