Should Pentecostals Mix With Evangelicals?

Peter Wagner, well-know specialist in church growth, suggested that Pentecostal distinctives have been negatively affected through the mainstreaming of Pentecostal denominations into groups such as the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), in the U.S. and I suppose he might include the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada (EFC) as well.

As a Canadian Pentecostal, raised on the hard pews of many a prairie Pentecostal church and one who has chosen to retain my home church of fellowship and ordination within the PAOC, while having served in ministries other than directly under the fellowship, I find Wagner's analysis both shortsighted and without factual underpinning.

Are Pentecostals evangelicals?

First, some background. Some have argued that Pentecostals are not evangelical. I find their arguments interesting, but they miss the point. The word "evangelical" was first used by Martin Luther to describe those during his time who left the church of Rome. He didn't call them Protestants, although they were. Nor did he use the term Lutherans. That was used later. But he chose evangelical because of the New Testament word evangel, which means simply the good news of Jesus.

From that point in history the Protestant church emerged, and from that later the 20th-century Pentecostal movement.

While the Pentecostal movement was getting under way, the larger Protestant church was undergoing a radical split with a liberal shift taking place and a corresponding conservative reaction. The "modernist" controversy over the trustworthiness of the Bible, the virgin birth and the uniqueness of Jesus Christ became the points of divergence. A large part of the mainline Protestant churches shifted to a more liberal theology. In Canada, this was reinforced by the merger (1925) of the Methodist, Congregational and two-thirds of the Presbyterian churches into the United Church of Canada. The resultant newly formed denomination, while beginning with a mission statement which rang of biblical orthodoxy, soon showed their liberal theological colours, especially in the 1960s.

As this shift to the left gained strength the evangelical-conservative response (initially known as "fundamentalism") entrenched and split off in many directions. Recall the bitter debates by Carl MacIntyre in the U.S. over Billy Graham's association with old-line churches. Here in Canada, T.T. Shields of Jarvis Street Baptist became the caricature of the "fighting fundy."

Pentecostals join

Surprisingly some of our Pentecostal leaders in both the U.S. and Canada, even though often snubbed by their evangelical brethren, turned to the larger evangelical group for fellowship and in some cases, even provided leadership. In the U.S. when the NAE was formed in the early 1940s, the Assemblies of God was one of the early members. In Canada it was Dr. Harry Faught who was the founding president of the EFC (1964), and since that time Charles Yates and Ken Birch have both served in the chair.

The question raised by Wagner is: did this in effect dilute the fervour of the Pentecostals who joined? In other words, did Pentecostals lose their fire by associating with those who didn't believe in the particulars of the emerging Pentecostal theology? In brief, I see no evidence, either in the U.S. or Canada, that Pentecostals have modified their practice so as to be included in the larger evangelical community. In all of my experience I have never heard such talk and have seen no evidence to support Wagner's analysis.

Do only Pentecostals lose their fire?

We do know that as any Christian movement ages, it loses some of the intensity and heat of its earlier days. But to account that to an association with other Bible-believing Christians is to ignore other factors which have impact on religious movements of all kinds. One could easily make the case that any loss in fervour of Pentecostals over the years could be better linked to factors such as the building up of assets including real estate (churches, Bible colleges, schools), ministers' pension funds and retirement properties. These alone force the churches and its leaders into becoming real estate and money managers. As a result the earlier rejection of material well-being now becomes a concern.

As well, children of the parents who founded the movement make their own decisions of faith and practice which vary from those of their parents. In the early days of this movement, education was seen as a tool of the evil one. But their children, often encouraged by their parents who had little education, go on through college and university, many preparing themselves for work in a profession. By its nature, the next generation changes the ethos and prime concerns of the founders.

One can make a very strong case for the reasons why religious groups drift away from the initial vision, and that is as much true for Pentecostals as it is for Methodists and others.

I view the linking of Pentecostals with evangelicals as being an enormous gift to the health and well-being of the church at large. To view the Pentecostal church as having the right to cut itself off from the wider body of Christ is to suggest that it is favoured of God with no responsibility to respond to Christ's call in John 17, which is to live in unity with others of his called ones.

The church is enriched

Apart from the biblical call, the larger Bible-believing church has been enormously enriched by this relationship with Pentecostals. First it led to a renewed understanding of the person and work of the Holy Spirit and has given new life to the church worldwide. Though at first shunned by other evangelicals, some Pentecostal leaders refused to allow this to deter them from fellowship. Today, be it in Baptist or even Anglican churches, you can see the cross-over effect in their worship.

Second, the charismatic movement, coming out of classical Pentecostal theology, experience and vision, has transformed the Protestant church. Wagner's connection to Pentecostals in Latin America led him to an appreciation for that which we believed and taught. In turn, his life and understanding of this Pentecostal message influenced Wimber, the founder of the Vineyard church movement.

Pentecostals also gain

But benefits of a wider fellowship are not one-way. Pentecostals benefit from relationships with the broader evangelical community. For me it began in Saskatoon. In the early 1950s (when one Bible college out west taught that we were a cult!) Robert Argue, then principal of Bethel Bible Institute (now Central Pentecostal College) became director of the Saskatoon chapter of Youth for Christ. He refused to be intimidated by the way some groups felt about us and took on this interchurch movement and gave it great leadership. Out of that, we at Elim Church believed we too were included in this larger witness of Christ. Such a relationship in no way served to dampen an emphasis in our local church or college on manifestations of the Holy Spirit or signs and wonders. It never occurred to us that we had to modify our beliefs or practices just because we associated with others of faith in other venues.

We also benefit in our relationship from the theology of other evangelicals. Coming out of the root system of the Methodist\Holiness movement, we were so experience-based that it was essential that we build up our theology for the undergirding of our denomination and congregations. In Saskatchewan, the Latter Rain movement served to convince us that without a thoughtful and Bible-based theology we would get into all sorts of trouble. It was by such associations with thorough-going Bible-based theologians in other evangelical churches that we were able to develop a theology centred in biblical teachings and coherent with our sense of revelation of the Spirit and his gifts.

I celebrate the large thinking of our denominational parents. Even though they suffered the barbs of nasty brothers and sisters, they refused to play the same game. Secure in their conviction that God had given the church a new way of seeing Christ's call and empowerment, many of them opened our eyes to the nature of the body of Christ.

Today the entire church is the beneficiary of such grand thinking. May their witness mentor us in the nature and call of Christ, as his people, in his body, so that our vision will not be stunted by a degrading us-first mentality, but that the life we know will be a catalyst to the life and witness of Christ's church wherever we find it.