(Edited) Pentecostal Mission and Global Christianity

THIS IS A PAPER SUBMITTED TO THE PRESBYTERY AND MEMBERSHIP OF THE ALASKA MINISTRY NETWORK ANNUAL CONFERENCE AT THE ONE-HUNDRETH CELEBRATION OF PENTECOSTAL MINISTRY IN ALASKA. The paper looks at the phenomenal growth of Pentecostalism around the world, the reasons for the growth, and asks what should be the model for missions in the future.

Pentecostal Education, 2022

As the second part of the series, this study begins with a survey of five major Christian families, and global Pentecostalism with its place in global Christianity in its three broad categories. The next discussion presents an overview of Pentecostal Christianity in each continent, observing the widening gap between the global North and South. The last major part probes the causes of the exponential growth of Pentecostal Christianity.

The Pentecostal World provides a comprehensive and critical introduction to one of the most vibrant and diverse expressions of contemporary Christianity. Unlike many books on Pentecostalism, this collection of essays from all continents does not attempt to synthesize and simplify the movement's inherent diversity and fragmented dispersion. Instead, the global flows of Pentecostalism are firmly grounded in local histories and expressions, as well as the various modes of their worldwide reproduction. The book thus argues for a new understanding of Pentecostal and Charismatic movements that accounts for the simultaneous processes of pluralization and homogenization in contemporary World Christianity. Written by a distinguished team of international contributors across various disciplines, the volume is comprised of six parts, with each offering a critical perspective on classical themes in the study of Pentecostalism. Led by a programmatic introduction, the thirty-six chapters within these parts explore a variety of themes: history and historiography, conversion, spirit beliefs and exorcism, prosperity, politics, gender relations, sexual identities, racism, development, migration, pilgrimage, interreligious relations, media, ecumenism, and academic research. The Pentecostal World is essential reading for students and researchers in anthropology, history, political science, religious studies, sociology, and theology. The book will also be very useful for those in related fields, such as culture studies, black studies, ethnic studies, and gender studies.

Asian Journal of Pentecostal Studies, 2005

Church unity has been much discussed, particularly around the centenary of the Edinburgh Missionary Conference. Pentecostalism, as a new player in today's global Christianity, comes with its unique potential toward church unity and corporation. This study identifies three such gifts: numerical growth, spontaneous ecumenicity through worship, and missional cooperation. The study concludes with a self-critical caution for fellow Pentecostals and the world church so that these gifts would be strengthened.

Journal of the European Pentecostal Theological Association, 2020

University of California Press, 2007

Global Pentecostalism · The New Face of Social Engagement — Donald E. Miller — Professor of Religion and Executive Director for the Center for Religion and Civic Culture at the University of California — and Tetsunao Yamamori — President Emeritus of Food for the Hungry International and Senior Fellow of the Center for Religion and Civic Culture at the University of California — took four years to travel around the world to visit and observe non-Western, Pentecostal churches and groups exhibiting holistic Christianity through active social ministries

Canadian Journal of Pentecostal-Charismatic Christianity, 2015

Ecclesiology 10.1 (www.brill.nl), 2014

Religions, 2018

This special issue of Religions assembles a talented group of international scholars from a variety of regions and disciplines to address contemporary developments within global Pentecostalism, a burgeoning movement that is changing the face-and interface-of religion and society today. A total of twelve articles (representing the work of thirteen authors) speak to issues surfacing along one of three overlapping trajectories: cultural expression, social engagement, and institutional change. The introduction briefly sets a framework for each article and calls attention to its wider connections and notable contributions. As a body of scholarship, these articles constitute a set of strategic soundings that refine our understanding of the texture and topography of global Pentecostalism. In addition to their substantive contributions, the authors, viewed collectively, also put on display the central attributes of a new era in Pentecostal studies, one distinguished by its productivity, diversity, range, and interdisciplinary ken.

Asian Journal of Pentecostal Studies and APTS Press, 2005

Pentecostals have been around for only a hundred years,2 but today are main role players in world missions, representing perhaps a quarter of the world’s Christians and perhaps three quarters of them are in the Majority World. 3 According to Barrett and Johnson’s statistics, there were 1,227 million Christians in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and Oceania in 2004, 62% of the world’s Christians, while those of the two northern continents (including Russia) constituted only 38%, dramatic evidence of how rapidly the western share of world Christianity has decreased in the twentieth century. If present trends continue, by 2025 69% of the world’s Christians will live in the South, with only 31% in the North.4 But it is not only in terms of numbers that there have been fundamental changes. Christianity is growing most often in Pentecostal and Charismatic forms, and many of these are independent of western “mainline” Protestant and “classical Pentecostal” denominations and missions. Pentecostal missiologists need to acknowledge and celebrate the tremendous diversity in Pentecostalism. The “southward swing of the Christian center of gravity” is possibly more evident in Pentecostalism than in other forms of Christianity.5 Most of the dramatic church growth in the twentieth century has taken place in Pentecostal and independent Pentecostal-like churches. Classical Pentecostal churches like the Assemblies of God, the world’s biggest Pentecostal denomination, have probably only some 8% of their world associate membership in North America, with at least 80% in the Majority World. One estimate put the total number of adherents of the World Assemblies of God Fellowship in 1997 at some thirty million, of which only about 2.5 million were in North America.6 Larry Pate estimated in 1991 that the Majority World mission movement was growing at five times the rate of western missions.7 Half the world’s Christians today live in developing, poor countries. The forms of Christianity there are very different from western “classical Pentecostal” stereotypes. They have been profoundly affected by several factors, including the desire to have a more contextual and culturally relevant form of Christianity, the rise of nationalism, a reaction to what are perceived as “colonial” forms of Christianity, and the burgeoning Pentecostal and Charismatic renewal.