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100 Years After Azusa Street: |
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In April 1906 the Holy
Spirit fell on a ragtag group of black, white, and Hispanic Christians who had
gathered in the rundown Azusa Street Mission in Los Angeles. They sang with
fervor, testified of God’s sanctifying power and spoke in tongues—in a day when
such behavior was considered fanatical. This now-famous revival, led by an
unknown black preacher named William Seymour, was a defining moment in the
history of Christianity.
Pentecostalism has now
spread to every continent and in some cases is fueling the most staggering
church growth on the planet. Yet at the same time many sectors of the movement
have become musty, stale and painfully irrelevant. Some of us are stuck in a
time warp.
The cloud of God’s presence
does not stay in one place too long. He is always moving forward. He wants to
reach every generation—and He loves to open a bottle of new wine when it’s time
for a new season. Meanwhile those who prefer the altars of old-fashioned
Pentecostalism have rejected the new wine—and sometimes have persecuted those
who drink it.
Last week I addressed a
group of Pentecostal scholars who had gathered at Lee University in Cleveland,
Tenn., to celebrate the miracle of Azusa and to envision the future of our
movement. I told them bluntly: It is time for us to move on. We must kill our
sacred cows, tear down the old monuments and have some funerals. As wonderful
as the past was, we can’t live there. God says to us: “‘Behold, I will do a new
thing’” (Is. 43:19, ASV).
Here are just a few of the
“new things” God is doing:
1. He’s shifting us from
buildings to the organic church.
Almost all ministry encounters in the book of Acts took place outside of
religious buildings. Yet we still hang on to the outdated idea that God wants
to live inside a brick-and-mortar temple. He wants to dwell among His people!
Many of the people we are called to reach will never go near our buildings
(which, by the way, sit empty most of the week). We must take Christ to the
marketplace through home churches, workplace Bible studies, campus ministries,
street meetings—and into cyberspace.
2. He’s shifting us from
pulpits to people. The
believers at Azusa Street celebrated the fact that God can use
anybody—regardless of class or religious pedigree. But we quickly fell back
into the old mind-set that requires a vast chasm between clergy and laity.
Every member of the church is a minister. We must equip the saints for the
work.
3. He’s shifting us from
racism to reconciliation. As
much as we talk about our heritage of racial integration, the truth is painful:
We are still too separated. (And it’s not just white folks who harbor racist
attitudes.) Jesus is serious about having a church that reflects the rainbow
colors of heaven. We must think multiculturally. And
we must sit at the feet of ethnically diverse leaders—including those from the developing
world—and adjust our outdated Western paradigms.
4. He’s shifting us from
male-dominated to egalitarian. We
must allow full participation of women in ministry, and make room for their
leadership gifts. We will never reach modern American culture if we keep our
chauvinistic mind-sets. And we will never fulfill the Great Commission if we
don’t empower and equip the female half of the church that has been
marginalized and neglected.
5. He’s shifting us from
hidden sin to healthy holiness. We
have congregations full of people who are not whole. A large percentage of
Christians struggle continually with addictions, bitterness, life-crippling
beliefs systems, wounds from dysfunctional families and even occultism. We must
become bondage breakers. We need another holiness movement—but this time it
must focus on the heart rather than on a dress code, and it must lead people to
an encounter with the Father’s love rather than into paralyzing legalism.
6. He’s shifting us from
human ability to supernatural power. We
Pentecostals claim to believe in miracles, but we have little to show for it.
Has our faith dried up?God
wants us to rediscover New Testament, book of Acts-style Christianity. And that
won’t happen until we rediscover book of Acts-style prayer.
7. He’s shifting us from
poverty to prosperity.
I’m not talking about a message that tells every Christian to expect a Lexus in
his garage, or that causes preachers to chase after watches, yachts and Botox
injections. We must dispense with that foolishness. But we must also reject the
Pentecostal poverty mentality of the past so that we can have the faith to fund
world evangelism. God wants to give us billions of dollars to feed the poor,
plant churches, build hospitals and transform nations.
8. He’s shifting us from
escapism to conquest. So many of us have viewed the future with pessimism. We’ve been wimps rather than warriors. We
thought everything was getting worse, as if Jesus simply wants us to “hold on”
until the rapture. God is calling us to adapt a triumphant view of history. The
Bible says we win. We need to start acting like it.
J.
Lee Grady (editor of Charisma and an award-winning journalist.)