What Is Ahead for Pentecostalism? (And Where Is Jesus Going?)
Photo by Clint McKoy on Unsplash
We are in the thick of transition, immersed in uncertainty, confronted by a plague, and learning about who we are, or ought to be, as Pentecostal followers of Christ. The times are trying us and revealing more than we might want to know or consider. In times such as these, we can understand more about what is happening and how we are to respond. However, we must be brutally honest with ourselves—as persons and as the Church. This means looking back and living forward, with an ear to the Spirit, an eye on the signs, and the determination of the sons of Issachar to serve the purposes of God, wherever they lead.
Pentecostalism’s Historical Context
It was not until William J. Seymour arrived from Texas that the Azusa Street revival began (in 1906), drawing new attention to an outpouring of the Holy Spirit, a Latter Rain similar to the Day of Pentecost. The global impact of Azusa Street was largely due to the use of holiness and missionary networks, some of which became the basis for the formation of the Church of God in Christ and the Assemblies of God denominations. From the days of Wesley through the Pietistic movement, many indications of the stirrings and promptings of the Holy Spirit were seen. However, they were not readily acknowledged in mainline denominational settings.
Azusa Street came to prominence in the era of Jim Crow and the ongoing reality of racism and racial disparity. Although Charles F. Parham opposed the mixing of races within the movement, William J. Seymour attested to a degree of healing from the racial divide, healing that resulted from the work of the Holy Spirit at Azusa. Frank Bartleman, who was present at the Azusa Revival, famously said, “The color line has been washed away in the Blood” (Azusa Street: An Eyewitness Account, xxvii.). He was referring to the words of William E. Dubois, famed civil rights activist, scholar, sociologist, and historian who wrote in his 1903 work The Souls of Black Folk that his century’s problem was “the problem of the color-line” (22). Clearly, the move of God included all strata of society, but it was situated among the disenfranchised and marginalized, and it was understood as the reawakened presence of the Spirit of a Suffering Savior—the One whose wounds bring us all to liberation and healing.
As the twentieth century progressed, cataclysmic upheaval engulfed the world. By November 1918, World War I had claimed 20 million military lives, among them 116,516 Americans. During the war, the Spanish Flu pandemic assailed the nations, infecting an estimated 500 million people and killing 50 million of them, including 675,000 Americans. When the Treaty of Versailles was signed in 1919, Germany was held accountable and humiliated, paving the way for the rise of the Nazi party and the Second World War. Between 1939 and 1945, that second conflagration claimed 75 million military and civilian lives, including 418,500 Americans.
During the twentieth century’s first 45 years, Pentecostalism became a global movement. In the midst of horrendous and ignominious evil, God’s Spirit moved. Great voices arose from American pulpits to preach the Gospel with power. In healing and deliverance campaigns, the name of Jesus was proclaimed and his coming was seen as in the Latter Rain that would cover the earth (Hos 6:3). During a period of enduring unrest and chaos, God was near, and the likes of Seymour, Bartleman, Bishop Charles Harrison Mason, Florence Crawford, the Bosworth Brothers, John G. Lake, Smith Wigglesworth, Aimee Semple McPherson, Charles S. Price, Bishop J. H. King, and many others raised their voices as pioneers of the movement.
During this era, holiness churches such as the Church of God in Christ, Pentecostal Holiness, and the Church of God became Pentecostal denominations, and the Assemblies of God and Church of the Foursquare Gospel were founded. The COGIC remained interracial, but a racial divide developed as white ministers moved to the AG. Thus, the structural realities of America’s “original sin” made their presence known within the Pentecostal movement. Although it was objectively true that the blood of Christ washed away the color line, experience proved otherwise. What Seymour and Bartleman thought to be obliterated within Christendom’s ranks had only gone into hiding and would resurface in 1914.
Three waves or types of Pentecostalism would emerge and overlap each other over the course of the twentieth century. Classical Pentecostalism would be followed by the Charismatic Renewal, which coincided with the emergence of the Latter Rain movement in 1948. The Latter Rain is identified with what is known today as the Third Wave, a blend of “Independent, Postdenominationalist, Restorationist, and Radical, Neo-Apostolic” churches (Todd M. Johnson, “The Global Demographics of the Pentecostal and Charismatic Renewal: Symposium; Global Perspectives on Pentecostalism,” Society 46, no. 6 [November 2009]: 481.). Global Pentecostalism’s three waves are diverse and varied in their approaches. These differences are both a blessing and a great challenge in defining the movement’s sense of distinction.
Where Do We Go from Here?
Given the history behind us and the reality of global Pentecostalism as the fastest-growing movement in Christianity, where do we go from here? The answer begins with where we are. The threats of nuclear war and weapons of mass destruction that were once top-of-mind now hover at the periphery of our conscious awareness, largely due to their pervasive proliferation around the world. We continue to work through the COVID virus that struck the planet in early 2020, bringing with it a panoply of health-related, social, economic, psychological, and political challenges. As of this writing, 1.66 million people around the world have perished due to the pandemic. In the USA, more than 310,000 have died. Hopes of entering the New Year with effective vaccines are causing some to breathe sighs of relief. Yet uncertainty, anxiety, and a pervasive languishing prevail.
In all its grace and power, the gospel is intended to bring us into flourishing. As Pentecostals who embrace the fullness of the life of God in the Person of the Spirit, how exactly do we flourish? More importantly, how do we make our way forward? How did our forebears do it? What precisely is Jesus up to? Where is he going? And perhaps the greatest question of all: “Are we going with him?”
How we as Pentecostals grasp time and “the times” is essential. The metaphor Pentecostalism uses as the outpouring of the Spirit is the eschatological Latter Rain, which still perhaps indicates our view of time from a sacred perspective. In God’s timing, the Latter Rain is close to the consummation of the Kingdom of heaven. The Spirit was and is being poured out for a great and final harvest and ingathering that will usher in the end of the age. Hence, to the collective Pentecostal consciousness, the Latter Rain is a penultimate moment that births the revival culminating in the Kingdom’s fulfillment.
While eschatological views vary as to how this will occur, there seems to be some consensus about how time moves forward. There is a sense in which the “path of the just is as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day” (Prov 4:18).. That “perfect day” implies the final Day of the Lord. While darkness covers the earth in the secular view of time, the light of the glory of God is believed to be shining on the Church in relation to sacred time. Holding these two dynamics in creative tension, Pentecostalism continues to move through time, with the tension between darkness and light being held together as a “now-and-not-yet” dialectic.
Understanding the Times
The ancient sons of Issachar exemplify a quality crucial in this hour: they understood the times in order to know what to do. At the precarious transition from the kingdom of Saul to that of David, the sons of Issachar (a tribe with significant Jacobian prophetic promises in relation to the tribe of Judah, Gen. 49:14–15) came to the fore as Judah’s protective donkey, caring for the sheep. These long-standing observers of the sideral movements and seasons of the earth grasped the meaning of days, signs, and years in relation to harvest, climate, sowing, and reaping. As purveyors of time, they recognized the timing for Israel’s governance under David. Their study of signs was the “prophetic Braille” that gave them wisdom about where things had been, where they had come, and where they likely were headed.
Where are the Issacharians in current global Pentecostal circles? I am not asking where the cottage-industry prophets are—those who prophesy for popularity’s sake. Where are the Issacharians who have a profound awareness of the cycles of history and a deep reservoir of references from the Great Tradition from which to discern where God has been in the past? These are the ones who can know where he is in the present and then anticipate where he might be in the future.
The things which were, which are, and which shall be are not linear but teleological. Even a cursory look at the dawn of the twentieth century and what unfolded reveals that “we have been here before.” What might happen if we delve further into past history? What might we find? What, then, have we learned or failed to learn from the past?
The Consumer-Driven Church
From the days of Aimee Semple McPherson, the use of technology and media in proclaiming the gospel has become increasingly attractive. Goals toward church growth, branding, marketing, filling the seats, having the best music, and franchising gospel “products” can become convoluted and corrupt. If we fail to study history, we might not recognize the distortions we entertain. These are the issues John Drane observed in his 2012 work, The McDonaldization of the Church. Drane took his lead from sociologist George Ritzer, who wrote The McDonaldization of Society at the turn of the millennium. Ritzer based his observations on the careful study of history from the 1950s, in particular the notoriety and wealth that Ray Kroc amassed by buying out McDonald’s and transforming its business model. Kroc’s approach evokes the greed and corruption that lie in wait when the goal of consumption drives us. Society as a whole took his franchise model and built the future on it.
In some cases, the Church succumbed to this zeitgeist and adapted the McDonald’s model to the matter of church growth. Too many churches have carried the metaphor even further and are serving up “fast food”—a quasi-spiritual diet of low theological soundness and high concentrations of “feel good” that miss the flow of the blood and flesh of the Son of Man.
No longer do we feed on him the way our forebears did, with a diet of true spiritual formation. Bible illiteracy is at an all-time high, and franchising has been flourishing amid a generation that does not know the regula fidei. Our low tolerance for uncertainty has caused us to “snack” on teachings about how to take authority over situations, so we can be “in control.” At the shrine of McDonald’s four pillars—efficiency, calculability, predictability, and control—we immerse ourselves in technique-driven methodologies and leadership fetishes. We have pressed our way into twenty-first century consumerism through proclamation and cultural accommodation. All of this shapes our almost certain failure to understand the times and know what to do.
It is little wonder that, despite the pandemic of 102 years ago, we were unprepared for the devastation a microscopic, airborne virus could cause. An almost invisible “bug” has tipped the scales against our expectations, hopes, and desire for certainty—and we never saw the game-changer coming! Instead, we relied on cottage-industry prophets to make false but satisfying claims of a quick “pass over” of the virus, which never happened. Ought we not hold them accountable to the faith once for all delivered to the saints? When did self-proclaimed prophets become the final authority? And when did the Church surrender its place as “the pillar and ground of the truth” (2 Tim 3:15)?
The Future, and Jesus, as They Are
If history tells us anything at all, we must realize that further disruption awaits us and has the potential to destabilize those determined to live in the “everything’s fine” bubble. Understanding the times begins with seeing how God has moved in history; the lack of this understanding leads to endless speculation and guessing games about the future, a shotgun approach to predictions and scenarios. The future, however, is not a prediction. The future is a promise.
Prophetic ministry is far more forthtelling than foretelling. The testimony (martyria, living sacrifice) of Jesus is the Spirit of Prophecy. The Jesus at the center of popularly marketed and often celebrity-driven Pentecostalism is not the Suffering Servant (martyria) but an American “Jesus” who behaves more like a superhero than a Lamb standing in the Father’s presence, as though freshly slain. The real Jesus calls us to share in his sufferings. Requiring sacrificial living from us does not recommend him in the current culture, however.
This is the same Jesus who speaks truth to power. We too easily turn Christianity into a moralism and then assert moral superiority over those who differ in their views of how God works in history. In a compelling message entitled, “Don’t Leave Me Out of the Choir,” Tom Skinner told my generation that life looks a lot different when you are born at the bottom of the garbage heap. The loss of the consciousness of the Lamb who has been crucified since before the foundation of the world has led to a message that is bereft of the cruciform life and justifies an “us and them” mentality that separates us from loving those for whom Christ died.
We are at a convergence of historical cycles, and we are largely ignorant of them. Instead, we rely on voices and rhetoric that are uninspired by the Spirit. As long as we fail to remember the past, we will miss many of the moments that are ahead and not realize that the past is recycling. All of history reveals that which was, is, and is to come. Postmodern and postcolonial thought have seduced us into despising, neglecting, and even forgetting history. We have become our own point of reference, viewing our current predicament as the apex of history, rather than another point on the continuum.
The cosmic egg has not cracked. What has broken is the fragile shell of our worldview and the false reality we have built up around ourselves. Like Chicken Little we run here and there crying that the sky is falling, when what we need is to strip the fractured eggshell from our thinking and from our vision of what is unfolding.
Socioeconomic cycles, racial disparity cycles, geopolitical cycles, technological cycles, and even climate-related cycles are converging in this era. Truly understanding the times starts with remembering the past, learning from the past, and even seeking healing for the past, which is present to the crucified Lamb. This is the only way truly to cope with the disruption we are experiencing and to prepare for the future, while continuing to lay hold of the sure promises of God.
For Pentecostals, past, present, and future converge in the encounter at the altar. Let us reclaim what it means for us as Pentecostals to be altered at the altar. We need to groan over the loss of certainty and the persistence of racism. We need to weep between the porch and the altar in repentance for forsaking the transcendent mystery for which our Pentecostal forbears lived and died. We need to own our emptiness and cry out for his fullness. We need to own our spiritual poverty and cry out for the riches of our inheritance in Christ. We need to recover the truth that we are strangers and aliens and repent of wanting to “take over.” We need humility, sobriety, honesty, and transparency. We need to acknowledge our hubris and humble ourselves once again under the mighty hand of God.
Perhaps then he will exalt us.
Mark Chironna earned his DMin from George Fox University in Applied Semiotics and Future Leadership Studies. He also has an earned Master’s in Psychology from Saybrook University. He is the Presiding Bishop of Engage, a network of bishops and pastors, and the founding pastor and Overseer of Church On The Living Edge in Longwood, Florida.