The Real Reason the Pentecostal Movement Keeps Growing

The Real Reason the Pentecostal Movement Keeps Growing

There are parts of the globe where the greatest church growth is happening through the Pentecostal movement. One of the most frequently asked questions is: "In a world where the church seems to be declining in many areas, how they are bucking the trend?"

There is never one reason why a movement succeeds. But some factors rise to the surface. Pentecostals will say they are growing because the Spirit is moving in a powerful way. I get that, and actually would affirm that as part of the reason, but from a sociological perspective, other things are happening and worth exploring.

I was recently asked (by Pentecostal leaders) what some sociological reasons might be. So following that meeting, and in this brief post, I want to explore how the beliefs of Pentecostals actually promote and produce growth compared to other more "mainstream" groups.

Ed Stetzer

Send the Fire, William Booth, The founder of the Salvation Army.

Verse 1

O God of burning cleansing flame

Send the fire

Your blood-bought gift today we claim

Send the fire today

Look down and see this waiting host

And send the promised Holy Ghost

We need another Pentecost

Send the fire today

Send the fire today

Verse 2

God of Elijah hear our cry

Send the fire

And make us fit to live or die

Send the fire today

To burn up every trace of sin

To bring the light and glory in

The revolution now begin

Send the fire today

Send the fire today

Verse 3

It's fire we want for fire we plead

Send the fire

The fire will meet our every need

Send the fire today

For strength to always do what's right

For grace to conquer in the fight

For power to walk the world in white

Send the fire today

Send the fire today

Verse 4

To make our weak hearts strong and brave

Send the fire

To live a dying world to save

Send the fire today

Oh see us on Your altar lay

We give our lives to You today

So crown the offering now we pray

Send the fire today

Send the fire today

Send the fire today

1994 Thankyou Music (Admin. by EMI Christian Music Publishing)

A Word of Warning to a Gay-Approving Nashville Church and Beyond

A Word of Warning to a Gay-Approving Nashville Church and Beyond

"The greatness of Christianity did not arise from attempts to make compromises with those philosophical opinions of the ancient world which had some resemblance to its own doctrine, but from the unrelenting and fanatical proclamation and defense of its own teaching." —Adolf Hiter, from Mein Kampf

The Saturday headline in our statewide Tennessean newspaper heralded, "Church Backs Gay Marriage." This story is causing quite a stir.

Reading the article, the reader gains the impression that this development is simply part of the "larger transformation that's been happening in the U.S." "Younger Christians increasingly accept lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people and find themselves at odds with churches that don't." A lady was quoted, "We thought we'd never find a church that's loving and progressive in the Southeast."

The newspaper quoted the pastor as saying they are a congregation of "about 1,800." When I went this Sunday, their two-service attendance was actually about 550.

Time Magazine covered the story this week with the headline, "Nashville Evangelical Church Comes Out for Marriage Equality." They report this church has become "one of the first evangelical megachurches in the country to openly stand for full equality and inclusion of the LGBTQ community ... ." The pastor says, "Pastors are coming to him quietly and undercover from all over town to talk with him about how to have this conversion in their own evangelical churches. We are on the front edge of a movement that means so much."

Wow! The rest of us Christians and those serving in leadership better jump out in the street and wave our arms frantically to catch the LGBTQ bus so we don't miss out on this momentous moment.

Scottish nationalists will hold us to ransom if Labour blocks English votes', William Hague warns, Daily Mail

 England risks being held to ransom by Scottish Nationalists unless Labour agrees to implement a system of ‘English votes for English laws’ at Westminster, William Hague said yesterday.

The Leader of the Commons said Ed Miliband was refusing to back a veto for English MPs over legislation that applies only to their constituents, to keep open the possibility of a Labour-SNP coalition.

The Conservatives said they planned to strip Scottish MPs of the power to impose tax changes, education and health reforms on England, given the Scottish Parliament will soon have control of all these issues.

The reform would make it impossible for an incoming Labour government to press ahead with its plan to raise the top rate of tax to 50p in England, for example, without winning the support of a majority of English MPs.

Mr Hague said it was a ‘simple matter of fairness’. But his blueprint prompted a furious response from Labour and the SNP – as well as some Right-wing Tories who want to go further and create an effective English Parliament.

Read more here:

Comment:

Why should  Scottish, Northern Irish and Welsh Members of Parliament have the right to vote on matters such as Education, Health etc  that only effects English hospitals and schools etc, etc when those matters in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales have been devolved to the Scottish Parliament, Northern Ireland and Welsh Assemblies  for the electorate and the citizens of those parts of the United Kingdom ?.   I believe those matters only affecting England should only be voted on by English MP’s. This is known as the West Lothian Question.

Read more on the West Lothian Question

The decade of despair: The businessmen warning that Miliband wants to take Britain back to the 1970s are right - it would be a catastrophe, writes DOMINIC SANDBROOK

 First, the Boots boss, now a string of other senior business figures are queuing up to attack Labour’s beleaguered leader.

In the past few days, it has seemed that Ed Miliband is heading for all-out war with the High Street over his increasingly strident attacks on Britain’s businesses.

As Lord Rose, the man who saved M&S, put it in yesterday’s Mail, the Labour leader is in danger of looking like a ‘Seventies throwback’.

Indeed, with his planned National Insurance and corporation tax rises, as well as his attacks on so-called business ‘predators’, Mr Miliband seems determined to rekindle the spirit of the decade that fashion forgot.

Labour MPs naturally shrink at comparisons with the Seventies, when strikes brought the country to a standstill and Jim Callaghan’s government was forced to go cap in hand to the IMF for the biggest bailout in history.

Yet from his cynical pledge to cap energy prices to his controversial mansion tax, Mr Miliband seems intent on banishing all memories of the New Labour years, when Tony Blair and Gordon Brown were eager to prove their business-friendly credentials.

For all Labour’s synthetic outrage, therefore, I think Lord Rose was entirely justified in recalling the climate of the mid-Seventies, which he called ‘the old days of punitive taxes on business-people, of class war and the stirring of resentment’.

In 1974, rather like today, Britain faced a choice between a governing Conservative Party that often seemed out of touch with its own supporters, and a lacklustre Labour Opposition happiest when bashing business and pandering to its Left-wing activists.

Read more here:

Comment:

If you want to see the United Kingdom bankrupt by punitive taxes, and ruined by neo-communist/left wing/socialist and self interested parties like the Greens and Scottish Nationalist  Parties and see Alex Salmond  as Deputy Prime Minister intent on breaking up the United Kingdom because of his self-inflated ego. vote for Labour, If you want our country to continue to see economic growth,  well the choice is easy, vote the Conservatives.  I know what choice I will be making and it’s not voting for Labour

Be Temperate and Prudent, What qualifies someone for pastoral ministry

Be Temperate and Prudent

by Cameron Buettel

What qualifies a man for pastoral ministry? Based on the abundance of self-appointed and unaccountable leaders in modern evangelical churches, it seems many church-goers either don’t know or don’t care. The fellowships they attend may profess Scripture’s authority in their doctrinal statement, but their practice reveals that it’s nothing more than a token badge of orthodoxy. Churches truly submitted to the authority of God’s Word look for qualified leaders and hold them to biblical standards.

The apostle Paul could not have been clearer about what biblically qualifies a man for pastoral work or leadership in the church. In 1 Timothy 3:2–3, he writes:

An overseer, then, must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, temperate, prudent, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not addicted to wine or pugnacious, but gentle, peaceable, free from the love of money.

While those qualifications seem pretty straightforward, many people in both the pulpit and the pew have overlooked or ignored them altogether. They have allowed their congregations to be overrun by pastors and elders who lack the proper training, the proper accountability, and—worst of all—the proper character to hold the position. And rather than follow Paul’s instructions, these ecclesiastical mavericks have fashioned their churches in their own rogue likenesses.

God’s people need the protection that comes from knowing what His Word says about what to look for in a pastor, and what to avoid. To that end, we’ve been examining the qualities and characteristics Paul uses to describe a godly shepherd.

No room for mum and dad in Ofsted families

No room for mum and dad in Ofsted families

The guidance behind schools’ regulator Ofsted’s ‘inappropriate’ questioning of ten-year-olds about lesbians has been revealed.

The Daily Mail reported that inspectors are briefed to ask pupils as young as four about homosexuality, transsexualism and same-sex parents.

Inspectors are instructed to ask pupils about different types of families including having “two mums or two dads” but there is no reference to families with both a mum and a dad.

’Intrusive’ questioning

Last week the head of Ofsted, Sir Michael Wilshaw, denied that pupils have been questioned about ‘inappropriate’ topics.

He was asked about complaints of ‘intrusive’ questioning of pupils at Grindon Hall Christian School in Sunderland and The Durham Free School, whilst giving evidence to the Education Select Committee.

Parents of children at Grindon Hall school objected to questions asked by inspectors, including if they knew what lesbians “did” and if their friends felt trapped in the “wrong body”.