Brother Carrin shares a lesson from church history about a renewal that changed missions and changed him forever. I am now 75 years old, and as you can imagine, looking back in gratitude to God for all my adult life spent in ministry. There are too many highlights to mention but here is one that…
In 1987, on the 250th Anniversary of its founding, I visited New Herrnhut Moravian Church on the island of St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands. Visiting this mountain-side shrine and the jungle overhanging its cemetery impacted my life in a way I will carry to my grave. There are churches in the Western Hemisphere much…
Although John Wesley had spoken about the Holy Spirit prior to 1738, it was not until after Aldersgate that he began to develop a distinct pneumatology. Aldersgate was not Wesley’s conversion-initiation; rather it was largely a pneumatological experience of the “internal witness of the Spirit.”1 His ‘heart strangely warmed’ marked a theological shift from outward…
Christian historian Woodrow Walton investigates the origins of the modern movements that inspired Christians to go and share the mission and message of Jesus throughout the world. The Making of the Christian Global Mission Part 1: Jan Hus and the Moravians It may seem odd to associate the making of the Christian global mission…
This year’s Charismatic Leaders Fellowship Consultation, formerly called the CLF Conference, was held in Augusta, Georgia, February 24-27. Yearly, this group of Charismatic leaders meets to discuss news and issues about the world-wide Pentecostal/charismatic movement. The group was originally founded in 1970 by Dennis Bennett, of Nine O’Clock in the Morning[1] fame, to discuss and…
Happy 499th Reformation Day. Celebrate Spirit-led renewal and awakening by reading and reflecting on what God has done in and through his people throughout history. Martin Luther’s Ninety-five Theses When the “Disputation of Martin Luther on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences” was nailed to the door of the castle church at Wittenberg, Germany…
In celebration of the Great Reformation and revival movements throughout Christian history, take a moment today to remind yourself of what God has done in and through his people. Be encouraged and challenged that he is ready and willing to revive his people again by his Spirit. The Impact of Martin Luther and the…
Introduction Not long ago, I attended Commencement exercises at the University of California’s Hastings College of Law in San Francisco. I was there to see a student named Kofi receive his law degree and to celebrate with his mother, Afi.1 Afi came to the United States from Togo with her husband more than twenty years…
Excerpts from the paper “The Petersens and the Silesian Kinderbeten Revival” by Eric Jonas Swensson. Lutheranism is a tradition born out of a dispute within the Roman Catholic Church. The blooming of German Lutheran Pietism, 1675-1725, a period commencing with Phillip Jakob Spener’s Pia Desideria and ending with the death of his protégé August Hermann Francke,…
Evidence for the operation of the gifts of the Spirit throughout the Church Age. This is Part 5 of 5 from the series, The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries