General Council Report #2
I wrote the following to a pastor friend:
Thanks for your response and comments about the churches you visited in making your choice for a home church after retiring as a local pastor yourself. Much has been said during this General Council about a “healthy church” and excellent special resources are being offered to be of help each pastor to achieve this goal.
One of the special guest speakers this morning was Pastor Rick Warren, the author of “The Purpose Driven Life” and “The Purpose Driven Church.”
I was amazed at the emphasis that he gave on the Holy Spirit, including the use of “tongues” in the church. He said he reads the Pentecostal Evangel every week and that we should not be ashamed to keep that word “Pentecostal” in the title. I cannot quote him exactly, but here is my personal take summarizing some of what he said: “It is the move of the Spirit that brought us this far. We should not curb the gifts of the Spirit. He encouraged us to allow the Holy Spirit liberty, but for the sake of new visitors to “clearly explain what was happening in the church bulletin.” He also insisted that any healthy, mature church should reproduce… not just winning the lost to fill its own pews, but giving birth to new churches. He told how he started with just his family and the work did not grow quickly. But when they still only had 80 members and a total attendance of around 100, they reached out and started another church. Since then they have helped start a church every year, then two churches a year and three churches a year and now many more every year. Some were churches started in other countries, some in local neighborhoods. He said we should not judge our churches and pastors by the size of the congregation, but by if it is a healthy church. Any healthy living organism will by nature grow. He said if a church grows from small to thousands quickly it is probably inflated with thousands of Christians floating in from other churches. He said that is not growth. That is a swollen baby! His message was exceptional. And he closed by saying he loved the Assemblies of God and that he would join the AG if they would let him. It was a “tongue in cheek” remark I suppose, but I would not be surprised that hidden there was the fact that to join the AG he would have to declare tongues as the initial evidence of the Holy Spirit baptism… which I doubt he is willing to do.
Yesterday we had another very interesting visitor speak briefly. He is a black brother representing a church organization called “The United Pentecostal Council of the Assemblies of God”. At first I was shocked thinking that they were allowing a “Jesus Only” church minister in our pulpit. But this is not the “United Pentecostals” that I have been acquainted with. Before letting this brother speak, Brother George Wood told a little bit about the history behind this movement. Many years ago during the first years of the Assemblies of God, a black brother felt called to go as a missionary to Africa. He applied to the Assemblies of God and was turned down because in those days there was still a strong racist influence in our organization. He was denied appointment solely on his ethnicity and color! This eventually sparked another organization which they called the “United Pentecostal Council of the Assemblies of God.” Their doctrine is identical to ours and they have used our AG materials for years.
This brother “Thomas Barclay” spoke with a great deal of enthusiasm typical of the blacks and got us all really excited about what God is doing among them. His brief message was a breath of fresh air tossed into the middle of a business meeting. I would not be surprised at all if there may be a close cooperative fellowship between this black group and the AG sometime in the future, perhaps even a merger.
What a privilege to be a part of an organization that is willing to admit its past errors and welcome to its pulpit at the General Council some that are not a part of our immediate fellowship!
Ralph
