PneumaReview.com: Will you please introduce us to your newest book?

Paul Palma: This book offers an historical and comparative profile of classical Pentecostal movements in Brazil and the United States in view of their migratory beginnings and transnational expansion. Pentecostalism’s inception in the early twentieth century, particularly in its global South permutations, was defined by its grassroots character. In contrast to the top-down, hierarchical structure typical of Western forms of Christianity, the emergence of Latin American Pentecostalism embodied stability from the bottom up―among the common people. While the rise to prominence of the Assemblies of God in Brazil, the Western hemisphere’s largest (non-Catholic) denomination, demanded structure akin to mainline contexts, classical Pentecostals such as the Christian Congregation movement cling to their grassroots identity. Comparing the migratory and missional flow of movements with similar European and US roots, in this book, I consider the prospects for Brazilian Pentecostals with an eye on the problems of church growth and polity, gender, politics, and ethnic identity.

PneumaReview.com: What is the significance of the word “grassroots” in the title?

PneumaReview.com: In the book you refer to the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in Chicago in 1907-08. Please tell our readers a little bit about the history of that move of God.

PneumaReview.com: Some key missionaries went out from Chicago to Brazil, who were they?

Paul Palma: Two Chicagoan missionary teams were integral in the founding of Brazilian Pentecostalism. The first was a group of Italian migrants and onetime Presbyterians. Luigi Francescon, accompanied by Lucia Menna and Giacomo Lombardi, arrived in South America in 1909. The Italians helped found the Brazilian Christian Assembly (CA) and Christian Congregation (CC) movements. The second was a duo of Baptist Swedes, Daniel Berg and Gunnar Vingren. The former Baptists Berg and Vingren arrived in Brazil in 1910 on their way to founding the Brazilian Assemblies of God (AD).

PneumaReview.com: What factors contributed to making their ministries so fruitful?

PneumaReview.com: As you have pointed out in the book their work is still evident today in the ongoing ministry of three denominations. Please tell us briefly about each.

Paul Palma: Despite challenges, each of the denominations are bearing fruit today. The CC is now a decidedly international movement with congregations throughout Latin America, North America, Italy, and beyond. The AD remains the largest Western (non-Catholic) denomination with a membership of about 21 million, but its expansion has tapered over the last decade due to structural and political shifts. The CA endures throughout Latin (and North) America but has splintered into several different denominations, including the Pentecostal Christian Church, the Bible Christian Church, the Villa Devoto CA, and the CA God is Love.

PneumaReview.com: You highlight the fact that two of the denominations trace their roots back to Luigi Francescon. What issues caused the movement he started to divide into two groups?

Paul J. Palma, Grassroots Pentecostalism in Brazil and the United States: Migrations, Missions, and Mobility (Palgrave MacMillan, 2022).

Paul Palma: The chief difference between the Francescon-founded CC and CA is a regional one. Francescon pioneered the CC on Brazilian soil. A year before his 1910 arrival in Brazil, he founded the CA in Buenos Aires, Argentina. CA churches slowly made their way into Brazil and recently reunited through inter-ecclesial efforts that harken to their Chicagoan heritage. While Francescon concentrated on the CC in Brazil (based in São Paulo), another cohort of missionaries from Chicago filled the need for workers in Argentina, and the movement there developed peculiarities of its own. For instance, while the CC readily expanded among the native Portuguese population, the CA remained ethnically Italian and insulated from other churches well into the twentieth century.

PneumaReview.com: Do the Pentecostal churches in Brazil have different practices or priorities than most non-Brazilian Pentecostal churches in the United States?

Paul Palma: Besides the prevalence of Portuguese-speaking members, there are subtle cultural differences. The CC churches are distinguished from most other Pentecostal churches by their insistence that women wear head coverings (the “veil”) during public worship. You will also find less urgency for seminary training for ministers among the Brazilian churches. While Brazilian Pentecostals now encourage seminary training, they lacked the resources for educational institutes for many years. For the AD, because of reasons tied to its Swedish roots, even when educational resources were available, it favored a short-term Bible School training model over formal seminaries.

PneumaReview.com: At different points in the text, you mention “reverse mission,” for those who may be unfamiliar with that term please explain what it means.

PR

Additional Resources

Read the review of Grassroots Pentecostalism in Brazil and the United States by Brian Roden

Watch the book launch introduction by Paul Palma

Tom and JoAnn Doyle: After twenty years of pastoring, God gave us a definite call to go to the Middle East and serve Him in multiple countries. I had become a tour guide for the State of Israel while I was a pastor, but God began to work in our hearts about the people who needed Jesus in Israel and the entire Middle East. Both of us received calls and God put it so strongly on our hearts to leave pastoring and go!

PneumaReview.com: What types of ministry are you involved in overseas?

Tom and JoAnn: At Uncharted, we have 70 national indigenous leaders in Israel, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Pakistan, and Germany. Our goal is to reach the unreached and stand with the persecuted. Our team plants churches in high risk areas among Muslims and we work with Jewish Holocaust Survivors in Israel. Another strong emphasis is working with persecuted believers. We try to sound the alarm in the West about the major breakthrough that is occurring in the Muslim world. More Muslims have come to faith in Christ in the last 10-20 years than in the last 1400 years of Islam!

PneumaReview.com: JoAnn, please tell us a bit about the new book, Women Who Risk.

JoAnn: After 20 years now in the Middle East we realized that women were always instrumental in the harvest field of salvations. The women we write about in Women Who Risk are real and their stories are true, but the book reads like a thrilling novel. God’s stories are the best, aren’t they? We just had to tell these stories because they remind us of the faithful women who financed Jesus’ ministry, were at the Cross, the Burial and the Empty Tomb. They were the first Gospel sharers as they told the Good News to the disciples too.

PneumaReview.com: In the book, women are described as “spiritual gatekeepers.” Please explain what that means.

Tom and JoAnn: Women are the major influencers in their families when it comes to spiritual things. You would think that would not be true in the Muslim world, but it is a God-given role to mothers and if they come to faith in Christ, they are faithful to tell their family even if they may die. At Uncharted we say, reach a Muslim woman, reach the Muslim world.

PneumaReview.com: Tom, you wrote a book about dreams and visions. How prevalent are they in the Middle East?

Tom: I didn’t believe in it at first until we were hit by a tidal wave of salvations with former Muslims who often told us that it all started with a high-definition Jesus dream. About 1 in 3 Muslims who come to faith in Christ say they had a dream or vision of Jesus Christ. He identifies Himself as Jesus in the dream so there is no doubt. No one goes to bed a Muslim and wakes up a Christian because of a dream of Jesus. But it starts them on a journey to find our who Jesus is after they have the initial encounter. Maybe because so few go to the Muslims with the Gospel as missionaries, and because Islam is 1/5^th of the planet, Jesus is leading the way and opening up the door for us.

Both of the authors of this book are Pentecostals with extensive experience in international ministry. As the subtitle clearly indicates, this is a book about missions. Specifically, it is about “the organizing of a mission agency” (page xv). In view of this some readers might think that this book is for a specialized audience. In one sense they are right; I understand how someone might come to that conclusion. But, in view of the Great Commission (Matt. 28:18-20) I think missions ought to be of major interest to all believers. It is true that some individuals will be more involved in the day to day “nuts and bolts” operation of the missions structures of churches and denominations; but all Christians should be missions-minded. One point the authors make in the introduction of the book is that all of the churches that the apostle Paul and his coworkers planted did become missions-minded (page 1). The Great Commission is still not complete. If it is going to be completed shouldn’t every church be like the missions-minded churches that Paul and his companions planted?

The book consists of a few pages of endorsements, a foreword, a preface, an introduction, and eight chapters. In the course of the chapters the authors cover a variety of subjects. The following are some of the chapter titles: What is Needed to Start a Missions Program,” “Missions Structure,” and “Key People on the Normal Missions Team.” The authors also address matters related to decision making and finances. The book also helps address issues related to the roles of the local church, the larger missions organization (if there is one), the missionaries, and the church or missions leaders in the receiving country.

As these four structures are adopted and put in place it will not result in a “one size fits all” program for every organization. The authors point out that different groups use different models. In chapter four they mention three, these are: “The Networking Model,” “The Cooperation Model,” and “The Hierarchical Model” (pages 75-78). As they discuss these models they point out both the strengths and weaknesses of each. For example, one of the strengths of the hierarchical model is that responsibilities and decision-making are clearly understood in the organization, one of its weaknesses is that power can be misused(page 78). The authors also tell the reader which parts of the world tend to use which models. They say “Many Asian, African, and Latin America cultures reflect the hierarchal model” (page 78). I find this interesting because these are the areas of the world that have become “the centre of gravity of Christendom” (page 6). Christianity is experiencing dramatic growth on these continents.

The book also outlines who should be on the missions leadership team and what qualities and experience they should have. The members of the team should include: “The Missions Director,” “Missions Board and Committees,” and the “Director of Missions Training” (pages 81-87). The book also looks at the issue of financing various aspects of the missions task (pages 95-98)

Reviewed by John Lathrop

Publisher’s page: https://wipfandstock.com/9781725269927/to-the-ends-of-the-earth/

Christian historian Woodrow Walton continues his investigation into 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 2: Missions to the First Americans

Before proceeding to dealing with the spread and growth of the Christian gospel into the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, there is also the need to look at the contribution of a lone figure of Norman-French heritage who as a Jesuit missionary opened the pathway for mission and evangelism in North America. In his travels in Canada, he not only spread the gospel among a particular native American people, the Hurons, but also lived among them for several years and penned the lyrics of the first Christmas carol written and composed in North America. This song was later translated from the Huron language by Jesse Edgar Middleton in The United Methodist Hymnal, No. 244 “Twas in the moon of wintertime.”

Huron moccasins (circa 1880 CE) on display at the Bata Shoe Museum, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Image: Wikimedia Commons

I want to introduce the figure of Jean de Brébeuf, whose biography Saint among the Hurons: The Life of Jean de Brébeuf  was first written in 1949 by Francis X. Talbot and published by Harper & Brothers and most recently republished in 2018 by Ignatius Press. Brébeuf was a Norman from the north of France, the descendant of Scandinavians who invaded northern France in the early 1500s. He was born in what is now know as Condé-sur-Vire, March 25, 1593, in the diocese of Bayeux in eastern Normandy. In 1617, at the age of 24, after finishing his schooling and settling family affairs, he applied for entry into the Society of Jesus and thereby became a part of the missionary-minded Jesuits, an independent minded order not initiated by the Church but by Ignatius Loyola and which had gained later recognition as a missionary arm of the church. Even after gaining such authorization, the Jesuits were allowed to function as an independent mission arm of the Roman Catholic Church under its own umbrella, the Society of Jesus. This same independence also affected the relationship of the Jesuits with the different countries in which they operated. In some cases, they were regarded with suspicion from the political realm of the countries in which they served as missionaries of the Gospel. Mexico was one such country as were Brazil and Argentina in South America.

It was in 1625 that Jean de Brébeuf learned that the Jesuits were opening a mission in New France (Canada). This was five years after the founding of the Plymouth Plantation in New England. The year before, in October of 1624, Brébeuf met two Récollet [a Franciscan order] missionaries just returned from the New World.

This article is part of The Gospel in History series by Woodrow Walton.
Image: The Books of Kells by way of Wikimedia Commons.

In March of 1625, with full royal assent, the Viceroy of Quebec issued a decree authorizing the establishment of a residence in Quebec and other parts of New France for the Jesuits and to associate its members with the Récollets in the conversion of the “savages.” On April 24, 1625, after several delays resulting from opposition by the Montmorency Company in both Paris and Rouen to the proposal, the authorization came through, and Brébeuf and the other missionaries crossed over into the open waters of the Atlantic for New France (Canada). They entered into Canada by navigating around Cap Gaspé and through the Gulf of St. Lawrence and to Quebec. From 1625 to 1649, the year of his death at the hand of the Iroquois, de Brébeuf labored among the Huron who lived along the borderlands of the Great Lakes all the way from southern Canada to Michigan’s shoreline to Sault Ste. Marie.

The point of this short excursus is that the Jesuits did not engage in general evangelism among Native Americans but focused their attention on specific people groups, both in Canada and Brazil. The 1986 motion picture The Mission portrayed the Jesuit work and also their conflict with the political regime of the Portuguese which governed Brazil at the time of the Jesuit mission work. The independence of the Jesuits in their missionary evangelism also brought them into an adversarial relationship to the Spanish viceroys which governed out of Mexico City.

John Eliot

Mamusse Wunneetupanatamwe Up-Biblum God, also known as The Algonquian Bible.
Image: Wikimedia Commons

Concurrent with Brébeuf in North America was John Eliot in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the first Puritan missionary to Native Americans who concentrated on the Algonquian language of the local Massachusetts. Helping him learn the language was a young Native American named Cockenoe. The youth had been captured in the Pequot War of 1637 and was a servant of an Englishman named Richard Collicot. Eliot later wrote in his diary that Cockenoe “was the first that I made use of to teach me words, and to be my interpreter.” Cockenoe could not write English but he could speak it as well as he could speak Algonquian. He was able, thereby, to help Eliot translate the Ten Commandments, the Lord’s Prayer and other portions of the Bible and prayers. His first attempts at sharing the gospel with the Native American in 1646 were meager, if not failures, but eventually met with success. He also became able to produce printed publications for the Indians in their own language. In 1663, Eliot completed a translation of the whole Bible into the Massachusetts language, Mamusse Wunneetupanatamwe Up-Biblum God. The printer who did the printing issued 1000 copies on the first printing press in the American colonies.

Three years later, in 1666, Eliot published The Indian Grammar Begun.

Through the succeeding years, fourteen towns of “praying Indians” grew up in Massachusetts Bay Colony, the best documented of which being the one at Natick, Massachusetts. Other missionaries also established praying Indian towns, one of whom, Samson Occom, was himself half Mohegan.

Eliot and his wife, Hanna, had six children, five sons and one daughter. Two sons, John Eliot, Jr., and Joseph Eliot, both became pastors of churches themselves. Joseph Eliot, a pastor in Guilford, Connecticut, and his wife, were parents of Jared Eliot, who also became a minister of the gospel was also a noted agricultural writer.

David Brainerd is another significant figure, not only in mission among Native Americans but also upon the future development of the missionary enterprise world–wide. Brainerd was born April 20, 1718, in Haddam, Connecticut, the son of a Connecticut legislator, and his wife Dorothy. Although he died young at the early age of 29 from tuberculosis on October 10, 1747, his ministry intersected with that of George Whitefield, Jonathan Edwards, Gilbert Tennent, James Davenport, and Jonathan Dickinson.

From David Brainerd, the apostle to the North American Indians, published in 1891.
Image: Wikimedia Commons

In 1742, at the age of 24, he was licensed by a group of Presbyterians known as the “New Lights” which included such figures as Barton Warren Stone, Jonathan Dickinson, and the initiators of the Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian Knowledge, the first-known organized missionary society.

Brainerd’s ministry in New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts, and Long Island became an inspiration for William Carey, Brainerd’s cousin, James Brainerd Taylor (1801-1829), and the 20^th century’s Jim Elliot who ministered among the Aucas (Huaorani) in Ecuador, South America. Brainerd was the forerunner of the evangelical missionary enterprise[1] which emerged with William Carey in England and the Haystack Prayer Meeting of 1810 in Massachusetts.

Thomas Bray, the founder of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign parts and also the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge, supported the ministry of Whitefield both in England and the English colonies which were to become known as the United States of America. Because the focus was upon North America and the British isles, the site of the activities was not global but British North America. A world, or global focused evangelical witness, first became reality with the initiation of the Particular Baptist Society for the Propagation of the Gospel Among the Heathen in 1792 in Kettering, England, where 12 ministers signed an agreement to support the missionary work of William Carey and John Thomas in Bengal, India. Carey and Thomas were first sent out in 1793. To this day, William Carey is considered to be the initiator of the Christian world mission with schools and organizations and a book publishing house named after him in both the United States and Canada. This first missionary society is still in operation to this date. In A.D. 2000, its name was changed to the Baptist World Mission and presently supports over 350 workers in 40 countries.

PR

Notes

[1] The reason to not consider George Whitefield and John Wesley as the forerunners of the evangelical missionary enterprise is that both Whitefield and John Wesley were more revivalists than missionaries. Their preaching missions were to revive Christian faith in believers and reinvigorate a Christian witness that would lead others to faith in Christ.

On this website you will find:

• All of the new books that we have published over the last five years—all available at good prices.
• Over 200 articles on Pentecostal Theology, Missions and History, dating back to the beginning of the Asian Journal of Pentecostal Studies in 1998. All articles are downloadable and absolutely free!
• Dozens of book reviews and editorials

Please drop us a line and let us know what you think of the site. We want to hear from you!

Dave Johnson, DMiss

Press Director & Journal editor

Vulnerable Mission: What it is, and Why we need it

When: May 31 – June 2, 2018

Where: All Nations Christian College in Easneye House, Ware, Hertfordshire UK

Sponsored by the Alliance for Vulnerable Mission.

Randy Clark is very well known in the Spirit-filled community, having been involved in supernatural ministry for over 20 years. He is both a contributor to and the compiler of Supernatural Missions. This book is a made up of fifteen chapters written by various authors. The contributors to this volume are: Randy Clark, Leif Hetland, Bill Jackson, Peter Prosser, Clifton Clarke, Rolland Baker, Heidi Baker, “D.J.,” Jonathan Bernis, Bob Ekblad, Lesley-Anne Leighton, Howard Foltz, and Donald Kantel. The book was written to fill a perceived need; there was not at the time a book that dealt with missions which incorporated power, presence, and presentation evangelism (page 1). This volume was compiled to answer the question, “How does the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit impact the way we understand and do missions?” (page 1).

In the updated version of The Third Force in Missions: A Pentecostal Contribution to Contemporary Mission Theology (Hendrickson Publishers, 2016), Paul A. Pomerville offers an amplified reiteration of the major premises of his earlier work (Hendrickson, 1985), namely, that Pentecostalism is enacting a biblical reading which challenges theologies skewed by the claims of dispensationalism on mission theory and praxis, and that indigenous Christianity of the Southern Hemisphere offers viable examples of authentic engagement with the Bible. In fact, that engagement is unhampered by Western assumptions that threaten to contradict inherent Southern sensibilities regarding the existence of the spiritual realm. In regard to the vigor of the contemporary Pentecostal missions phenomenon, Pomerville offers that setting the movement apart as distinctive is in order. Not only does Pentecostalism don well its appellation as “The Third Force” of Christian expression after Roman Catholicism and Protestantism, Pomerville posits the justification of the term “first force” in twenty-first century missions as a possible descriptor pointing to the undisputed vigor of Southern missions today. That “force” manifests an impressive record of strides made within and emanating from that zone out to the world—much of which has been underreported. Its efficacy is also found in its potential to engage sensitively with the growing Islamic population. Pomerville sees the church of the South, rather than the church of the North, as the hope for Islam.

Paul A. Pomerville

In other words, what Pomerville does this second time around is to point to the undeniable vigor of the Pentecostal phenomenon in the Southern Hemisphere, and coming out of the South these past 30 years, where the movement is producing a contagious and enduring transcultural spirituality. Also, this time Pomerville reflects not just on the dangers of dispensational theology in terms of major blind spots counterproductive to sound hermeneutics (i.e., a hollow eschatology and an anemic ontology of the kingdom of God). As well, his concern targets the dangers to the ongoing mission of the Christian church that lay couched in an abiding silence on the role of the Holy Spirit and a suspicion of the concept of revelation as a dynamic activity.

Reviewed by Anna M. Droll

Dan and Babs Izzett extend their invitation to attend the American Leprosy Missions’ 2016 Presidential Retreat. Read the interview about Dan’s journey with leprosy here: “That the life of Jesus may be manifested: An interview with Dan Izzett“

We are returning to the USA in April to be at the ALM Presidential Retreat & was thinking if there would be anyone from your group that would like to attend this life changing weekend?

If so please let me know.

Peace

Dan n Babs Izzett

As one of American Leprosy Missions’ most valued partners, you are invited to the 2016 President’s Retreat, April 22-24, 2016 at the Billy Graham Training Center at The Cove in Asheville, NC.

This exciting event presents:

• a unique opportunity for spiritual growth,
• a chance for you to build meaningful relationships with people who share your faith, and
• a rare inside look at the exciting future of this world-changing ministry.

Together, we’ll enjoy worship, fellowship, and Bible teaching with special guests Lee Strobel and Stuart & Jill Briscoe. We’ll take a close look at how God is moving through American Leprosy Missions around the world. And discover how we can END leprosy once and for all in this generation.

David Hoekema, “Missions and Modernity in Colonial Africa: Most of what you think you know is wrong” Books & Culture (September/October 2014), pages 32-33.

Hoekema’s short article considers the role of 19^th Century missionaries to Africa, especially West Africa. Missionaries were good, but colonialists were bad, is in a nutshell his conclusion. Missionary-style subordination was self-limiting according to Hoekema; it was a kind of subordination of African nationals that had a clear end in view. The colonial way of working though, that has now become the ‘aid model’ engaging with Africa, “substitutes its own agency for that of the subordinate group and proceeds to exercise it on the latter’s behalf” (quote is of Táíwò cited by Hoekema).

How Colonialism Pre-empted Modernity in Africa is the title of the book by Táíwò that Hoekema draws on heavily in this article. The article could almost be a review of the book. Hoekema tells us that for Táíwò, modernity is rooted in subjectivity and individualism that arise when redeemed sinners acquire a new Christian identity. The key to modernisation is, according to this understanding, to promote missionary activity which engenders such subjectivity. The philosophical underpinning that underlies this understanding apparently comes from Hegel.

This article’s subtitle; “most of what you think you know is wrong”, shows that the author assumes his reader to start out with a negative valuation of missionary activities in Africa. He wants to correct this view. To Táíwò, and Hoekema, missionary work is the preferred model of intervention into Africa.

Reviewed by Jim Harries

Read “Missions and Modernity in Colonial Africa” at http://www.booksandculture.com/articles/2014/sepoct/missions-and-modernity-in-colonial-africa.html