THANK YOU, JOHN MacARTHUR

I want to say a heartfelt thank you to John MacArthur for his stinging slap of rebuke to the Pentecostal/charismatic global family.

I am sure that some of my friends are wondering why I would thank John MacArthur and I will answer that in a moment. But first, a little perspective.

I am a Pentecostal. My grandfather, a Methodist lay preacher with a passionate desire to follow the Lord, brought our family into Pentecost about 90 years ago. My parents were very strong, conservative Pentecostals and they raised my brother and me in a Bible-centered, Spirit-filled home. I received Christ as my savior when I was in grade school and received the baptism in the Holy Spirit fifty-eight years ago.

It is vitally important to understand that controversy/persecution has always accompanied the outpouring of God’s Spirit. In fact, the Pentecostal movement was birthed in controversy. Within hours of the outpouring on the Day of Pentecost, criticism arose (see Acts 2). The heaviest criticism of the early Church arose from the religious establishment and ended up with portions of the Church being scattered throughout the world (see Acts 8:1).

In 1906, in a rundown building on Azusa Street near downtown Los Angeles, the modern-day Pentecostal outpouring began. Within weeks an article appeared on the front page of The Los Angeles Times ridiculing “the weird Babel of Tongues” occurring in the Azusa Street Revival. From that inauspicious beginning, the modern expression of Pentecost has spread all over the world.

Up to the 1950s, the mainstream of the Protestant church viewed the Pentecostals as a sect and, in fact, Pentecostal pastors were often not welcomed into local ministerial associations. With the eruption of the charismatic movement in the late ’50s and early ’60s, much of the criticism of the Pentecostals began to wane. Part of the reason was that the charismatic renewal was sweeping into mainstream evangelical and historic denominations. As a result, many of the historic church leaders were beginning to understand that while the Pentecostals did have a different view of the gifts and operation of the Holy Spirit, the rest of their doctrinal beliefs were within the boundaries of orthodoxy.

  

As acceptance among mainline evangelicals rose, Pentecostal churches slacked off in their distinctive doctrine of the Holy Spirit and His gifts to the church. In the last thirty years, the average Pentecostal church has gone from being a church with a distinctive Pentecostal expression to, at best, a middle-of-the-road evangelical church.

Today the fastest growing segment of Christianity in the world is the Pentecostal/charismatic community. While modern Pentecostalism is just slightly over 100 years old, it has experienced phenomenal growth that shows no sign of slowing down. It is estimated that at least 600 million people are now “Pentecostal/charismatic” Christians and surveys indicate that over 40 percent of all Christians (globally) are Pentecostal/charismatic. The largest areas of growth currently are in Asia and Africa. The growth of the Pentecostal/charismatic movement in North America is very anemic but perhaps that’s about to change!

Why did I start this article by saying thank you to John MacArthur? Because I believe MacArthur has done the current North American Pentecostal/charismatic movement a tremendous favor. Our movement has been given a hard slap and we needed it. We have had a wake-up call—but are we going to respond or will we roll over and go back to sleep?

The Pentecostal/charismatic movement in North America has gotten fat and sloppy. Many of our younger leaders have wanted nothing to do with the sting of criticism and the shunning that sometimes accompanied being known as a “Pentecostal.” Since the 1990s, the heroes of many of the younger Spirit-filled pastors have been Bill Hybels, Rick Warren and John Maxwell. Many of the most talked about churches with a Pentecostal heritage are now consumed with looking good to the public, having a cool, contemporary style, and not offending anyone. As a result, many of our churches have no prayer meetings, the worship style is concert type rock and roll, and services are barely more than one hour long. The previous drive for evangelism and world missions has largely been blunted and people are rarely invited to openly declare themselves for the Lord! The North American Pentecostal church has given itself a vasectomy and if it stays on this current course, within another five or ten years we will be nothing more than another dying church movement.

I believe the Lord used John MacArthur to deliver this much-needed message. The heart of the wake-up call has nothing to do with our movement blaspheming the Holy Spirit (as MacArthur stated). That is simply an unfounded accusation—but it certainly got our attention. It is always wrong to take an anecdote and say that one abhorrent act or belief represents the whole of a movement. It does not and never has! The bad behavior of a few Pentecostals/charismatics no more represents the whole movement than the young couple in MacArthur’s church who are engaging in sex before marriage represents the conduct of all the unmarried couples in his congregation.

So again, thank you, John MacArthur. You've done the Pentecostal/charismatic movement a tremendous favor. You have slapped some of us awake—and we needed that!