Notre Dame de Paris (“Our Lady of Paris”) on fire, April 15, 2019.
Image: Antoninnnnn / Wikimedia Commons

Of course, many in the Reformed tradition are suspicious of its statues as an incitement to idol worship.  As a Catholic boy and young man, I lived through the Pre-Vatican II excesses of statue veneration. Lighting candles to some saint for healing requests were then commonplace. As an Anglican, I favor the Reformed (iconoclast) position. When I pastored a small Hispanic congregation, I did not permit any form of statues. Our Stations of the Cross were in the icon format, thus obeying the biblical injunction against “graven images,” yet allowing the beauty of icons to serve the imagination of the congregation. I also appreciate Christian sculptures that are not intended for worship, such as representations of the angels that covered the Ark of the Covenant.

This posting, however, is not meant for making contention or as a critique of Catholic practices. Rather, I want to challenge readers. I want to encourage you to join me in united prayer for French Christians in this time of sorrow.

Let’s pray:

• That the burning of Notre Dame remind the French people, including their large secular population, how old and precious their Christian heritage is, and how it is the foundation of French culture.
• That the burning and reconstruction of Notre Dame bring the French people to the realization that their Christian heritage is the only true bulwark against radical Muslims who have now become so active in France. Islamists who have a profound hatred for the West and France now effectively control many neighborhoods in French cities. Police action or secular appeals will not change this. Rather, a revival of Spirit-filled Christianity—as in the French Catholic Charismatic renewal and Protestant Spirit-filled congregations—can model the love and power of the Gospel.
• That when Notre Dame is eventually re-opened, it will no longer be primarily a tourist spot and religious museum, but the center of a renewed French Christianity, both Catholic and Protestant.

Missionary David Joannes speaks with Pneuma Review about his book, The Mind of a Missionary, and about sharing the story of Jesus no matter the cost.

PneumaReview.com: You are involved in cross-cultural missions. Please tell our readers how long you have served overseas and where.

David Joannes: I got started in missions in 1994 at the age of fifteen. I went to Russia with Teen Mania Ministries and have never been able to shake the missionary call. At age eighteen, I bought a one-way ticket to Kunming, China, and have been living overseas for the last twenty-two years. Southwest China is home to hundreds of ethnic tribes and was the perfect place to launch out into ministry among unreached people groups. After years of evangelism, discipleship, and church-planting, my wife and I founded a ministry called Within Reach Global. Working alongside the underground Church, we have seen God move in the lives of countless unreached communities.

PneumaReview.com: What kinds of resistance or persecution have you experienced while serving in ministry overseas?

Author of The Third Force in Missions, Missionary-scholar Paul Pomerville speaks with PneumaReview.com about theologies and attitudes he believes have hindered the effectiveness of the church, particularly the church in the West. He urges Pentecostals to throw off the poisonous ideas of colonialism and the Enlightenment and instead be filled with the Holy Spirit of justice and peace.

PneumaReview.com: Please tell us about your experience in missions.

Paul Pomerville: After study in the national language of Indonesia, I started my service as an Assemblies of God missionary educating Indonesian ministers on the Island of Sumatra. I established a “theological education by extension” program that provided theological education for candidates for the ministry and active pastors in ten different areas of the island by way of independent study materials, a traveling faculty and weekly seminar-type training sessions. It was the first program of its kind in Southeast Asia; it was modeled after a similar program by missionary Dr. Ralph Winter in South America. When I was on furlough in the United States I started graduate education in missions. The next missionary service was in Brussels Belgium at the International Correspondence Institute, an arm of the Foreign Missions Division of the Assemblies of God. The Institute was preparing ministerial training materials and printing them on site for pastors and Christian educators via correspondence both in Western countries and also in the countries of the Southern Hemisphere. I wrote several courses and prepared an audience profile model of the developing countries for course writers for that part of the world, and also gave writers an orientation to that very different cultural audience. I also served as managing editor. On the next furlough in the United States I finished a Ph.D. in Intercultural Studies at Fuller Theological Seminary’s School of World Mission. I then served as professor and Department Chairman of the Missions and Cross-cultural Communications Department at the Assemblies of God Theological Seminary in Springfield Missouri.

PneumaReview.com: In your book you state that there are certain theologies that hinder the cause of missions. Please tell us what those theologies are and how they impede the missionary cause.

Paul A. Pomerville, The Third Force in Missions: A Pentecostal Contribution to Contemporary Mission Theology (Hendrickson Publishers, 2016).
Read the review by Anna M. Droll.

Paul Pomerville: The central thesis of The Third Force in Missions concerned the Pentecostal contribution to mission theology. At the time the first edition was written (1983) there were doubts as to whether there even was a Pentecostal contribution to mission theology. My contention at that time was that Pentecostal-charismatic Christians made up one-third of the world’s evangelical Christians and their growth was evidence of a potential Pentecostal contribution. However, the unprecedented Pentecostal-charismatic movement in the Southern Hemisphere today, the “third wave” of Pentecostal-charismatic renewal has proven the question of a Pentecostal contribution to be a “moot point.” Today, 800 million-plus Pentecostal-charismatic Christians are now a “first force” in Christian missions. It is clear that this unprecedented rapidly growing movement south of the equator was not due to “theology,” but rather the Pentecostal-charismatic experience with the Holy Spirit. Obviously, there is a “Pentecostal theology” undergirding the Pentecostal-charismatic movement that emphasizes the role of the Holy Spirit that two of the most influential theologies in the Northern hemisphere have not emphasized, but rather have neglected and outright denied—1) Western rationalistic scholastic theology of the post-Reformation period and 2) dispensational theology.

Lisa Sharon Harper is a follower of Jesus calling all followers of Jesus to love every person the same and seek their flourishing. PneumaReview.com speaks with her about her story and how God is inviting each of us to participate with him in making his Gospel of Peace real in our communities today.

PneumaReview.com: Please share with us some of your story. Where are you from? What Christian traditions do you most identify with? What have you been involved with for which you are most grateful to God?

Lisa Sharon Harper: To know me you must know my ancestors. God laid the foundations of who I am through them.

As a teenager, my mother was a member of the Philadelphia chapter of S.N.C.C. (Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee) in the mid-1960s. Her job was to connect Stokely Carmichael and others, such as James Farmer, with churches to speak in when they came through town. Her branch of our family tree reaches through the great northern migration, to enslaved and indentured family members in Maryland, Virginia and South Carolina as far back as 1650. Great grandfathers and uncles fought in every war this nation has ever seen; from the Revolutionary War through the Civil War to World War I, World War II, Korea and Vietnam. And one branch of the family, the Fortens of Philadelphia, served as primary financial backers of the abolitionist movement and helped build and lead the very first women’s equality gathering in Philadelphia in

My father was a member of C.O.R.E. (Congress of Racial Equality) in New York City. He attended the meeting where Freedom Summer participants were introduced: They were about to head to Mississippi to help register black Mississippians to vote. My father was considering joining Freedom Summer, but realized he needed to stay back and work for the summer. He met Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner at that meeting. My father’s father emigrated to the U.S. as a child joining his family in the South Bronx in New York City. They had arrived in waves over a period of years, directly following the United States’ annexation of the island. The earlier generation hailed from St. Kitts/Nevis where they were likely enslaved in extremely poor and brutal conditions. My great grandfather and his brother island-hopped looking for work throughout the turn of the century. His brother found work in Panama, building the canal.

My father’s mother was the daughter of an itinerate preacher who preached in all fifty states, according to family lore. She told me her father was college educated in British Guyana at the turn of the 20^th century. Most of her family, in fact, were college educated business people, she said. While the question of how black men were college educated businessmen in British Guyana at the turn of the century remains unclear. The Census revealed one clue: that my great grandfather was born in Holland and lived in a Dutch quarter of a French section of British Guiana.

Image: Matt Popovich

The Lord has sent us to bring Him glory and alleviate with prayer and loving acts much of the evil and chaos we learn about and encounter. Negative news gives us opportunities to “stand in the gap” for our nation, and for the salvation and welfare of others. The model for this is Moses, when he pleaded with God not to destroy the Israelites. God informed Moses that He was about to annihilate them after they had defied Him by creating a golden calf.  What worse news can there be? And what more authoritative news anchor man? But Moses interceded, and actually changed God’s mind, yes, that is what the scripture says, and the Chosen people lived and were permitted to go on into their destiny (Ex 32:11-14).  Here are some practical examples of “praying the news” for the sake of the Kingdom.

Read the full article: “Pray the News – And bring revival to the nations!”

http://anglicalpentecostal.blogspot.com/2016/05/praying-news-and-bring-revival-to.html

In this Fall 2007 conversation with a reader, Executive Editor Raul Mock, asked some questions of a recent subscriber.

Image: Samuel Zeller.

What you have been studying lately?

Lately, I have been studying church planting and church growth strategies.  I been studying Pentecostal & Charismatic history in the last two-thousand years, Revivals through history especially modern ones (Shearer Schoolhouse, Welsh, Topeka, Azusa Street, etc.).  Also, I am doing an expository study of the Sermon on Mount.

What topics or conversations have inspired you or irked you recently?

I have been inspired recently of sudden re-interest in the Azusa Street Revival. I have been interested in Azusa for years and it’s nice to see it getting so much attention lately. I have been irked by conversations about Pentecostals & Charismatics are becoming institutionalized. I have been irked by secular news stories about Pentecostals & Charismatics and about some of our fallen leaders.

If you could sit down with a group of theologians and Bible teachers, what questions would you want to ask?

Where are we going as a movement? If we are going in a wrong direction, how do we get back on the right path. If we are going in the right direction, how do we maintain? I know the obvious answer is to trust and obey the Lord through the power of the Holy Ghost, and live a Spirit-filled life, keeping that in perspective what can we do as individuals, as churches, and as denominations.

Thanks for your time.

God bless you in Jesus’ name,

Pastor Ben