Editors Note:
Here in this article C. Peter Wagner discusses the phenomenal growth of Pentecostal churches. Wagner died several months ago (October 2016), and I believe he wrote this article in the 1980's. Today, many current Pentecostal churches have left or lost their "roots" in an attempt to reinvent themselves rather than to rely on the incredible Power of the Word and the awesome Power of the Holy Spirit. In some cases, churches have corporately chosen to follow after "Purpose-Driven Church" style methodology, and other attempted strategies (almost always with dismal results). It is helpful to occasionally revisit our "DNA". ~ St. Mark
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About Charles Peter Wagner (August 15, 1930 – October 21, 2016) was an Apostle, theologian, missiologist, missionary, writer, teacher, and church growth specialist best known for his controversial writings on spiritual warfare.[1]
Wagner served as a missionary in Bolivia under the South American Mission and Andes Evangelical Mission (now SIM International) from 1956 to 1971. He then served for 30 years (1971 to 2001) as Professor of Church Growth at the Fuller Theological Seminary's School of World Missions until his retirement in 2001. He is the author of more than 70 books. He was the president of Global Harvest Ministries from 1993 to 2011 and served as the chancellor emeritus of Wagner Leadership Institute, which trains leaders to join in a movement known as the New Apostolic Reformation, an organization Wagner also helped found. He was also the vice president of Global Spheres, Inc.
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To say that this growth (Pentecostal Church Growth) is phenomenal is an understatement. The pentecostal movement is less than 100 years old, young as such movements go. Only 50 years ago it was still being classified by many along with cults. Now, being a Pentecostal is an “in” thing amoung many Christians, and the stature, reputation and dignity of the group continue to grow. If the Lord tarries, pentecostalism will undoubtedly go down in future history as the most significant religious phenomenon of the twentieth century.
What is behind this awesome growth?
First and foremost, pentecostal growth, as all bona fide church growth, is a sovereign work of God. Paul said that although he plants and Apollos waters, it is God who gives the increase (1 Cor 3:6). Jesus said, “I will build my church” (Matthew 16:18). It is His church, and He is the builder. To God and God alone be the glory!
But the same God is the underlying cause of Episcopal, Mennonite, Presbyterian, Lutheran, and any other kind of church growth, as well as pentecostal growth. Why is it, then, that pentecostals seem to grow more vigorously? The full answer to that question is complex; but, for the purpose of this article, I am going to attempt to simplify it by selecting as carefully as I can what I consider to be the four most salient characteristics of pentecostal growth. Not that other churches do not also share some of these qualities - they do. But none, it seems to me, have combined all four quite as well as pentecostals have. Pentecostals are usually characterized by churches of purity, prayer, power and the poor. Let me develop each one of these.
Churches of Purity
Pentecostal churches have a tradition of purity in three key areas: belief in the Bible, Christian doctrine, and lifestyle.
Belief in the Bible
The authority of the Scriptures is final. Pentecostals believe that what the Bible says is the Word of God, no questions asked. The great theological debates of the last century which have eroded confidence in the Bible amoung large segments of Christendom have scarcely touched pentecostals.
If pentecostals have erred at all, they may interpret the Bible too literally in places, but that is hardly a dangerous error any more than having too many clothes on when you are caught in a mountain snowstorm. Too many clothes may be cumbersome, but too few could cost you your life.
Research in church growth has shown that the more literally the Bible is interpreted, the more likely the church is to grow. One reason then, that pentecostal churches are growing is that they hold to biblical purity.
Sound Doctrine
Sound doctrine, which goes along with biblical authority, has also contributed to the purity of pentecostal churches. While it is true that pentecostals have differed amoung themselves on secondary doctrines, they have agreed on the basics.
Christian Lifestyle
Christian lifestyle is a third mark of pentecostal purity. For most pentecostals conversion is a radical, life-changing experience. Separation from the world is demanded at the new birth. No drinking, no-smoking, no drugs, no extramarital sex, no cussing, and no gambling are common lifestyle characteristics amoung pentecostals. Some groups add others such as no dancing, no gold, no bikinis, no rock music, no movies, no card playing, no sports, and no buying on Sunday. On the positive side, pentecostals usually go to church three or four times a week, read the Bible daily, pray before each meal, and give at least ten percent of their income to the Lord.
It may seem to some that such strictness could be an obstacle to church growth. Just the opposite. It is a well-known fact that the stricter the religious obligations and the higher the level of commitment demanded on its members, the more vigorously a church grows. Watering down the Christian lifestyle to conform to society in general may appear to have some short-term benefits for growth, but over the long haul it will surely turn people away from the church. The pentecostal pendulum, fortunately, is still over on the strict side.
Churches of Prayer
This section on prayer will be relatively short. The shortness, however does not reflect the lack of importance of prayer for the growth of the church. It simply reflects the lack of research. I know that prayer is closely related to church growth, and I have set as one of my research goals for the eighties an attempt to discover just how and why this is true.
However, even though I do not know as much as I wish I knew about the subject, I do know that pentecostals are praying people. The kind of prayer that requires the active, energetic participation of each person (as contrasted to liturgical prayers that require very little personal involvement) is a universal characteristic of pentecostal people in their churches, their family circles, and their private devotions. Praying in tongues undoubtedly helps this greatly. It frequently establishes an intimate contact with God that is otherwise much more difficult to establish and maintain. Through the years I have noticed that in interdenominational meetings the person called upon to lead the group in prayer is frequently the pentecostal.
Intimacy with God is reflected not only in formal prayers, but also in revelatory manifestations of the Spirit such as prophecies, including what many call a word of knowledge (which I consider a type of prophecy). This kind of direct contact with the Holy Ghost is a tremendous force for growth and is most consistently prominent in pentecostal churches.
If I may be permitted a personal anecdote, some years ago I was helping our Congregational church through the process of planting a new daughter church. We retained a firm to do a demographic study so that we would be sure we located the new church in the right place. As I recall, the service cost us about $ 7,000. While we were still in the process of this project, I was invited to dinner at a friend’s house. Pastor Jack Hayford of the Church of the Way in Van Nuys, the largest church of the Foursquare Gospel in the country, was also a guest. He mentioned in passing that they were planting a new church in Valencia, and I asked him how they went about selecting Valencia as the location. “Oh,” he said, “I was driving along the freeway by Magic Mountain when all of a sudden I got a warm feeling in my chest, and the Lord said, “Plant a new church in Valencia.” I told him that it was much cheaper to be a Pentecostal than a Congregationalist!
Churches of Power
Closely related to the intimacy with God attained through prayer is the frequent manifestation of supernatural signs and wonders in Pentecostal churches. Probably the greatest contribution that Pentecostalism has made to Christianity in general is restoring the reality of the miracle power of the New Testament. Such power had been absent amoung the other churches for so long that when it appeared in Pentecostalism around the turn of the century the only way many traditional Christians could handle it was to declare it a heresy and classify Pentecostals as a false cult. Most Christians are smarter now, and God has forgiven them for the past.
Although I am still in the process of studying this, it does seem to me that one of the major purposes, if not the major one, of signs and wonders in the New Testament was to attract the attention of unbelievers and to draw them to Jesus Christ and to the kingdom of god. Time after time in the book of Acts, signs and wonders are related to vigorous church growth. Acts 5:12-16 is typical of many other passages: “Many miracles and wonders were being performed amoung the people by the apostles . . . more and more people were added to the group - a crowd of men and women who believed in the Lord.”
Worldwide, Pentecostal churches grow when the Holy Spirit is free to manifest His miracle power through believers. An amazing phenomenon of modern times is the explosive growth of churches in Mainland China during the Mao era. When the missionaries were driven out in 1949 and 1950, an estimated one million Protestant Christians remained in China. Through 30 years of the harsh persecution, through the brutality of the Cultural Revolution, with no Bibles, pastors, or church buildings, the church did not wither away as many feared it would. Instead it grew vigorously so that estimates of believers in China now run from 25 million to almost 50 million. How did this happen? All the answers are not yet in, but one thing we know for sure is that a major factor was God’s immediate supernatural work of healings, casting out of demons, and miracles. While the thousands of house-churches that have been springing up cannot be claimed for Pentecostals or for any other denomination, my hunch is that most of them will turn out to be more like Pentecostals than any other modern branch of Christianity.
Not only do Pentecostals believe in miracle power, they also believe in soul-winning power. Sharing the faith is a constant way of life for Pentecostals. They believe that God wants to use them to win souls, and He does. When I consult with many denominations, I have to start by convincing them that the gospel is worth sharing and that God wants churches to grow. Not so with Pentecostals. It never occurred to them to question it. Pentecostals are possibility thinkers - their faith level is high. They believe in evangelism, and they believe in church growth. They trust God for great things and God honors their faith. Pentecostal churches are churches of power.
Churches of the Poor
The God of the Bible is a God who loves the poor. It is true that He loves all people, including the rich; but, if we take the Bible seriously, we know that He has a special bias for the poor. Because of this, God is going to make sure that the poor have a strong witness for Christ. Back in the eighteenth century the Anglican Church in England had abandoned the poor, so God raised up the Methodist Church. When the Methodists came to America, they ministered to the poor with circuit riders going from cabin to cabin out on the frontier. But one hundred years later, the Methodists had become middle-class, and God raised up the Holiness / Pentecostal movement to minister to the poor once again.
Check it out. Almost all Pentecostal preachers now in their sixties or seventies were born in poor homes, and many younger ones were also. This is one of the strongest characteristics of Pentecostal growth.
Research has shown that the working class people of the world are more receptive to the gospel than the higher classes.
Furthermore, God reserves a special blessing for His servants who preach the good news to the poor, and Pentecostals have been receiving this blessing through the years.
But this observation leads me to my final section in which I want to elaborate on what I said up front; namely, that there are some ominous signs that Pentecostals may subtly be moving away from the very things that have contributed to their growth for 80 years.
Many different factors are entering into this process, but most of them can be classified under the following: the burning desire for respectability.
Dangers of Respectability
I have argued that Pentecostal churches are growing steadily and strongly because they are churches of purity, prayer, power and the poor. If they remain that way, they will remain strong. But cutting any of these characteristics off will be like cutting off the hair of Samson. Unfortunately, I think Delilah with her scissors may be lurking right around the corner.
Especially since World War II ended, 35 years ago, Pentecostals have been gaining respectability rapidly. Being persecuted and classified with the Jehovah’s Witnesses now seems like an unreal bad dream. General superintendents and general overseers are now officers in the National Association of Evangelicals. They get invitations to the large international congresses. For the older generation it is a great relief to be able to mix with other leaders inter-denominationally after taking nothing but abuse for so many years. The younger generation knows no different - weren’t Pentecostals always respectable, just like Lutherans and Presbyterians?
All this is to the good. Behold how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity. But it has its problems - especially for church growth.
One price of respectability is that you will continue to be accepted so long as you do not stress your doctrinal distinctives.
For Pentecostals this means keeping a low profile on Baptism in the Holy Spirit, the initial evidence of speaking in tongues, hallelujahs and amens from the audience, miraculous healings and exorcisms, prophecies / words of knowledge, and many more. But these are some of the very characteristics that have enabled Pentecostals to grow three or four times faster than the other groups they are trying to gain respectability from.
Behind all this is a phenomenon called redemption and lift. When poor people become Christians and allow God to clean up their life, they frequently do not remain poor. But, as the Methodists learned, rising to middle-class respectability can easily get a church out of touch with the poor they originally came from. This hasn’t completely happened to Pentecostals, but it has happened enough to hoist yellow flags all over the place. If the Pentecostals abandon the poor, God will raise up someone else to minister to them and the rate of growth of Pentecostal churches will surely begin to drop.
One of the measuring sticks for redemption and lift is the denominational educational system. As Pentecostals who were born poor rise socially and economically, they desire better educational opportunities for their children than they themselves had - so they establish colleges. When their children graduate from college, they are irretrievably middle-class. Over the decades this can and usually does shift the focus of outreach and church growth from the poor to the middle class.
Another measuring stick involves requirements for ministers. Most of the old-time Pentecostal preachers were either self-educated or they learned by being an apprentice to another pastor. Then, when the colleges came, more and more were college graduates. Ministers were considered more respectable if they went to college. Then the process escalates until graduate schools are established. Currently, the Church of God, the Assemblies of God, and the Pentecostal Holiness Church are about at this point. Down the line a two-tiered ministry is likely to develop. Those who go to graduate school will subtly be thought of as superior to those who do not, and they will be elected to influential denominational policy-making positions. It may take a few decades, but the well-meaning declarations of the present leaders (who have not gone to graduate school) that no formal education requirements will be made for ordination into the ministry may begin to erode and eventually disappear altogether. A study of the Methodist church will show that it can happen. It will be devastating for church growth if it does.
By this time some are saying, “Hey! Wagner has stopped preaching and gone to meddling.” Well, then let me conclude with a list of concrete suggestions that can keep Pentecostals on track as the global leaders in making church growth happen:
1. Hold purity high. I do not see much change as yet in biblical authority or doctrine, but I do detect some watering down of the Christian lifestyle as distinctly separated from the world around. Keep strict, and God will bless.
2. Depend on prayer and fastings as your spiritual core. Keep channels open for intimacy with God through tongues and prophecies.
3. Ask God to show His power through signs and wonders as He did in the early days of the Pentecostal movement. Publicize testimonies of those who have been blessed through miracles. Not enough is said about healing any more. If I am not mistaken, only one author, David L. Lemons, addressed the issue of healing in the entire first year of publication of the Pentecostal Minister.
4. Maintain a passion for souls. Keep witnessing and outreach in the forefront of all church programs.
5. Never allow educational requirements to substitute for spiritual gifts as the basis for ordaining new ministers.
6. Vigorously plant new churches and exalt the bivocational minister. There’s nothing wrong with earning money from a secular job while you’re building a new church.
7. Curse “the demon of respectability.” Be willing to be fools for Christ’s sake. Do not allow association with other Christians to water down Pentecostal distinctive of doctrine or practice.
The last two decades of the twentieth century hold incredible promise. I believe that they will see the greatest harvest of souls in the history of the Christian Church. My prayer is that, as Pentecostals have led the way in reaping the harvest over the past two decades, they will maintain this leadership with even greater power as we move into the future for the glory of God.
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