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Ancient Church of the Roman
Empire=Patriarchal form
Reformation=Christocentric faith
Since the 17th century revival movements in
Europe and America=Charismatic Community
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There is one Spirit
Many spiritually endowed people with experiences
of the Spirit
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Pentecostal churches are not “sects,” steered by
US capital and the CIA.
They are an independent popular movement of
the poor
They have something to say to the whole of
Christendom on earth
They have liberating experiences to pass on to
all men and women
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Pentecostal churches emerged out of revival
movement
“Everywhere there were direct experiences of
the Spirit shared by all the people involved. It
was a truly democratic experience of the Spirit,
without priest, tradition, and church order.
This experience was called “baptism in the
Spirit.” But in this spiritual baptism a personal
relationship to Jesus was born: Jesus lives—
Jesus heals—Jesus comes.”
This is what distinguishes Pentecostalism from
spiritism.
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Pentecostal churches are termed experiential
religion. Orthodoxy in the Spirit and
orthopraxis in action is followed by an
orthopathy in the feelings and motivations.
The Pentecostal movement is everywhere a
movement for healing.
The congregation does not just consist of
hearers of the Word or onlookers at the liturgy.
Pentecostal Christians come from below, and
from the highways and byways.
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This is not a religion for the people; it is a
religion of the people.
Whereas social-critical analyses explan why
people sink into poverty, misery, and sickness,
the experience of the Spirit enables people to
emerge from social misery and to ascend the
social ladder.
Pentecostalism is a missionary movement, with
optimism, with the joy of the gospel, and
without the judgmental spirit that condemns
others.
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Experiences of the Holy Spirit in Jesus’ name
are not momentary experiences that come and
go; they are the beginning of a permanent
indwelling of the spirit. Enthusiasm is an
accompanying phenomenon; the essential is
faithfulness and perseverance “to the end.”
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The world of spirits and the victory of the Holy
Spirit: that theological idea fits in with
premodern notions about the world. The
world that consists of heaven, earth, and the
underworld, the world of the spirits of our
ancestors, of good and evil powers,
witchdemonology, and the reverence for
ancestors as well as the fear of them—that
world accords well with the biblical world
picture within which the history of Jesus and
the activity of the Spirit are related.
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Dispensationalism was once a salvation-history
model for interpreting the Pentecostal
experiences of the Spirit. In this way these
experiences were linked with apocalyptic
expectations of an imminent end of the world.
But I think it is better to associate them with a
transforming eschatology of the coming
kingdom. For the experiences of the Spirit are
not just fire from heaven; they are also “the
powers of the age to come” (Heb. 6:5), and so
“the age to come” is a universe of charismatic
forces of eternal life.
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Pentecostalism is a religion of the poor, not for
the poor.
Their “primal spirituality” is expressed in the
participatory and expressive worship as well as
testimony times. The very fact that the Holy
Spirit chose to visit them through powerful
experiences such as healings, baptism in the
Spirit, prophecy, and miracles, as well as
drastic conversion experiences, was in itself a
social uplift.
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The “outpouring” of the Holy Spirit in the
early twentieth century brought several
powerful paradigm shifts.
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Self-understanding shifted drastically—from being
marginalized to being conspicuously “called” for
God’s ministry
Experiences urgency of divine call to minister, based
on a strong eschatological sign for the immediate
return of the Lord
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Reinforced by eschatological urgency, many
Pentecostal believers, often not properly
trained, clergy as well as laity, men as well as
women, young as well as old, devoted their
lives to evangelism.
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His ministry and theology demonstrate a
holistic worldview, including the physical and
material aspects of human life, as much as the
spiritual level. A bowl of rice and healing of
terminal diseases in a poverty-stricken society
are as important as the matter of sin and
salvation. In the “majority world,” if the most
powerful and loving God cannot heal a person,
he is not as useful as the ancestor spirits on
whm many have been relying for such needs.
God is expected to be the savior, not only aft
this life, but also during this earthly existence.
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The Spirit calls, empowers, and sends his
people to the ends of the earth to be his
witnesses. The Holy Spirit, whom they
experienced through healings, miracles, and
empowerment, is also expected to perform
miracles and healings.
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Discrimination, neglect, and economic
disparity are the norm within most Latin
American countries. The masses still struggle
to obtain their daily bread. Globalization and
authoritarian power structures have eliminated
lesser groups from participation.
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Pentecostals thrive in the chaotic and disorderly
paradigm shifts within modern Latin American
culture and religion. They are comfortable
operating independently in institutional,
authoritative, and monolithic ecclesial power, and
seldom hesitate to utilize resourcefully every
means of communication and technology
(sometimes to the extreme). Pentecostals are
inclined, when the odds seemed stacked against
them, to depend upon the inspiration of the Spirit
to spark creative ideas that produce methods and
strategies that work. In the midst of a social and
economic nightmare that is daily fare for their
brothers and sisters, Latin American Pentecostals,
regardless of recourses or lack thereof, should do
everything possible to foster a moral imagination.
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Being morally imaginative means
embracing a systematic and
entrepreneurial approach that links a
creative problem-solving process to
desired outcomes. With an experiential
starting point that takes seriously spiritual
discernment, the supernatural, and divine
empowerment, it is the imagining of a
preferred future undergirded by social and
theological reflection, a resolve to
overcome emerging obstacles, the creation
of a dynamic social action alternative.
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Pentecostalism—by its democratization
of religious life, promise of physical and
social healing, compassion for the
socially alienated, and practice of Spirit
empowerment—has the ingredients for a
powerful moral imagination that can
address the concerns of the disinherited,
frustrated, and assertive persons who oin
large part make up the movement.
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Minjung emerge when common people
undergo-socio-cultural alienation, economic
exploitation, or political oppression.
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Two major revivals in the southern states in
India took place before the twentieth century
Noted characteristics of the revivals
Indigenous leadership and negation of caste
 Call for a liberation of people oppressed by the caste
system
 The composition of Christian music by Indian
believers
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At Mukti, one of the most influential
Christian revivals in South Indian history
broke out among these deserted women
and children led by the marginalized
widow Ramabai.
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Asian Pentecostalism in its origin represents a
minjung movement of the colonized,
oppressed, and poor. With the outpourings of
the Holy Spirit, these powerless and hopeless
Asians found hope and healing. Second,
twentieth-century Pentecostalism even in its
origin was already multicultural and global. It
was not just a North American phenomenon;
rather, at the beginning of the twentieth
century, God poured out the Spirit on “all
people” and all continents, including the
colonized, subjugated Koreans and Indians.
Main Arguments in Brief
Apostolic Function
Two Missing Concepts
Two Missing Concepts
Where Apostolic
Ministry Took Place