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FIRST RESPONSE: Watch Out! Here Come The Pentecostals! |
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Written by Don Williams
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First Response
February 2007
Watch Out! Here Come the Pentecostals!By Don Williams
The New York Times ran a series of front page articles on the growth of Pentecostalism this last month. (January 14-16) They centered on a store-front church, “The Ark of Salvation,” in Harlem. There Pastor Danilo Florian ministers to a congregation of about 60 people, basically immigrants from the Dominican Republic. Since offerings total about $2000 a month, he has a full time job outside the church and does ministry at night and on the weekends. His schedule exhausts him but he soldiers on. The Times' articles center on him, his family, his faith, his hopes, fears and frustrations. Behind this very personal and touching reporting is the huge scope of the Pentecostal movement. Let's begin with a few statistics.
The Times reports, “A century after its birth in Kansas, Pentecostalism is the world's fastest-growing branch of Christianity, with roughly 400 million adherents. Some say Pentecostals are the second-largest group after Roman Catholics, who number more than one billion. But comparisons are difficult because the faith is not monolithic. While some Pentecostals belong to large, established denominations like the Church of God in Christ, about 80 percent are in newer, independent congregations that may not even call themselves Pentecostal.” The lower “48” States average 8% of the population as Pentecostal. Oklahoma comes in at 15%, West Virginia at 14%, California at 9% and New York at 6%. Interestingly, Oregon, one of the least churched states, has 10% Pentecostal. Even stoic Maine comes in at 7%, and Yankee Vermont is also 7%.
What is really interesting, however, is the growth of Pentecostalism in Urban America. The number of Pentecostals in New York City for example, has increased 45% since 1995, half of them foreign born. While there were 3,000 Pentecostal churches in the City in 1995, today there are 4,070. Membership has shot up from 600,000 in 1995 to a projected 863,000 this year. (1 in every 10 New Yorkers.) The ethnic mix represents The City itself: White, 24%, Asian 12%, Black, 35% and Hispanic, 29%. While mainline churches, over all, have declined with aging membership, the Pentecostals are booming. This alone explodes the lie that Christianity cannot prosper in Inner-city America.
But back to Pastor Florian. His church occupies a storefront that previously served as a drug-den masquerading as a auto-sound business. As he watched the police raid it Florian thought, “This could be a church. Lord, that is the place.” He tracked down the building's manager, got a five-year lease and “talked him into joining the church.” (Perhaps The Time's way of saying, “Led him to the Lord.”) Now, most evenings, services are held with a teen-age band playing bouncy Latin rhythms. The Times reports, “Men in crisp business suits that belie their dreary day jobs triumphantly pump their fists. Women in flowing skirts shout, stomp and gyrate wildly. The air crackles.” While they have built a strong community, they “are bent on converting many more. For they are living Pentecostalism, the world's fastest-growing branch of Christianity, with a fervor and sense of destiny that resonate in the grand name they have chosen: the Pentecostal Church Ark of Salvation for the New Millennium.” Their congregation is made up of reformed drug dealers and womanizers, cafeteria workers and women whose sons or husbands are in prison. “What they share inside this unlikely temple on Amsterdam Avenue near 133rd street is a faith in God, in miracles and in one another. Religion here is not some sober, introspective journey or Sunday chore, but a raucous communal celebration that spills throughout the week.” What are the secrets of this church?
First, The Times reports, they have aggressively courted the poor. Second, they offer joyful intimacy lacking in large churches. Third, they help each other with rent, child care or finding a job. Fourth, they are culturally connected to their target audience: “As immigrants, they find their own language and music, as well as the acceptance and recognition that often elude them on the outside.” Fifth, they foster discipline and drive - a work ethic that “is nudging their members into the middle class and beyond.” Now several members are college graduates. But beyond this is white-hot evangelism and transformed lives. The Times reports, “To spend a year with this congregation is to see a teenage single mother and party girl discover the strength to go to college, marry in the church and land a job. It is to see a former political radical and brawler pray over alcoholics in the park. It is to see the 50-year old pastor roaming the city, driving the church's van to gather members for Bible class or trolling for converts outside an upper Broadway subway station - to keep the Ark afloat, and growing.”
Here is a church that experiences the Spirit's power, prays openly in tongues, engages in intense ecstatic worship and heals the sick. Interestingly, for a Pentecostal church, most of the members do not speak in tongues, including Pastor Florian. He teaches about heaven and hell, the necessity of the new birth and the soon appearing of Jesus -rapturing his church into his presence. While the church stands against “worldliness” (it forbids smoking, drinking and dancing), it also teaches that the faithful will be blessed both in this life and the next. The services are filled with joy: “That joy lends a sense of freedom, and often abandon, to services at the Ark, where people break into song or their own spur-of-the-moment prayers” and music flows through everything - pop and salsa with Christian lyrics. The Times reports, “That ability to harness the local music and culture is one reason for Pentecostalism's swift spread around the world.”
Moreover, the truth is, this church depends on and revolves around Pastor Florian, a called, quiet and intense man who really believes that the meek will inherit the earth. “We are not complacent,” he says, “We are more ambitious than Rockefeller.” A lapsed Catholic, he joined a Pentecostal church after his 7-year-old daughter was healed of encephalitis. Now pastoring his six year old church, he takes no salary and continues his day job decorating expensive handbags. Clearly he is the “father-figure” for the church. His life is lived for reaching “the lost,” and for his people. While independent, he also connects with other Pentecostal churches in The City.
The church reaches many marginalized people, and welcomes women in leadership. The Times notes,“Unlike Catholics and some evangelical Christians, Pentecostals let women preach and lead; Mr. Florian's co-pastor is his wife, Mirian. The humblest member can take the pulpit to share testimony, a prayer or a poem.” The Times adds, “Recently, an 8-year-old girl preached excitedly to a rapt congregation, then laid her hands in blessing on a new convert.”
One major issue, faced by all denominations, is how to reach and hold on to the next generation. Against the backdrop, as one evangelical leader warned, of an “epidemic of young people leaving,” The Times reports that the Ark “is an unusual success.” It has attracted a devoted core of teenagers - more than a dozen (out of 60 members) “who sing and pray at every service.” When the first teens showed up, dragged in by friends or family, they had no interest in “religion or music.” But Pastor Florian saw in them “the seeds of his church band. More important, he saw in this motley bunch of knockabout youngsters the future of his fledgling church.” He went into action.
The Pastor gave these teens instruments. He paid for music lessons. And he lavished gifts on them they had never known: “Attention. Praise. Expectations.” Today they are thriving. Converted, they embrace the church's strict moral code and seek to reach their friends. Yet there is a constant battle for them. They are told not to watch television and only date other Pentecostals. Dancing is taboo - but they can gyrate in religious ecstasy. While the jury is out, these teens, The Times reports, “have their faith in God and something else just as powerful: the feeling that for the first time, someone has faith in them.” And that someone is Pastor Florian. One teen, from a broken past, comments, “The pastor is cool. He doesn't lie to us. He is a little kid, like us.” After baptizing several in the Delaware River in Pennsylvania, the Pastor “reminded the teenagers that they were no longer children from the block but missionaries to the world. “Now,” he said, “you are workers.”
In several ways, small Pentecostal churches function like the early Methodists. Their pastors take little or no salary. They foster lay leadership. They stress experiential faith. They live in community. They stand in high tension against accommodating to the surrounding culture. They have clear boundaries, accountability and discipline. They place exuberant worship at the center of their life (think Charles Wesley). They foster thrift and upward mobility. They thrive on evangelical passion. (For an extended commentary on these points see Finke and Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-2005, Winners and Losers in Our Religious Economy, Rutgers University Press, 2005.)
Watch out! The Pentecostals are not only coming. They are here.
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First Response 
