Pentecostal Ministry Research Articles

오순절 교회의 통전적인 성령사역

This study is based on the biblical basis of Pentecostal missions, the direct connection between the baptism of the Holy Spirit and the life of being a witness of Christ based on Acts 1:8, and the anointing of the Holy Spirit and the Messianic proclamation of Christ based on Luke 4:18-19. Specifically, this paper discusses the missionary call to the poor, the oppressed, and the captives. Furthermore, it examines the historical and chronological change of the Pentecostal missions. In the early periods, the proclamation of the gospel accompanied by wonders and miracles was the main focus, but it gradually developed into a holistic mission that responded to social situations and included active actions for the marginalized and weak people. In this process, we discuss how the challenge facing Pentecostal missions lies in how the holistic Pentecostal ministry preserves the unique elements of this movement based on pneumatology.

Painting a true Christ: Art as collaboration with the creator spirit

ABSTRACT Terrence Malick’s A Hidden Life (2019) not only tells the story of Franz Jägerstätter but also depicts Malick’s deeply Catholic understanding of art and the artist’s vocation, an understanding that portrays art, and in particular art that seeks to witness to the truth Jesus Christ embodies, as a kind of costly obedience. The author explores Malick’s Catholic vision of art and its implications for Pentecostal ministry.

Integrated Pentecostal Ministry of Richard Ngidi in the Apostolic Faith Mission of South Africa, 1921–1985

Previous studies on the life and ministry of Richard Ngidi only present historical data on his achievements and to some extent his failures. This paper is a socio-historical analysis that not only reveals historical data but also aims to problematise the data in relation to social problems like racial segregation. A socio-historical analysis is a method that finds synergy between historical and social factors. The socio-historical analysis in this paper juxtaposes the history of Ngidi with racial segregation. The analysis of the ministry of Ngidi in the Apostolic Faith Mission (AFM) of South Africa demonstrates that his ministry was an integrated one amid a segregated society. Integrated ministry refers to a ministry that is able to bring unity in the midst of various divisions in society. The AFM of South Africa, like many other denominations, was a segregated society because of the influence of South African politics on ecclesiastical politics during apartheid. Similarly, many pastors adhered to the racial policies of that time or broke away to start their own ministries. Ngidi was an exception because his ministry was multi-racial, non-political, gender-inclusive, interdenominational and international. Therefore, this paper contends that Ngidi serves as a model for social cohesion and unity in diversity.

Pentecostalism and women leadership: paradigm for gender re-construction in Nigeria

Gender construction in Nigeria is culturally constructed, gender processes are inculcated through the family, school, religion, peer group etc, as such women are relegated on their line of actions culturally. Thus, gender inequality has gained momentum. However, in the Pentecostal doctrines and dogma women position have change drastically giving credence to equal partnership with the men. Hence, this research aims at showing that Pentecostalism adapting itself as a Christian denomination that saturate itself as a possible gospel, involved in the rejuvenation of humanity have tendencies towards the appreciation and equivalent status women enjoys with the men counterpart, dominantly recognizing the important role women can play in the church and the society, as such priding the feminine role as a necessary complement to the masculine role. As such, women are allowed to own their parishes, women ministry, women pastorate, women counselors, women wing, and side by side leadership role with men etc. This serves as advocacy mechanism by Pentecostal ministry to reconstruct the cultural/traditional construct of gender in Nigeria.

Women in Pentecostal and Charismatic Ministry: Informing a Dialogue on Gender, Church, and Ministry, by Margaret English de Alminana and Lois E. Olena (eds.)

Women in Pentecostal and Charismatic Ministry: Informing a Dialogue on Gender, Church, and Ministry, by Margaret English de Alminana and Lois E. Olena (eds.)

Desire Work: Ex-Gay and Pentecostal Ministry in South Africa, written by Melissa Hackman

Desire Work: Ex-Gay and Pentecostal Ministry in South Africa, written by Melissa Hackman

Women in Pentecostal and Charismatic Ministry: Informing a Dialogue on Gender, Church, and Ministry, edited by Margaret English de Alminana and Lois E. Olena

Women in Pentecostal and Charismatic Ministry: Informing a Dialogue on Gender, Church, and Ministry, edited by Margaret English de Alminana and Lois E. Olena

‘Break Down These Walls’: Space, Relations, and Hierarchy in Fijian Evangelical Christianity

AbstractPatterns of sociality in Fijian evangelical Christianity differ from the mainline Fijian Methodist church in being notably less integrated with relations of vanua and chiefly hierarchy, leading scholars to speculate as to whether such traditions are more individualised. Analysing teachings, hymns, worship styles and spatial arrangements within a prominent Fijian Pentecostal ministry, I explore how sociality is produced through the interaction of spatial, conceptual, and embodied processes. Competing dynamics of hierarchy and equality, connections and boundaries, are mobilised within an overall framework that emphasises individual moral authority and personal relationship with God. Through this analysis, in conversation with previous studies, this paper argues for a critical examination of schemes of ‘egalitarian individualism’ and ‘hierarchical holism’, which, through the influence of Louis Dumont in particular, have been prominent in studies of Christianity and sociality in Oceania.

Desire Work: Producing Heterosexuality in South African Pentecostal Gay Men

ABSTRACTGay men in Cape Town, South Africa joined a Pentecostal ministry in an attempt to produce what they understood as ‘natural’ heterosexual attraction. In this article, I explore how these gay men try to form new selves through what I call ‘desire work’, or physical and emotional micropractices and discipline. Desire is not ‘natural’, but it is produced through a multitude of engagements with cultural norms, public life, political economies, and social forces. New selves are built through concerted bodily changes and comportment [Mahmood, Saba. 2005. Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press], and although gay Pentecostal men shared this process, their success was limited. I understand desire work as a response to a larger context in which many Pentecostals are disaffected with the post-apartheid government and withdraw from politics as a result. Their fears of the uncertainties of democracy pushed them to engage in optimistic fantasies of heterosexual lives, which were not often realised [Berlant, Lauren Gail. 2011. Cruel Optimism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press].

Another Springtime? 21st Century Pentecostalism in the light of Donald Gee's vision

This paper was originally given as the 2012 Donald Gee lecture. It reflects on the author's spiritual pilgrimage and stops off at three points for theological reflections. The points concern Pentecostal distinctives, Pentecostal ministry and the wide role of the Spirit.

Julie C. Ma, When the Spirit Meets the Spirits: Pentecostal Ministry Among the Kankana-ey Tribe in the Philippines, 2nd. revised edition (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2010). 274 pp. $24.00 paperback.

Julie C. Ma, When the Spirit Meets the Spirits: Pentecostal Ministry Among the Kankana-ey Tribe in the Philippines, 2nd. revised edition (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2010). 274 pp. $24.00 paperback.

Pentecostalism and Globalization: The Impact of Globalization on Pentecostal Theology and Ministry – Edited by Steven M. Studebaker

Pentecostalism and Globalization: The Impact of Globalization on Pentecostal Theology and Ministry – Edited by Steven M. Studebaker

Fieldworking’ Deliverance Rituals in a Liberian Pentecostal Ministry

This paper describes fieldwork attempts to understand perceptions of the spirit world in one Liberian Pentecostal ministry, and the limitations in fully understanding and collecting data for such an ambiguous topic, when relying only on interviews and observations. Using only these methods, I was faced with a number of seeming contradictions between teachings and practices. By remaining flexible in my fieldwork methods, I found that taking advantage of my “otherness” – my status as a non born-again Christian – rather than being an obstacle to gaining access, was actually very useful, especially when I was surprisingly invited to be the subject of one of the ministry’s deliverance rituals. The reasons that I was allowed to take part in the performance and the performance itself gave me valuable data that could not have been acquired through any of my own questions or observations.

Faith-Based Social Services

This paper makes some observations for assessing faith-based social services from a sociological perspective. More specifically, it examines internal factors like the theology of the group and external factors, the political context, for understanding a Pentecostal approach in the USA. Observations are made from the Los Angeles Dream Center, a Pentecostal ministry, which is also a model for other Dream Centers throughout the world. The central argument is twofold: Pentecostals offer a unique holistic approach to mission and second, a sociological approach which takes seriously the theology of a group as well as its social context provides an optic for assessing similarities and differences among faith-based social services.

DISPLACING VIOLENCE: Making Pentecostal Memory in Postwar Sierra Leone

In this article, I seek to locate the anthropology of social recovery within the work of memory. Following a decade of violent armed conflict in Sierra Leone, displaced youth in a Pentecostal church write and perform plays that are silent on the subject of the war, but renarrate it in the idiom of spiritual warfare against a subterranean demonic realm known as the Underworld. Ideas of the Underworld are part of a local retooling of the Pentecostal deliverance ministry to address Sierra Leone's years of war. Through their struggle against the Underworld, these Pentecostal youth reimagine Sierra Leone's war, reshaping experiences of violence that have shaped them and thereby transforming demonic memory into Pentecostal memory. Just as their own physical displacement is not an entirely negative condition, their displacement of violent memory is enabling rather than repressive. By “forgetting” the war as a direct realist account and reworking it through the lens of the Underworld, they use war itself to re-member their lives. Although they do not lose their memories of terror and violence, they learn to transform these in ways that allow them to create a moral life course in which they are much more than weak dependents.

“The crusade is the vision”: branding charisma in a global pentecostal ministry

This paper explores the rhetorical properties of mass-mediated revival spectacles staged by Reinhard Bonnke, a German-born evangelist who has long worked in Sub-Saharan Africa and claims to have converted millions of Africans to Christianity. The swooping pans of these massive African crusades, which form the establishing shots in proselytic videos, model Bonnke's particular Pentecostal visual ideology. In doing so, these images bear material witness to Bonnke's reputation as a global, itinerant missionary-preacher. Stills extracted from video footage condense the transformative energy of the event into portable icons which, recirculated as book inserts, posters and Website banners, work as identifying logos for his ministry. Bonnke's particular success, we argue, lies in the ways that the visual reconstitutes the charismatic core of Pentecostalism in connection with his development of a “brand scenario” that works both to distinguish his ministry within the corporate Christian world and to foster the growth of corporate Christianity as capitalist enterprise. This convergence of branding and theology provides a compelling example of how moving image, graphic image and word-text work together intertextually to promote a visual pedagogy that is at once distinctive and familiar to Charismatics worldwide: a disciplining of vision toward Pentecostal ideas, objects and histories.

The personality characteristics of pentecostal ministry candidates

The Eysenck Personality Questionnaire was completed by 259 male and 105 female Pentecostal ministry candidates attending the British Assemblies of God and Elim bible colleges. The data demonstrate that both male and female Pentecostal ministry candidates score significantly lower than the population norms for the neuroticism scale. They are more stable than men and women in general. The female Pentecostal ministry candidates do not differ from women in general on the dimensions of extraversion, psychoticism and the lie scale. While the male Pentecostal ministry candidates do not differ from men in general on the dimension of extraversion, they score significantly lower on the psychoticism scale and significantly higher on the lie scale. These findings are set within the context of three sets of theories concerned with the relationships between personality and religion in general, personality and Christian ministry, and personality and the experience of glossolalia, a defining characteristic of Pentecostal ministry candidates.

Personality, Mental Health and Glossolalia

AbstractThis article reports on a survey of young men and women training for Pentecostal ministry. The survey was designed to test the relationship between glossolalia, or speaking in tongues, and personality. Personality theory, briefly outlined below, is complex and divided into several schools. For this reason it is necessary to show how findings derived from one school may be interpreted differently by another. Nevertheless, the general outline of previous work is clear. Most critically important for young men and women preparing for Pentecostal ministry is the fact that some research has questioned the mental health of those who speak in tongues. This article is able to show that, on the contrary, those who speak in tongues in the current sample under study are less neurotic than the general population. In order to demonstrate the validity of this thesis, this article will first outline the optional psychological theories of personality with their explanations of mental health and mental illness, then delineate the findings of various psychological studies of glossolalia, and finally present the results of our study of Pentecostal ministry candidates from a data analysis of the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire.

The African-American Pentecostal experience and urban ministry: contributions and challenges

The African-American Pentecostal experience and urban ministry: contributions and challenges

THE PENTECOSTAL MINISTRY

International Review of MissionVolume 66, Issue 261 p. 57-63 THE PENTECOSTAL MINISTRY Manuel J. Gaxiola, Manuel J. GaxiolaSearch for more papers by this author Manuel J. Gaxiola, Manuel J. GaxiolaSearch for more papers by this author First published: January 1977 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1758-6631.1977.tb02136.xCitations: 2AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume66, Issue261January 1977Pages 57-63 RelatedInformation