Pentecostals in America: A Review
In little more than a century, Christianity has experienced the explosive growth of a new movement called Pentecostalism. This movement, which did not exist prior to the twentieth century, presently claims the affiliation of an estimated “279 million” people worldwide, according to Pew Research. Additionally, the Pentecostal-influenced charismatic movement comprises “305 million Christians in the world,” meaning that the two movements...
Relentless Ministry and Relying on Jesus: A Devotional Reflection on Mark 6:30–44
Over the past year and a half, the coronavirus pandemic brought myriads of challenges, heartaches, and headaches to everyone. For pastors and church leaders in particular, ministering in the midst of the pandemic proved frustrating. Luddite pastors like myself spent countless hours figuring out the technological means by which we might minister to our congregations (running a camera, building church websites, creating a social media...
The Community, the Call, the Comforter, and the Cure: A Pastoral Reflection on Anointing the Sick with Oil
Recently, a fellow pastor and I were discussing fruitful ways we have discovered to serve the sick in our congregations. Yet my friend was surprised by two narratives of ministering to the sick that I recounted for him. First, I spoke about one of my congregants who was bedridden with a cancer that began in her pancreas and rapidly spread throughout her body. Following one Sunday morning service, a deacon and I journeyed to her house...
Laying Hold of our Tradition: Free Will Baptists and the Laying on of Hands
by Joshua R. Colson The laying on of hands for the reception of the Holy Spirit after baptism is foreign to most modern Baptists. In the 1600s, however, a movement emerged among English General Baptists to institute the practice in their churches. The inclusion of the rite as a gospel ordinance in both the Standard Confession (1660)[1] and the Orthodox Creed (1679) makes this fact plain.[2] What’s more? Although discontinued “by the...
Pining for the Glory Days: A Review of Randall Balmer’s Evangelicalism in America
by Joshua R. Colson The term evangelicalism means many things to many people. In contemporary usage, the term often refers to a bloc of white, conservative Christian voters. Indeed, pundits and pollsters regularly identify evangelicals with the Republican Party, free markets, and politically conservative causes. The identification of evangelicals with the Republican Party is apparently justified by the fact that eighty-one percent of...
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