Pentecostal expansion: Reasons 1-3
We’re in the month that celebrates 100 years since the Asuza Street revival that launched Pentecostalism as a movement. Towards a Pentecostal Missiology for the Majority World by Allan Anderson does a great job of unpacking what it is about Pentecostalism that makes it such a dynamic Christian movement. Perhaps the 20th Century’s most successful movement of any kind.
Here’s my summary of his first three points:
1. Pneumatocentric Mission*
Pentecostal mission is grounded first and foremost in the conviction that the Holy Spirit is the motivating power behind all this activity. Pentecostal missionaries got on with the job in a hurry, believing that the time was short and the second coming of Christ was near. Reflection about the task was not as important as action in evangelism.
The Spirit bears witness to the presence of Christ in the life of the missionary, and the message proclaimed by the power of the Spirit is of the crucified and resurrected Jesus Christ who sends gifts of ministry to humanity.
2. Dynamic Mission Praxis
Pentecostals believe that the coming of the Spirit brings an ability to do “signs and wonders” in the name of Jesus Christ to accompany and authenticate the gospel message.
Gary McGee notes that this “confident belief that God had at last poured out his Spirit with miraculous power to empower Christians to bring closure to the Great Commission…has forced the larger church world to reassess the work of the Holy Spirit in mission.”
The central role given to healing is probably no longer a prominent feature of western Pentecostalism. But it is in the Majority World, where the problems of disease and evil affect the whole community and are not relegated to a private domain for individual pastoral care.
Thus, Pentecostal movements went a long way towards meeting physical, emotional and spiritual needs of people in the Majority World, offering solutions to life’s problems and ways to cope in what was often a threatening and hostile world.
3. Evangelism: Central Missiological Thrust
The Azusa Street revival (1906-8) resulted in a category of ordinary but “called” people called “missionaries” fanning out to every corner of the globe within a remarkably short space of time.
Despite the seeming naiveté of many early missionaries, their evangelistic methods were flexible, pragmatic and astonishingly successful.
Pentecostal evangelism was geared towards church planting, a central feature of all Pentecostal mission activity. Pentecostal churches were missionary by nature, and the dichotomy between “church” and “mission” that so long plagued other churches did not exist. This “central missiological thrust” was clearly a “strong point in Pentecostalism” and central to its existence. Thriving Pentecostal “indigenous churches” were established in many parts of the world without the help of any foreign missionaries.
*Comment from Steve: In the old days they called it “Holy Ghost power!”
