If you are interested in the happiness of the world’s Christian movement, it is difficult not to worry about the Pentecostal speech movement that is strong against 600 million people. Not only does it constitute a quarter of global Christianity, but mainstream evangelicalism is increasingly adopting Pentecostal flavours, especially in the global South. Pentecostalism is more than just a part of the story. They shape many of those directions.
My Journey to the Pentecost Move Move Move
My personal story of my faith is intertwined with the Pentecostal character movement in Africa. I came to Christ at university and through the ministry of the Student Christian Organization (SCOM) in Malawi, an affiliate of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students.
I felt an inexplicable desire to experience this God.
As a disbelievers who have not walked past their meetings, I felt the presence of God in their songs and worship, and I felt an inexplicable desire to experience this God, which appears to live in the admiration of these people. Therefore, when the Gospel was explained to me and I came to know Christ, I quickly went to find “my people” and Scombe became the charismatic community of faith in which I was nurtured.
After graduating from university, I officially joined a Pentecostal church, felt a call for ministry and also enrolled in a Pentecostal Bible School. Over the years, my involvement in Pentecostalism grew beyond Malawi, educating and mentoring students at Pentecostal Colleges and seminaries in several countries.
Today I am the chairman of the Pentecostal Theological Education Association (APTEA) in Africa. It is a multinational network focusing on quality assurance at over 120 Bible schools and seminaries across all regions of the continent, including North Africa.
This experience in leadership development has allowed us to have a window into Pentecostalism across Africa. And in my advantage, I can see why optimism is.
The vibrancy of African churches, the thousands of students who register in our Bible schools each year, want to be properly equipped with their ministry and all accounts of Pentecostal churches that have a great positive impact on the gospel of their communities, cities and nations. In short, I am greatly encouraged.
The challenges facing the movement
Yet, among all the great movements of God, there is goodbye between the wheat. Therefore, it is not surprising that there are serious challenges in current movements that must be acknowledged.
As a dedicated African Pentecostal, I hesitate to publicly criticize the movement I love. This is because there is a tendency to have to dismiss African churches as “depth and a mile wide,” or as a general Pentecostalism as a heretical prosperity movement.
See www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/african-pastors-saying-no-to-prosperity-theology/.
There is no denying that there are internal problems with African Pentecostalism.
I would never want to test such claims. This claim is often based on assessments of a particular theological cultural tradition rather than on special criticism. However, there cannot be denied that there are internal problems with African Pentecostalism, which threatens its spiritual well-being and missionary faithfulness.
Perhaps the best concern of my concern is the tendency to increase the centralisation of power in the church hierarchy, or even worse, in God’s individual men and women.
This may be too much to say that it characterizes the overall movement, but not so many say it has become common. In many cases, leaders are more than just ministers. He or she is a minister, defining the culture of the ministry and embodying its identity. This is an identity that has been entrusted to carry it throughout the body of Christ, rather than selecting an individual.
While most leaders perform their duties with zeal and humility, there are too many examples of people who have exploited this centralisation of power. We have allowed a new category of “super apostles” like Paul fought in Corinth to carry the privilege of fighting in Corinth, becoming a focus of attention and doing ministry work. Our Pentecostal traits are at risk of choking.
Renew the spirit of Pentecost
The Pentecost event broke from the Old Testament model, which focused on a single leader.
In Pentecost, the spirit was poured into all followers, not alone. As Peter declared, it is for everyone the experience of you or the elderly, male or female (Acts 2:14-21). The Pentecost event, as Moses once longed, broke from a model of anointing concentrated on a single leader or category of leadership, began a new era of spiritual empowerment for the entire community of God’s people (11:29).
In the classical Pentecostal understanding, what happened on Pentecost was not merely a symbol. It was an inauguration ceremony of a paradigm intended to withstand all generations.
But too many have forgotten the vibrancy of our Pentecostal ancestors: engaged in amateur readings and interpretations, spiritual ministry, and boldly become witnesses of Christ. In many cases, we have replaced this with administrative elites that are similar to pre-European Europe rather than the Acts 2 community we have always considered ideal. We need to take a step back and look back at how far we come and where we are at risk.
Pentecostal reform is needed.
Therefore, in preparation for Pentecost on Sunday, I will call on fellow African Pentecostals and acknowledge that Pentecostal reform is necessary.
A new vision of ministry in the spirit of Ephesians 4 is needed. Church leaders believe that their main role is not the centralization of the ministry itself, but the equipment of saints for the ministry.
We need a new commitment to the truth that all of God’s people are called to be his witnesses. We need to return the power of the spirit to where we belong to the people.
Our first loyalty is to Christ, and secondary only to the systems we serve, or the leaders we serve.
Returning to its biblical and historical roots, the movement’s future is even more promising than our past. If we return to this kind of fidelity, can we imagine the future of the Pentecostal movement in Africa? Already, the church is lively and human resources.
What happens if that resource is deliberately empowered in the true spirit of Pentecost? Lay tens of millions of market ministers, church planters, missionaries, evangelists and pastors, unleashing the movement of all kinds of workers for the mission of God around the world.
This vision needs spiritual and practical changes. To make this kind of shift, you need to resist both the countercultural and popular ministry modes in the church and the templates of ministry from the world. Therefore, it requires courage, but boldness in the face of difficult challenges to witness is what the spirit anointing brings (Acts 4:31).
Let’s start Pentecostal reforms. This move is reproduced and actually becomes something we have been claiming for a long time.
Andrew Mukwaira is a cross-cultural church planter, theological educator and pastor appointed under the assembly of God in Malawi. He is a mission reflective practitioner, mission leadership expert, idyllic ministry and mission scholarship. Andrew holds a doctorate in cross-cultural studies from Fuller Theological Seminary.
