Reflections on... Free Churches (FTS_MC500)

For our last class we took up the topic of the ecclesiological grouping known as the Free Churches, which includes everything from Baptist to Assembly of God, from Nazarene to Quaker. For the sake of ease of discussion, we covered the beginning of the Free Church from at the time of the Reformation, the Anabaptists. Their movement was referred to as the Radical Reformation, because not only did they take up the reforms of Luther and Calvin, but they also went even further to deconstruct the entire structure of the church as it existed. Whereas the Reformation continued to maintain the symbiotic partnership between church and state and the expression of the church as one visible institution, the Radical Reformation broke ties with both the government structures and the visible institution of the church. This movement began with a Bible study led by Ulrich Zwingli, from which many left to form independant communities of re-baptized adults. Zwingli, one of the leading Reformers, distanced himself from these Anabaptists ("ana" meaning "again"). Charactersitc of the Anabaptist and most Free Church movements is, of course, adult baptism, an emphasis on holiness, a central focus on the Scriptures, an understanding of the church as against the world, a more thorough emphasis on the priesthood of all believers, and an understanding of sacraments as merely symbols.

We finished the discussion on Free Churches with a brief overview of the modern global Pentecostal movement. Most Pentecostals would trace their roots to the Azusa street revival of 1906 in Los Angeles, and since then, according to Dr. Bolger, the Pentecostal movement has become the fastest growing social movement anywhere in the world and at any time of history. Pentecostalism is more appropriately described as a movement, since there are many different denominations within Pentecostalism, not to mention all the independant churches scattered throughout the world. The two striking characteristics of the early Pentecostal movement were, of course, the phenomena of speaking in tongues, but also, and perhaps more significantly, the radical racial and gender diversity within the same movement. From the very beginning the poor and rich, men and women, and people from all ethnicities and nationalities were in together in fellowship, in leadership even. According to Dr. Bolger, one could sum up the basic Gospel message of the Pentecostals as: Jesus is your savior, he will baptize you in the Spirit, God heals, and Jesus is coming again. With this basic foundation, Pentecostalism has swept the globe and become the second largest Christian movement next to Roman Catholicism.

This ends my reflection on lectures from my class, Church in Mission. This next week I will be starting a class called, Encountering the City. I plan on blogging through the daily lectures there as well. I hope it proves helpful for all of us!