The Leadership of the Azusa Street Revival

Some Pentecostals are proud to say that Pentecostals affirm women in ministry. They might point to the leadership of the Azusa Street Revival in Los Angeles (one of the most influential centers of early North American Pentecostalism), where about half of the leaders were women.

As Pentecostal denominations formed, some churches continued to give prominent place to women leaders. The Pentecostal Holiness Church and the Open Standard Bible Churches have always given women full clergy rights. The same is true of The International Church of the Foursquare Gospel, started by Ammie Semple McPherson, and today around 40% of their credential holders are women.

Institutional Restrictions 

Most Pentecostal denominations, however, placed restrictions on women’s ministry and leadership in some form.

The Assemblies of God (USA), which began in 1914, has ordained women since 1935. The Church of God (Cleveland, TN), in contrast, still does not grant women their highest level of clergy credentials (they call it “ordained bishop”). As a result, women are restricted from the highest leadership roles in that denomination.

Canada

My friend, Carmen Kampman, at her recent ordination ceremony

In my own Pentecostal denomination, the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada (PAOC), in 1984, after a full decade of discussion and debate, we finally voted to ordain women. Nevertheless, as of 1986, only 25% percent of ministers thought that women should be elected to leadership roles (as Presbyters, to be specific).

As a result, it wasn’t until General Conference in 1998 that the PAOC finally removed all restrictions to women in leadership. At that event we voted to “provide for gender inclusivity in all matters relating to the credentialing process and qualifications of candidates for the elected offices of District and General Executives” (1998 Conference Minutes, page 16).

Current Ambiguity

My own research shows that even now only 83% percent of PAOC clergy consistently affirm women in leadership (again, specifically in the role of presbyter), with another 8% undecided regarding the issue. Furthermore, less than 6% of lead pastors in the PAOC are women, even though about 27% of all credential holders are women (PAOC Fellowship Stats, 2017)

“ Less than 6% of lead pastors in the PAOC are women, even though about 27% of all credential holders are women.

Women ministers still face obstacles. Patti Miller, lead pastor of a large Pentecostal church in Montreal, pointed out to me that young women, especially staff pastors, often get questioned by people in their church about their leadership roles as women. These questions sometimes even come from their colleagues. Furthermore, some male pastors have stated that in this metoo# environment, they are afraid to hire female pastors onto their staff.

Recent Developments  

At the PAOC’s General Conference in May 2018, the General Superintendent, Dave Wells, reminded those in attendance that we affirm women in ministry because Acts reminds us that Jesus pours out the Spirit on both the sons and the daughters.

Patti Miller then presented a summary of the new “PAOC Statement of Affirmation Regarding Gender Equality in Leadership.” Rather than only affirming women in ministry, the statement ends with a number of commitments to intentional action.

This document was prepared by a committee of female and male PAOC leaders over the last 9 months. Going forward the committee hopes to guide churches and leaders in how they can further integrate women into leadership roles in the Church.

Click here to read the “PAOC Statement of Affirmation Regarding Gender Equality in Leadership.”

You might also be interested in these posts:

• #MeToo and the Church: #PentecostalSistersToo
• How are Canadian Pentecostal Clergy Changing?
• Updating the PAOC Statement of Faith: Gender and Language

Andrew K. Gabriel, Ph.D., is the author of Simply Spirit-Filled: Experiencing God in the Presence and Power of the Holy Spirit (forthcoming) as well as three academic books, including The Lord is the Spirit. He is a theology professor at Horizon College and Seminary and serves on the Theological Study Commission for the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada. You can follow him on Facebook or on Twitter.

The post Pentecostal Women in Ministry: Ambiguity and Affirmation in the PAOC appeared first on Andrew K. Gabriel.

The denomination has a long history of refreshing its statement of faith, even with minor revisions as recent as 2014. This time the PAOC’s Theological Study Commission has begun steps toward refreshing the whole statement of faith.

At the 2016 General Conference of the PAOC, I presented a brief history of the PAOC’s SOFET. Here is a recording of that presentation. You can also find a written summary of the history below.

Click here for a written summary of the history of the PAOC’s statement of faith (posted here with permission).

You can find a copy of the PAOC’s current statement of faith here.

So far the Theological Study Commission (TSC) has produced draft statements on Spirit baptism and eschatology. We have presented these statements at a number of regional meetings, and those attending have given feedback that we will use to further revise the drafts going forward.

Drafts of the statements will also be presented and discussed at the next General Conference in May 2018, in Victoria, BC.

Outside of these venues, the PAOC is not currently circulating the draft statements since they are only drafts and are not meant to reflect official PAOC positions (given that they have not yet been voted on by the PAOC General Conference).

While revised drafts will eventually be circulated more publicly, the earliest the PAOC’s General Conference will vote on any revisions to the current statement of faith is 2020.

“ Check out this video describing the history of the PAOC’s statement of faith.

You might also be interested in these posts:

• Spirit Baptism in Current Pentecostal Theology: Part 1 – Frank Macchia
• Eschatology in Current Pentecostal Theology
• What is a Pentecostal?: On PAOC Pentecostal Identity

Andrew K. Gabriel, Ph.D., is the author of Simply Spirit-Filled: Experiencing God in the Presence and Power of the Holy Spirit (forthcoming) as well as three academic books, including The Lord is the Spirit. He is a theology professor at Horizon College and Seminary and serves on the Theological Study Commission for the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada. You can follow him on Facebook or on Twitter.

The post The Changing of the PAOC’s Statement of Faith … Again [with Video] appeared first on Andrew K. Gabriel.

Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) was one of America’s greatest theologians and a key leader in the “Great Awakening” revival (1720s-1770s) at the dawn of what we now know as evangelicalism.

Regarding this time, Edwards writes, “It was a very frequent thing to see a house full of outcries, faintings, convulsions, and such like, both with distress, and also with admiration and joy.”^[1] Edwards believed that at least some of these “fainting” experiences and “convulsions” resulted from authentic encounters with God.

John Wesley (1703-1791) hailed from across the Atlantic Ocean in England. Wesley describes people falling as one of the “outward signs that so often accompanied the inward work of God.”

Some critics suggested that people fell on the ground only from “natural effects” in the sense that people may have “fainted away only because of the heat and closeness of the rooms.” Others suggested that when people fell it was fake because the falling only happened in private meetings.

In response to such claims, Wesley wrote in his journal that on May 21, 1739, God “began to make bare his arm, not in a close room, neither in private, but in the open air, and before more than two thousand witnesses. One, and another, and another was struck to the earth; exceedingly trembling at the presence of His power.”^[2]

The testimonies of Edwards, Wesley, and other early evangelicals make it clear that contemporary experiences of trembling in the presence of God or being “slain” in the Spirit are not new to the evangelical movement.

This does not prove that such experiences are legitimate. Nevertheless, these historical observations have caused me to pause and reassess these experiences in light of Scripture.

This blog post is an excerpt from a (non-academic) book I am writing, now titled, Simply-Spirit Filled. Read about it here.

[1] Jonathan Edwards, “The Distinguishing Marks of the Work of the Spirit of God,” Jonathan Edwards on Revival (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1984), 64.

[2] John Wesley, The Works of John Wesley, 3rd ed., vol. 1 (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1979), 210 and 196.

The post Shaking and “Slain” in the Spirit: Historical Reflections appeared first on Andrew K. Gabriel.