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Transcript - CH510 A History of the Charismatic Movements © 2019 Our Daily Bread University. All rights reserved. 1 of 14 LESSON 13 of 24 CH510 The Prosperity of Classical Pentecostalism A History of the Charismatic Movements As we begin our series again today, we take up a really exciting subject in my mind, and that is the enormous prosperity and solidification of this emerging movement. What I’ve tried to argue by way of outline goes something like this: The first manifestation of the Charismatic movement is what is called classical Pentecostalism. If you look at this great movement, born about 1901, I think by simple outline there are three parts to it. There’s the period of beginnings, from 1901 to 1906 or 1909, depending upon the preference of division; and then there’s a period of theological schism and strife, from about 1909 through about 1932. And that period of controversy and strife has, I think, two facets to it. First, there’s theological controversy; and what divided the early Pentecostals in the second decade of the twentieth century was first the finished work theory of William Durham, the influence of Baptist holiness people into a world that had previously been dominated by Methodist holiness people, so two-steppers as opposed to three-steppers. Then, second, the issue of Unitarian Pentecostalism or modalism, as it’s commonly called, which then divided the Pentecostal movement again into Trinitarians and Unitarians. Then when you come to the 1920s and the 1930s, the divisions in the new denominations that emerge are not so much over theology as personality, as differences of that type that create a series of new—sometimes small and sometimes larger—denominational bodies. When you come to after 1932, you come to what I call the flowering of classical Pentecostalism—prosperity, solidification, it becomes a much more dominant powerful movement in the ranks of American Christianity. So that is what we do today: the flowering of classical Pentecostalism, or subtitled “The Emergence into American Evangelicalism.” Thus far in our study Pentecostalism has developed, both by necessity and choice, outside the mainstream of evangelicalism. Pentecostalism was quite isolationistic from its beginning until John D. Hannah, PhD Experience: Distinguished Professor of Historical Theology, Dallas Theological Seminary

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Page 1: A History of the Charismatic Movements CH510 …...manifestation of the Charismatic movement is what is called classical Pentecostalism. If you look at this great movement, born about

A History of the Charismatic Movements

Transcript - CH510 A History of the Charismatic Movements © 2019 Our Daily Bread University. All rights reserved.

1 of 14

LESSON 13 of 24CH510

The Prosperity of Classical Pentecostalism

A History of the Charismatic Movements

As we begin our series again today, we take up a really exciting subject in my mind, and that is the enormous prosperity and solidification of this emerging movement. What I’ve tried to argue by way of outline goes something like this: The first manifestation of the Charismatic movement is what is called classical Pentecostalism. If you look at this great movement, born about 1901, I think by simple outline there are three parts to it. There’s the period of beginnings, from 1901 to 1906 or 1909, depending upon the preference of division; and then there’s a period of theological schism and strife, from about 1909 through about 1932. And that period of controversy and strife has, I think, two facets to it. First, there’s theological controversy; and what divided the early Pentecostals in the second decade of the twentieth century was first the finished work theory of William Durham, the influence of Baptist holiness people into a world that had previously been dominated by Methodist holiness people, so two-steppers as opposed to three-steppers. Then, second, the issue of Unitarian Pentecostalism or modalism, as it’s commonly called, which then divided the Pentecostal movement again into Trinitarians and Unitarians.

Then when you come to the 1920s and the 1930s, the divisions in the new denominations that emerge are not so much over theology as personality, as differences of that type that create a series of new—sometimes small and sometimes larger—denominational bodies. When you come to after 1932, you come to what I call the flowering of classical Pentecostalism—prosperity, solidification, it becomes a much more dominant powerful movement in the ranks of American Christianity. So that is what we do today: the flowering of classical Pentecostalism, or subtitled “The Emergence into American Evangelicalism.”

Thus far in our study Pentecostalism has developed, both by necessity and choice, outside the mainstream of evangelicalism. Pentecostalism was quite isolationistic from its beginning until

John D. Hannah, PhD Experience: Distinguished Professor of

Historical Theology, Dallas Theological Seminary

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The Prosperity of Classical Pentecostalism

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World War II when, because of a host of factors, it was progressively viewed as a part of true Christendom. What I’m arguing there simply is that there was lots of early animosity between non-charismatic evangelicals and charismatic evangelicals, and a lot of that finally broke down in the late 1930s, early 1940s, from a host of factors. The major factor that caused some evangelicals, some non-charismatic evangelicals, to reevaluate Pentecostalism was the increasing threat of liberalism. The polarity ceased in some minds to be between Pentecostalism and biblical Christianity to become biblical Christianity and liberalism. Hence, Pentecostalism became a segment of biblical Christianity in many people’s minds which, of course, I would argue it always was.

In the 1940s evangelicals saw the need for greater cooperation to offset the tremendous inroads of the Federal Council of Churches, now called the National Council of Churches. They were paranoid by the birth of the World Council of Churches, particularly within their eschatological framework of end times theology. They saw the coming of the great tribulation and the beast who put marks of 666 on people’s heads, so that the animosities ceased to be among each other and became a polarized external force. Thus, interdenominational groups emerged. The American Council of Churches, the Independent Fundamental Churches of America, the National Association of Evangelicals [NAE]; and with them—at least the latter, not so much the two former groups—a reappraisal of the place and significance of Pentecostalism.

Classical Pentecostalism, however, remained isolated from American evangelicalism as a whole for at least two reasons. First, Pentecostalism’s stress on the “full gospel” tended to alienate those whose gospel by deduction was not full. Pentecostalism’s absolutism and rigidity, coupled with its fanatical fringe, put many non-Pentecostals on the alert. Many found it frankly intimidating to be told that they were inferior, second-class citizens. That was very unfortunate. To be honest, I think non-Pentecostal people made some terrible mistakes in handling these brothers and sisters in the Lord; but that is said in the context that it’s not simply a one-way street, so it seems to me that there are some things to be said on both sides.

Evangelicals in the 1920s rejected any place to Pentecostalism in the Fundamentalist-Liberal struggles. Thus they were viewed as a separate class of Christians. This, however, changed rapidly as a major evangelical group, the National Association of Evangelicals, accepted many into membership. Harrell in his book All Things

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Are Possible, a really fine book of the 1940s and 1950s history, says this:

Particularly important was the cooperative mood of the Pentecostal churches by 1946. The churches were filled with a new generation less belligerent about divisive doctrinal issues, as well as hungry for a demonstration of miraculous power. There had been a marked mellowing of sectarian traits among the larger Pentecostal denominations. No longer was the membership of these churches largely poor, of lower class. Their social status had risen sharply during the war years. Pentecostal denominations fully won recognition by organized evangelical religion in America. In 1943 a number of churches joined the National Association of Evangelicals, which in a sense was the successor of the Fundamentalist movement that had repudiated Pentecostalism in 1928. Cautiously entering the NAE, some Pentecostal leaders met each other for the first time.

Just a bit about the background of the National Association of Evangelicals: The NAE, as it’s commonly called, is a fruit of a desire following the era of 1920s to united conservative forces both against the rise of liberalism and needless evangelical fragmentation. The movement began in embryonic fashion in 1929 when J. Elwin Wright organized the New England Fellowship that spawned similar groups across the country from 1939 through 1941. In 1941 a group of evangelicals met at Moody Bible Institute for discussion and prayer, which resulted in the Committee for United Action among Evangelicals. In 1942 an organizational meeting convened in St. Louis, and the NAE was formed, the National Association of Evangelicals for United Action. The reasons for the NAE’s founding are stated as three: the inadequacy of other channels of cooperation, a sense of isolation felt among organizations. Remember the 1920s literally fractured evangelical witness in our country, with many of those traditional evangelical denominations going liberal, and it was traumatic.

Dr. Shelley in his book Evangelicalism in America says this:

Doubtless the fragmentation of the Christian ranks as a result of the Fundamentalist-Modernist controversy had reached a point of necessary reaction. Zeal for truth had too often trampled Christian unity underfoot. Dr. Ockenga stressed this when he told the St. Louis Assembly, “This

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millstone of rugged independency, which has held back numerable movements before in which individual leaders must be the whole hog or none, must be utterly repudiated by every one of us. A terrible indictment may be laid against Fundamentalism because of its failures, divisions, and controversies. This must be admitted by those of us who believe in the fundamentals and who also look and seek a new outlook.”

The third motive was a conviction that a positive witness could be given by united evangelicals, and only by united evangelicals. To facilitate the gathering of evangelicals abroad, a brief creed was developed that had seven brief points, entitled “United We Stand.” Point seven and point five are relative to the topics that touch the pulse beat of Pentecostals. Point five about the Holy Spirit simply says: “We believe in the present ministry of the Holy Spirit by whose indwelling the Christian is enabled to live a godly life.” In point seven: “We believe in the spiritual unity of believers in our Lord Jesus Christ.”

So it was a very broad-based, vanilla creed that tried to lay down just the essentials, not the idiosyncrasies, of various evangelical groups, thus creating an umbrella of cooperation. My thesis is simple: that it’s through participation in the National Association of Evangelicals that these walls are broken down, and Pentecostals meet evangelicals, and they find out that they can be friends in the work of God.

Pentecostal participation in the NAE was immediate, as J. Roswell Flower of the Assemblies of God was elected to be a charter member of the seven-member executive committee. Indeed, later in 1961, Thomas F. Zimmerman became its president. Both the Assemblies of God and the Church of God, Cleveland sent representatives to the 1943 Constitutional Convention. The importance of Pentecostal participation in the NAE has been captured by Nichol in his book called The Pentecostals. He says:

Needless to say the decision of the evangelicals to invite Pentecostals to the Chicago Convention [that is, of the NAE] and the subsequent decision of the major Pentecostal groups to join the NAE did much to eliminate the discourse which had for many years characterized relations between evangelicals who are Pentecostal and those who are not. It is also necessary to emphasize the fact that the union of Pentecostals with American evangelicals actually antedate

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any formal mergers by Pentecostal groups themselves.

Conn in his book on the history of the Church of God, Cleveland makes this insightful comment:

The proposed association was a brave venture and reflected mature thinking among evangelical leaders and among Pentecostal brethren. As was to be expected, some of the Church of God preachers questioned the propriety of such close association with non-Pentecostals. Nevertheless, a majority of the delegates realized that there is but a hair’s breadth between the current of conviction and the shoals of bigotry. Many a church has begun with the simple faith that its organization is divinely ordained, only to end behind solid walls of ecclesiolatry. It is easy to confuse separation from the world with a looseness toward all that is unlike oneself and then regard the misunderstanding as a virtue. An aggressive, vital, evangelistic church is in danger of such absorption in its own affairs that loses its outside perspective and looks askance at all others than itself. Sometimes this is done to the point of doubting the sincerity, fitness, or divine acceptance of others. The proposed association was a great step toward breaking down such barriers of distrust and misunderstanding. The emphasis and principle of the NAE has always remained cooperation without compromise.

Some of the major Pentecostal groups participating in the NAE, these I’ve tried to say something about previously; but they are the Assemblies of God, the Church of God, Cleveland, the Elim Missionary Assemblies, the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel, the International Pentecostal Assemblies, Missionary Bands of the World, Pentecostal-Holiness Church, Pentecostal Church of God of America, and the United Holy Church of America.

The practical effect of bringing Pentecostalism into the evangelical mainstream has been positively remarkable. That’s the first organization of non-charismatic evangelicals with charismatic people. The second major umbrella group is what is called the World Pentecostal Fellowship. This is the first fellowship of strictly Pentecostal people. As early as 1911, Thomas Ball Barratt—remember the classical Pentecostal from Norway—issued an urgent plea for clarity and unity seeking cooperation among Pentecostals worldwide. A decade later Barratt’s plea

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was somewhat implemented when several Pentecostals met and organized the International European Pentecostal Convention in Amsterdam in 1921. Similar conventions met intermittently through the years, the last in Stockholm in 1939. The war interrupted an umbrella organization activity.

What I’m really trying to say is that in the 1940s the classical Pentecostal movement becomes a prosperous, solidified, interconnected movement as part of the evangelical mainstream. They join the evangelical National Association of Evangelicals. They form the World Pentecostal Fellowship. They form the Pentecostal Fellowship of North America, as we will say in a moment.

In 1946 a Pentecostal prayer convention was held in Basel, Switzerland, in the wake of the Holocaust that brought almost total devastation to Pentecostal work throughout Europe, in addition to immense suffering. As a result of the Basel convention, Pentecostals worldwide were asked to attend a conference in Zurich, Switzerland, in 1947. According to Greenaway, the purpose was delineated as follows:

One group desires a world fellowship and feels it must be organized before it can be recognized at all, and the other group is equally anxious to have a world fellowship, but they hold that it already exists. They insist we just need to believe this without organizing it, and it will be universally recognized. The two factions seem like two little boats in a tempestuous sea. One moment they get so close that it seems they are getting knitted together. Then comes another wave caused by the speech of an extremist on the one side or the other, and there they drift further apart than ever before. Misunderstanding seems to be the root of all this trouble.

Three results came from this conference, although one was not an international fellowship, but they agreed on three things: an international center to coordinate work of relief and evangelism was set up in Zurich. An international periodical was established called Pentecost, edited by Donald Gee. Donald Gee is sort of the international literary figure of the charismatic movements. He’s outstanding, and we’ll come to him later. Third, a resolution was passed recommending that different geographic sections of the world organize area conferences. This will, of course, lead to the Pentecostal Fellowship of North America.

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Since no lasting organization came out of the Zurich conferences in 1947, a second world conference was held in Geneva in 1949. Out of it came the World Pentecostal Fellowship with its seven basic objectives. Here they are: to encourage fellowship; facilitate coordination of effort among Pentecostal believers; to demonstrate to the world the essential unity of Spirit-baptized believers to coordinate in an endeavor to respond to the unchanging commission of the Lord Jesus to carry the message to all men in all nations; to promote courtesy and mutual understanding; to afford prayerful and practical assistance to any Pentecostal body in need of help; to promote and maintain the scriptural purity of the fellowship, of Bible study and prayer; and to uphold and maintain these Pentecostal truths most suredly believed among us.

Several American groups were prominent in the formation of the World Pentecostal Fellowship, namely, the Assemblies of God, the Open Bible Standard Churches, and the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel. So first they joined the NAE, then they formed the World Pentecostal Fellowship, and this brings us to a national organization that’s strictly Pentecostal called the Pentecostal Fellowship of North America.

As previously noted, one resolution passed in the first world conference in Zurich in 1947 was the recommendation that area fellowships be organized. This, as well as another factor, is noted by Synan when he writes:

The meetings of the NAE provided the first opportunity for the various Pentecostal leaders to meet together. It was in the lobbies between sessions of the NAE meetings that the idea of a national organization of Pentecostals was born. Many old antagonisms were forgotten as a feeling of kinship began to replace the older suspicions. Another stimulus toward unity was the suggestion made by the first World Pentecostal Fellowship, which met in Zurich, Switzerland, in 1947 that Pentecostals of North America combine into a closer fellowship. The climate of togetherness seemed to be worldwide among Pentecostals in the 20th century.

At the close of the NAE conference in Chicago in 1948 several Pentecostal groups met together with the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada to consider a national fellowship. A second conference was held in Chicago in 1948, which included representatives of telve Pentecostal denominations. A name was proposed, a

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common statement of faith suggested, and stated aims proposed. The conference closed by calling a constitutional convention to be held in Des Moines, Iowa, in October of 1948 at the headquarters of the Open Bible Standard Churches. The conference at Des Moines became a national convention as the Pentecostal Fellowship of North America [PFNA] was formed. The purpose of the organization is this: “To give expression to the inherent principles of spiritual unity and fellowship of Pentecostal believers leaving inviolate the existing forms of church government adopted by its members; and recognizing that every freedom and privilege enjoyed by a church or group of churches shall remain their undisturbed possession.”

The Pentecostal Fellowship of North America immediately became the voice of about one million Pentecostals, representing over ten thousand churches. The founding members of the fellowship included the Assemblies of God, the Church of God, Cleveland, the Pentecostal-Holiness Church, the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel, the Open Bible Standard Church. Granville Oral Roberts, who becomes a huge name in the charismatic movement, then of the Holiness-Pentecostal Church, now the United Methodist Church, delivered the major address.

By the time of the second meeting of the PFNA in Oklahoma City, membership had grown from the original eight to fourteen, including the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada. Notable for their absence from the Pentecostal Fellowship of North America were African-American Pentecostal bodies, the Unitarian Pentecostals, the Tomlinson branches of the Church of God, and the churches such as the Pentecostal Church of God, whose divorce views were considered too liberal for the founding bodies. Synan says:

“In essence, the Pentecostal Fellowship of North America represented mainstream of respectable White orthodox Pentecostalism in North America.”

A major result of the forming of the PFNA was as a high level of cooperation among the Pentecostals. For example, in March of 1948, the hitherto unanticipated cooperation among Pentecostal groups in the Los Angeles area—meaning the Assemblies, the Foursquare, the Pentecostal Church of God, the Pentecostal-Holiness Church, the Church of God, Cleveland – conducted large youth rallies. Never before could that have happened. In 1951 this beneficial cooperation led to a Golden Gate Pentecostal Fellowship, comprising thirty-eight churches in the San Francisco

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area.

Another point of cooperation—and, in a way, a link to our developing story in the 1950s—was a joint sponsorship of the ministry of Oral Roberts, a once Pentecostal-Holiness churchman, in his crusades from coast to coast. Harrell says in his book All Things Possible:

Through all this cooperation, Roberts steadfastly maintained his independency of any denominational hierarchy. Although his early meetings were heavily Pentecostal and sponsored totally by Full Gospel churches, he very early emphasized that his ministry was intended for all the churches. Roberts’ work became more ecumenical with time. During a 1957 campaign in Raleigh, North Carolina, he listed among the churches represented in his audience the Assemblies of God, Roman Catholic, Baptist, African Methodist, Episcopal, Christian Church, Church of God Episcopal, Freewill Holiness, Lutheran, Greek Orthodox, Missionary Alliance, Methodist, Glad Tidings Tabernacle, Presbyterian, Missionary Baptists, Pentecostal-Holiness, and United Brethren.

What I’m saying at this point is simply this: When you come post-1930, the classical Pentecostal movement simply becomes a very large, very massive movement, in terms of its size. It solidifies, three massive organizations are created, and bridges are built. Those three organizations are, first, the NAE, in which the hostility and the rancor between non-charismatics and charismatics begins to break down when both find each other amiably in the 1943 National Association of Evangelicals.

When the Pentecostals joined the NAE, as Vincent Synan says, they seemingly discovered each other as well. So you have the birth of two major umbrella Pentecostal bodies. The first is the World Pentecostal Fellowship, and in the background of that is the labors of Thomas Ball Barratt, Donald Gee, and others on an international level; and then the birth, in North America, of the Pentecostal Fellowship of North America. So all that I’m arguing is that denominations become solidified, they become much more stable, they form umbrella groups and become part of the mainstream of American Christianity.

What I would like to do now in the final parts of this lecture is to reflect a little bit upon the enormous growth of the classical

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Pentecostal movement, and it is really enormous. It’s staggering, really. Classical Pentecostalism not only flowered by ending its isolationist posture in the 1940s but has also evidenced sizable growth in numbers, churches, and missionary outreach. In short, it has become what historians call “the third force in Protestantism.” Obviously, the Pentecostal-charismatic churches are the fastest-growing churches, both in America and abroad. They’re growing in numbers, in institutions, and in missionary outreach.

Let me give you some examples, and what I’m doing here is taking Kendrick’s charts of the growth of Pentecostal bodies and simply updating his charts. This will sound like I’m just reading numbers, but the purpose is to give you some authentic sense of the enormous growth of classical Pentecostalism. For instance, in the Assemblies of God in 1936 there were about 2,600 churches, 148,000 members. When you come in the 1990s, in our present decade, they list over 11,000 churches and almost 2.2 million members. So it grew from 150,000 to over two million.

The Church of God in Christ, the Mason church out of Memphis, grew from 31,000 members in 1936 to a current listing of 5.4 million, making it obviously the largest of the classical Pentecostal bodies.

The United Pentecostal Church, the major Unitarian expression of classical Pentecostalism, grew from 26,000 members to over a half a million members today.

The Church of God, Cleveland, which was brought into Pentecostalism through the work of A. J. Tomlinson; but Tomlinson was separated from the movement in 1922. It has grown from 44,000 members to over 620,000 members today, making that obviously a very large body.

The Pentecostal Church of God grew from around 4,000 members to currently about 40,000 members.

The International Church of the Foursquare Gospel grew from around 16,000 members to almost 200,000 members today. My statistics are from yearbooks in the early 1990s, so now that we’re at 1995, these statistics are probably weak.

The Apostolic Overcoming Holy Church of God grew from 863 members to about 13,000 members.

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The Pentecostal Assemblies of the World grew from around 6,000 members in 1936 to over a million members listed today.

The Pentecostal-Holiness Church grew from 13,000 members to over 120,000 members in the late 1980s. That’s the latest statistics I was able to obtain.

And we could simply go through these other denominations, and while the growth rates are different—the largest, of course, being the Church of God in Christ, the Assemblies of God, and the Church of God, Cleveland—there are numerous others that simply show and reveal quite methodic growth. Some idea—and this list is not complete at all—but if you take the entire list that I have, in 1936 there were roughly 6,000 classical Pentecostal churches having about 320,000 members. And in the 1990s the list sprang from a mere 6,000 churches to almost 48,000 churches and a membership in my list of classical denominations to over 11 million, which is huge. And that’s not saying that the classical Pentecostal movement across America—let alone the world—is only 11 million. It’s far more than that, but it’s just to say that it has mushroomed from a little over 300,000 to over 11 million—and that’s not including some large churches that are simply not in my list.

That’s one way to look at their prosperity. It may not be the best, but at least it’s looking at just sheer numbers. Another way to look at its prosperity is to look at its structural growth.

Classical Pentecostalism has not only ended its isolationistic policies—at least many of them have, some still maintain that separatism—and shown remarkable numerical growth; but that growth has been complemented in other areas as well; for instance, an advance in education.

The growth of Pentecostalism into a large, worldwide body of churches also resulted in a new generation of Bible schools and colleges to serve the movement. Beginning with the Holmes Bible College, now Theological Seminary, in Greenville, South Carolina, in 1998, a host of schools have been established. My list is far from complete, but it’s symptomatic. The first denominationally owned college was Lee College, founded in 1918 by the Church of God, Cleveland, Tennessee. In 1919 the Pentecostal-Holiness Church founded Emmanuel College in Franklin Springs, Georgia; and the Assemblies of God founded the Central Bible Institute in Springfield, Missouri. Participation in the NAE, the National

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Association of Evangelicals, has resulted in positive benefits educationally for Pentecostals through the accrediting association of Bible colleges. Programs have been updated, standardized, degrees have been granted, and so forth.

The Assemblies of God opened their first liberal arts college, Evangel, in Springfield, Missouri, in 1955. Synan in his history wrote of Pentecostals’ changing posture toward education. And I quote:

In the early days there were many Pentecostals who feared liberal arts education as a possible Trojan Horse that might eventually cool the fires of revival ardor that had produced the Movement, but by the 50s and 60s no efforts were being spared in the upgrading of denominational schools and having them gain reasonable accreditation.

An indication of the advance of Pentecostals in this area was the creation of a distinctly Pentecostal university, Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma, founded by two Pentecostal-Holiness churchmen, Granville Oral Roberts and R. O. Corvin in 1965. The school not only aimed at being a first-rate educational institution, offering doctoral degrees in several areas, but also opened a graduate school of theology, the first Pentecostal seminary to offer postgraduate degrees.

Synan again says: “Symbolic of the increasing acceptance by the traditional churches of the Pentecostals was the fact that Billy Graham assisted in the act of dedication in April of 1967.” And I would add that Oral Roberts is not the only school, but it’s probably the most well-known school in America and around the world as a class institution in that context.

Not only has there been enormous growth—and I think the growth in the United States has been less than the enormous growth throughout the world, and in part of your reading that I am giving you in your syllabus, you’ll read of that expansion, which has just been phenomenal – but there has been: 1) numerical growth; 2) there has been education advancement, and with it – and I don’t really list it in my lecture—but periodicals have been born. Major academic societies have been born. These we’ll refer to later. Classical Pentecostalism has become a very large movement. So numbers have come, educational advancement, periodical publication, scholarly societies, for sure; and there’s also been a massive outreach in terms of home and foreign missions.

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Lesson 13 of 24

In both home and foreign missions—church planting particularly—Pentecostals have made significant progress. The following statistics are those of the Assemblies of God, but they serve to illustrate a general picture. I’m using the Assemblies because their material is more readily available to me, but that’s not to say that equal and comparable growth hasn’t come in other denominations. For instance, in terms of church membership and growth, we see this: that in 1929 the Assemblies had around 1600 churches, 92,000 members. By the early 1990s it had over 11,000 churches and 2.2 million members, and more now.

In 1917 the Assemblies were able to send out 91 missionaries. That leapt to 235 by 1921. By 1929 it had crept to 284; by 1952 to 617; by 1975 it had crossed the 1,000 mark; and in the early 1990s the denomination was able to put out over 1,500 foreign missionaries. So it grew from 91 in 1917, the era of their schism with the Unitarian movement, to now over 1,530 missionaries.

In terms of ordained clergymen, the Assemblies of God in 1925 had about 1,200 ordained clerics; in 1953 almost 8,000; in 1961 there were 9,200 ordained clergymen; and in 1991 they listed over 30,500 ordained clerics—16,336 of them in local parishes. So I’m saying it’s massively huge.

In missionary giving, God was able to use them to raise up in 1917 over $10,000. It seems small by our standards. In 1945 they gave over 1.2 million dollars to missions; in 1952, 3.4 million went to missions; in 1960, 6.6 million to the cause of evangelical missions. By 1975 it had crept to 15 million dollars for the foreign missionary enterprise, and by the early 1990s, it was well over 85 million dollars in this one single denomination, for the cause of foreign missions. That’s phenomenal.

To summarize what it is that I have tried to say on this tape, I would do it this way: As the decade of the 1930s brought an end both to the early theological controversies that rent the movement, the finished work Unitarianism, as well as personality cleavages that gave rise to new movements, such as Amy McPherson, the 1940s brought the beginning of Pentecostalism’s conscious movement from obscurantism and isolation into the mainstream of evangelicalism. The Pentecostals were given great impetus in that direction in 1943, as the NAE opened its infant doors to them and as both the World Pentecostal Fellowship and the Pentecostal

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The Prosperity of Classical PentecostalismLesson 13 of 24

Fellowship of North America were subsequently organized. The Pentecostal movement went forward numerically, educationally, and otherwise, as they progressed in the twentieth century.