What is remarkable about this new strain of Pentecostalism is the heroic intensity of the ministries, which have not yet evolved into tired bureaucracies. The founders of these programs are driven by a sense of calling, a feeling of thankfulness for how God has intervened in their personal lives, and they are constantly reinventing their [...]
Category Archives: Pentecostalism
God’s option for the poor
14 November, 2009 – 7:11 AM
Researchers Donald Miller and Tetsunao Yamamori went looking for fast growing churches in the developing world addressing social needs in their community. The churches had to be led and funded indigenously. No foreign money or leadership. Is it any surprise that 85% of the churches that fitted the criteria were Pentecostal or charismatic? Their conclusion [...]
Is the gospel good news for the poor?
19 October, 2009 – 6:36 AM
It is certainly a distortion of the Christian message if it is primarily interpreted as a program for the material improvement of the human condition. The core of the Christian message is the proclamation of a tectonic shift in cosmic reality inaugurated by the resurrection of Jesus Christ. This proclamation radically relativizes all the empirical [...]
Australian Christian Churches: Growing and Slowing
2 May, 2009 – 3:54 AM
Since 1977 under the leadership of Andrew Evans, and for the last twelve years Brian Houston, the Australian Christian Churches have been one of the fastest growing movements in the land. The ACC has released its 2009 report. A few observations. . . Since 1997 there has been an 85% growth in the number of [...]
The Reformation of Machismo
28 April, 2009 – 3:59 PM
The conventional wisdom is that Christianity reinforces the oppression of women. Elizabeth Brusco, a feminist Marxist scholar conducted fieldwork in Columbia from 1982-1983, and found that pentecostal conversion transformed traditional gender relations by giving women a moral authority in the home to challenge their husbands’ drinking, gambling, or adultery. She wrote up her findings in [...]
Andrew Evans: Part 2
21 August, 2008 – 7:32 AM
The second half of my interview with Andrew Evans on the Rise and Rise of the Assemblies of God in Australia. Pentecostals are known for their dependence on the Holy Spirit. Did all this goal setting undermine that dependence? We set goals. But to get the churches going there has to be a work of [...]
Andrew Evans on the rise and rise of the Australian Assemblies of God
19 August, 2008 – 12:31 PM
Andrew Evans was born in India to missionary parents. He served as a missionary in Papua New Guinea. Back in Australia he took a church of 150 people and grew it to thousands – Paradise AOG. For twenty years he led the Assemblies of God (now Australian Christian Churches) in exponential growth of both churches [...]
