Garry spoke tonight on the subject of what makes a Pentecostal church. We are Goldthorpe Pentecostal Community Church – Goldthorpe is our location, and the fact that we’re a community church is our mission statement (‘with God in the community, with God for the community‘). But the word ‘Pentecostal’ doesn’t mean a lot to most people nowadays except as a denominational tag.
The Pentecostal movement arose at the start of the 20th century, after a century or more of liberal theology which sought to take the miraculous of the Bible, explaining miracles in natural ways.The first report of the Pentecostal movement in Britain was in September 1907 in Sunderland under the ministry of T. B. Barratt in an Anglican church where A. A. Boddy was the minister. This movement took what the Bible said literally and was characterised by preaching which focussed on hell, damnation, repentance and holiness of living, stressing the necessity of accepting Jesus Christ as one’s personal Lord and Saviour and believing in the Holy Spirit, given as a gift to believers and working in miraculous power in and through us in the present day.
The baptism of the Holy Spirit (a key feature of Pentecostalism) is not believed by all Christians and is not necessary for salvation. When a person becomes a Christian, God gives them His Holy Spirit (see Rom 8:9-11) who dwells within us (1 Cor 3:16, 2 Cor 1:21-22). The baptism of the Spirit (or being filled with the Spirit) is nothing new; we read about this in Ex 31:2-3. John the Baptist was filled with the Holy Spirit even before birth (see Luke 1:11-15) and he taught that Jesus ‘will baptise you with the Holy Spirit and fire.’ (Matt 3:1-11) Jesus talked about this baptism in Acts 1:4-5 and we read about the first occurrence of this on the Day of Pentecost in Acts 2:1-4.
One of the characteristics of the baptism of the Holy Spirit is speaking in tongues (or other languages), as Acts 2:5-11 makes plain. We read many more instances of people being baptised in the Spirit in the book of Acts (e.g. Acts 10:34-36, Acts 19:1-6), seeing that this is not the same as becoming a Christian. This is a blessing and a gift which God longs to pour out on us. This gift enables us to be witnesses (Acts 1:8) and gives us strength and power. The challenge for each one of us is to receive the gift of the baptism of the Holy Spirit and then to live in His power every day.