Show Notes
In this episode of Peaceable and Kind, Derek Vreeland concludes the Holy Convergence series by exploring the gift of the Pentecostal tradition: reality. More than a theological system or denominational identity, Pentecostal reality is an awareness that the Holy Spirit is actively present and at work in the world today. Rooted in the Azusa Street Revival of 1906, the Pentecostal movement reminds the church that God’s kingdom is not merely something we believe in, but something we experience through the living presence of the Holy Spirit.
Beginning with the remarkable story of William Seymour and the Azusa Street Revival, Derek traces the Wesleyan-Holiness roots of Pentecostalism, the emergence of Spirit baptism, and the movement’s global impact. Along the way, he reflects on both the strengths and weaknesses of the Pentecostal tradition, from its early witness to racial reconciliation and expectation of God’s miraculous work to later distortions associated with the prosperity gospel.
The episode concludes by arguing that the greatest gift of Pentecostalism is not speaking in tongues or miraculous gifts, but an awareness of God’s active presence that produces love. The authentic evidence of the Holy Spirit is a life marked by the fruit of the Spirit, empowering believers to love God, love their neighbors, and participate in God’s work of renewing the world.
**Key Takeaways **
Pentecostalism emerged from the Azusa Street Revival in Los Angeles in 1906.
William Seymour’s leadership combined humility, holiness, and a deep dependence on the Holy Spirit.
Early Pentecostalism grew out of the Wesleyan-Holiness movement.
Pentecostal reality is the awareness that God’s Spirit is actively present and working in the world today.
The Holy Spirit empowers believers for witness, ministry, and Christlike living.
Expectancy for God’s miraculous work should always remain grounded in God’s character, not prosperity formulas.
The greatest evidence of the Spirit’s work is the fruit of the Spirit, especially love.
Every Christian tradition contributes something valuable to the church, and Pentecostalism reminds us to live with continual awareness of God’s presence.
**Books Mentioned **
Pentecostal Spirituality: A Passion for the Kingdom — Steven J. Land
**Scriptures Mentioned **
Acts 2:1–4
Acts 2:5–11
Matthew 28:20
John 16:7
Zechariah 4:6
1 Corinthians 13:1–3, 13
Galatians 5:22–23
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Transcript
Welcome back.
Back to another episode of Peaceable and Kind.
I am your host, Derek Vreland.
Thank you for joining me for this episode.
And if you are new to Peaceable and Kind, welcome.
Glad to have you with us.
If you haven’t already, subscribe to Peaceable and Kind wherever you are listening to this podcast and leave a rating, a review.
I know a number of you have been listening because you’ve been telling me that you have been listening.
But you need to tell the world, and the way that you can do that is by leaving us a rating or review.
I would appreciate that so much.
Well, this episode is important because we’re coming to the end of a journey.
We have been spending now, this will be eight episodes.
Exploring a holy convergence.
This has been such a fun project for me because I’ve done a lot of self-reflection
Understanding how God has been at work in my own spiritual journey, but this has also been a reflection on how God has been at work in our church.
You know, I have this podcast and I write books, but the podcast and the writing for me just flows out of my primary calling.
And that is that of a shepherd, of a pastor.
I love the church.
I love the whole church.
I love big churches and little churches.
I love churches that meet in storefronts, in old cathedrals, multi-site churches.
I’m just, I’m, I love the whole church.
And I know that some people, and maybe this is you, have had negative experiences in the church, negative experiences with
Church members or church leaders.
And for that, I’m I’m deeply sorry.
It hasn’t been my experience, however.
Now, as a pastor
I’ve had difficult seasons.
I’ve pastored difficult people.
And no, I’m not going to name any names.
But overall, my experience of the church has been a positive one.
And honestly, even if I wasn’t called to be a pastor, I’d still be a church guy.
I believe in the church.
I believe that the church is what Jesus is doing today.
When Peter made his declaration of faith,
When he said to Jesus, you are the Christ, the Messiah, the King, the only Son of God.
When he made that confession, Jesus said in response, Upon this rock, I will build my church.
Now, our Catholic brothers and sisters will say that that rock is Saint Peter himself.
I tend to believe that the rock is the rock of revelation.
That Jesus is Christ, that he’s the King, that He’s the King of Kings.
But what Jesus said to Peter was that he would be building his church.
And I don’t think Jesus has stopped.
I think he is still building his church
And the entire heart for me in this series I’m calling a holy convergence
Is not only to process my own spiritual journey and identify the traditions that have shaped the church where I serve as a pastor.
But I want your love for the church to grow.
I want your love and appreciation for other Christians of other traditions to love and grow because I want to walk
in fellowship, harmony, and unity with all Christians who will hold to
the ancient creeds of the faith.
I mean if you believe the Nicene Creed, you’re my brother, you’re my sister.
And we’re gonna disagree, I’m sure, on other points of doctrine theology.
Um, but I want you to have a posture of openness towards Christians of other traditions.
I’ve done that over the years.
to a great benefit.
I think I’ve I’ve grown so much because I have learned to love Christians who aren’t like me
So in our final episode in this mini-series, A Holy Convergence, I want to talk about Pentecostal reality.
And as with previous episodes, I’m going to be reading.
I want to be r I wrote this out as as sort of a manuscript.
You know, some of our podcast episodes, I’m just
I have a few notes and I’m just making stuff up.
Um But I I I’ve written out what I want to communicate because there’s a lot to talk about when it comes to the Pentecostal charismatic tradition.
And so I’ve written it out, so it’s going to have that kind of flow.
I’ll pause and stop and interject when other things come to me.
But in talking about Pentecostal reality,
I want to begin by telling a story, by telling the story of the launch of the Pentecostal tradition
Because in my list of seven, Pentecostal reality is at the end of the list because Pentecostalism or the Pentecostal charismatic tradition.
Is the newest tradition on the scene?
It it only goes back just over a hundred years.
Well, I guess a hundred and twenty years now.
So I want to begin by talking about Pentecostal reality by telling you this story.
In 1906 in Los Angeles, God poured out the Holy Spirit on a small mission church where a group of Christians was tarrying, waiting on the Spirit to come
What happened over the next three years at the Azusa Street Mission was an awakening greater than anything experienced in 18th century colonial America.
Around the preaching ministries of Jonathan Edwards or George Whitfield.
This awakening gave birth to the most recent of the seven Christian traditions that form our holy convergence.
Today, there are approximately 676 million Pentecostal charismatic Christians around the world
The ripple effects of the Azusa Street Revival continue to shape global Christianity in profound ways, particularly in the global south.
William Seymour, an unassuming one-eyed black holiness preacher from Louisiana, the son of former slaves, led the Azusa Street Mission.
They saw themselves as an apostolic faith movement.
While raised Baptist, Seymour became persuaded by holiness theology which would shape the rest of his ministry.
The early 19th century holiness movement emphasized that salvation included the Holy Spirit’s ongoing work of sanctifying Christians.
Building on Wesleyan theology, many within that movement taught that Christians should seek a definite experience
of entire sanctification in which the heart was cleansed of sinful motives and filled with perfect love for God and neighbor.
Those in the Holiness Movement sought to live a life marked by wholehearted devotion to God and Christ-like character.
Growing out of the soil of a Wesleyan context, the Holiness movement laid the theological groundwork for the emergence of Pentecostalism.
When Seymour and early Pentecostal Christian leaders led people to experience the baptism in the Holy Spirit, they were building on categories the Holiness Movement had already established.
At Azusa, Seymour led with remarkable holiness and humility.
Eyewitnesses often described him praying with his head hidden inside a wooden crate
refusing to draw attention to himself while urging people to seek God for salvation, sanctification, and the baptism in the Holy Spirit.
The Holiness Movement commonly described entire sanctification as baptism in or with the Holy Spirit.
But Seymour became convinced that believers received Spirit baptism as a separate and subsequent experience to sanctification.
He taught a threefold process, three works of grace, with three logically distinct experiences.
Justification, an experience of forgiveness and new birth.
Sanctification, an experience of being perfected in love
And three, baptism with the Holy Ghost, an experience of empowerment
For Seymour and the emerging apostolic faith movement, quote, the baptism with the Holy Ghost is a gift of power upon the sanctified life, unquote.
The innovative doctrine preached at Azusa was speaking in tongues as the biblical evidence that a person had been baptized in or with the Holy Spirit.
This evidence was consistent with the experience of followers of Jesus on the day of Pentecost, according to Acts 2.
And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.
That’s Acts 2:4 in the King James Version.
Speaking in a language unknown to the speaker became a key foundational doctrine for classic Pentecostalism.
While tongues became a distinguishing characteristic of the movement, the early Pentecostals saw themselves as returning to the faith of the apostles, as demonstrated in the Book of Acts and the rest of the New Testament.
They identified this apostolic faith as the full gospel, announcing the good news of Jesus as Savior.
baptizer in the Holy Spirit, healer, and soon coming king.
The response to preaching the full gospel at the Azusa Street Mission
reflected the same multi ethnic reality that marked the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in Acts two, where Luke deliberately emphasizes the crowd’s ethnic and linguistic diversity.
Jews and converts to the Jewish faith, people from Persia to Rome, from North Africa to Arabia, all heard the gospel proclaimed in their own languages
The outpouring of the Holy Spirit recorded in Acts two was both a miracle of speech, that is, speaking in tongues, and the first public sign that the gospel aims to unite people from every culture and language.
The Azusa Street Revival saw the same kind of multi ethnic phenomena.
According to Pentecostal historian Vincent Sinon, at the Azusa Revival there was a total absence of racial discrimination.
Blacks, whites, Chinese, and even Jews attended side by side to hear Seymour preach.
Eventually what began as a local revival
in a local black church became of interest to people all over the nation, regardless of race.
In a short while the majority of attendants were white
But always there was complete integration of the races and the services.
One man exclaiming, the color line was washed away in the blood.
Now that’s a complete quote from Sinon, but he’s quoting Frank Bartleman, his famous account of the Azusa Street Revival, saying the color line was washed away in the blood.
So, the outpouring of the Spirit at the Azusa Street mission, which included expressions of spiritual gifts such as speaking in tongues, brought together people with vastly different backgrounds.
Seymour learned this doctrine of speaking in tongues as the biblical evidence of spirit baptism from Charles Parham, a holiness minister from Kansas.
In nineteen oh five, Parham started a Bible school in Houston, where Seymour lived at the time.
Seymour eagerly wanted to attend, but Jim Crow’s segregation laws prohibited blacks and whites from sitting in the same classroom together.
Parham permitted Seymour to attend class, but he had to sit in the hallway and listen to Parham teach through a crack in the door.
After the Azusa Street Revival began, Parham visited at Seymour’s invitation and did not like what he saw.
The times of worship were unorganized, noisy, and chaotic, and he was appalled by black people and white people worshiping together
Let me pause from what I’m reading for just a moment to say that the way the division between Parham and Seymour happened is somewhat
Nuanced in the way it’s described by different historians.
Some historians don’t draw out the racial implications as much as others
But uh James Goff, who uh wrote a book in nineteen eighty eight on Charles Parham, I think for most Pentecostal scholars, Goff’s work is considered the the definitive
uh biography of Parham is pretty open and honest about Parham’s racism, uh racial discrimination
There’s a quote in Goff’s book where he’s quoting Parham describing his experience at the Azusa Street Mission during the revival, where Parham wrote, and I quote,
Men and women, whites and blacks, knelt together or fell across one another.
Frequently a white woman, perhaps of wealth and culture, could be seen thrown back into the arms of a big buck.
and then Parham uses the N word, and held tightly thus as she shivered and shook in freak imitation of Pentecost.
Horrible, awful shame
So for James Goff to show us what Parham was thinking when he sees
uh what’s happening at the Azusa Street Revival, we see that for Parham, his denouncement of the revival was in part
Because he saw this emotional expressiveness as not the real outpouring of the Holy Spirit.
He called it an imitation, he called it a fraud
Uh so that was true.
He denounced the revival in part because he thought in its emotional excess this is not true.
Pentecost.
But
He also was deeply racist.
And I don’t think you can deny that.
Um Alan Anderson, um a modern uh Pentecostal scholar.
uh wrote an article um that’s in the um NUMA, the Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies back in in 2005, where I think he really draws out how deeply ingrained
Parham’s racism really, really was.
Okay, that’s a bit of an aside.
Let’s go back to the story.
And so Parham condemned the Azusa Street Revival and continued to denounce the teaching and
practices of the Christian seekers there.
A racial fracture had been introduced, which would eventually solidify into two different
Pentecostal denominations, the assemblies of God, which was primarily white, and the Church of God in Christ, which was predominantly black
The fracture would be healed, however, in 1994, as leaders from both the assemblies of God and the church of
God and Christ came together for a three-day set of meetings seeking reconciliation.
So this has been called the Memphis Miracle, and it was beautiful.
And it has led to much racial reconciliation within the Pentecostal tradition.
And for that, I’m grateful.
This emphasis on the history of racism and reconciliation in Pentecostalism highlights the enduring gift from this tradition, and that is Pentecostal reality.
Now, Pentecostal theology, rooted in the Wesleyan holiness tradition, explores the truth of God’s presence, which remains active on earth through the Holy Spirit.
This is what I mean by Pentecostal reality.
It is the confidence that the world we can see is not all that there is.
Every day we live in two realities at once, the physical world we experience through our senses, and the unseen world where the Holy Spirit is at work leading
comforting, healing, empowering, and transforming the people of God.
In his important book, Pentecostal Spirituality, A Passion for the Kingdom,
Stephen Land argues that Pentecostalism is a way of seeing the world, a spirituality shaped by the living presence of the Holy Spirit and driven by a longing for the kingdom of God.
Pentecostals see themselves as people of the Spirit, the third member of the Trinity, who makes our experience of God a lived reality.
Pentecostal theology is, according to Land, a discerning reflection upon this living reality.
That phrase captures the heartbeat of Pentecostal spirituality.
The Spirit awakens us to a world where God is present and active among the people of God.
and sends them into the world proclaiming and demonstrating the kingdom of God.
Land adds, for Pentecostals the Holy Spirit is the agent of the kingdom of God
Christ is the king or regent, and the Holy Spirit is the active reigning presence.
Pentecostal reality is the experience of God’s rule and reign at the intersection of intellectual beliefs, embodied practices, and the heart’s affections.
Awareness of the Holy Spirit is cultivated through lives of prayer and worship gatherings for praise and worship.
Emotional expressiveness typifies Pentecostal worship.
While some worshipers may indulge in the euphoria of a heightened emotional state,
At its best, Pentecostal worship services pull together what they believe about who God is with practices like singing, raising hands, and kneeling
as their hearts are set ablaze with a genuine love for God.
The wholeness created by the integrated nature of Pentecostal reality emboldens worshippers to remain open
To the surprising works of God.
We believe God is ever-present.
Jesus promised to be with us until the end of the age, and he promised to send us the Holy Spirit
The members of the Trinity remain present with the people of God, but the manifest presence of the Spirit can come in unexpected ways to comfort or convict
The Spirit can come to empower us and transform us often in surprising ways.
Hey friends, I want to pause this episode for just a moment to let you know that Resurrection 8 Less.
Lessons on how God restores us.
The third and final book in the God in the Neighborhood Bible study series is out now.
Go to the show notes for ordering information.
Evangelical energy and intentionality can easily morph into an addiction to willpower and self-sufficiency, both of which can shipwreck our faith
Pentecostal reality reminds us of the prophetic message given to Zerubbabel, not by might, not by power, but by my spirit, says the Lord of hosts.
The Christian life is not a matter of willpower, but a willingness to open up to the Spirit’s power
Pentecostals recognize the otherness of the Spirit’s power.
God the Holy Spirit is unlike anything in the created world, and so they live their lives set apart from the world.
Some early Pentecostals practiced passivism in the spirit of Anabaptist peacemaking because of their passion for the kingdom of God, which was distinct from the kingdoms of this world
Their conviction in the otherness and presence of God’s kingdom at work on the earth also included the expectation for miracles, healing miracles in particular.
During the nineteen fifties, evangelist Orl Roberts brought Pentecostalism to the masses by televising his healing crusades held under a large tent that seated thousands
He often taught that people needed to expect a miracle if they wanted it to happen.
Expect a miracle became a well-known slogan in Robert’s Ministry of Healing.
This expectancy typifies Pentecostal spirituality.
It serves as a healthy corrective
To the ever-present temptation of cynicism and apathy that can drain the life out of the church
An attitude of expectancy is helpful, but as the Ministry of Oral Roberts continued, he added two other principles to expectancy.
By the 1970s, he taught the principle of seed faith based on three key ideas.
Number one, God is our source.
Number two, plant a seed of faith.
Number three, expect a miracle.
While these principles may appear helpful.
Roberts increasingly applied them to financial miracles, laying important groundwork for what became known as the prosperity gospel.
Pentecostal and charismatic televangelists of the nineteen eighties and nineties transformed this posture of expectancy into a formula for material gain.
What began as an honest invitation to trust God for his miraculous provision was recast as a guarantee of financial abundance.
Producing one of the most damaging distortions of the Christian gospel in modern times
There is so much more I could say about the prosperity gospel, and I don’t want this portion of my discussion of Pentecostal reality to
Cause you to think that all Pentecostals subscribe to the prosperity gospel because they don’t
And I feel as a graduate of Oral Roberts University, that was the Pentecostal Seminary where I did my training, I just feel obligated.
To say something about the awfulness of the prosperity gospel.
I don’t want to be critical and negative.
As I have explored these seven traditions, I have tried to
present them all in their best possible light.
I’ve avoided for the most part criticisms.
But this one it kinda hits close to home because I have a diploma
That bears the name, Oral Roberts.
And I so lament the destruction of the prosperity gospel.
It has been exported to the world, primarily through Christian television, and it’s destroying the church.
It’s destroying the faith.
It is, in my opinion, anathema.
And I just deeply, deeply regret.
And I understand the development of the prosperity gospel because when
Orl Roberts, who really is the pioneer of what we know now as the prosperity gospel, when he was first teaching on prosperity in the nineteen sixties,
Well, he defined prosperity this way.
This is from a little booklet called My Favorite Bible Scriptures, which is a funny title.
My favorite Bible scriptures.
Well.
Scripture and the Bible is the same thing.
But anyway, we won’t we won’t discuss the title.
But in the in this little booklet, my favorite Bible, Scriptures.
Uh he defines prosperity as, and I quote, the possession of everything you need for yourself and your loved ones, with enough surplus to give to those who need help.
If you have everything you need with some left over for the poor, that is prosperity.
Now that’s a definition of prosperity that I can get behind, and I bet you get behind that as well
Because I do believe that peace, shalom, well being
Is a well-being that affects every part of our life, including our financial condition.
I do believe that God wants to raise up the poor out of their poverty
And I do believe in a prosperity that every individual has enough to meet their needs and enough surplus to share with others in need.
And I just wish that Oral Roberts had just
kept it right there had had this whole seed faith business just defined prosperity that way, we would have been okay.
But
the temptation of greed and avarice, they’re always around.
And so what has become the prosperity gospel, which I do lay a lot of the blame at the feet of Earl Roberts
Is something I think all Christians need to denounce as not the true gospel.
But if you can, try to set aside Oral Roberts’ teaching of seed faith
uh from what he brought to Pentecostal spirituality, what I’m calling Pentecostal reality, and that is a real expectancy for the power and presence of God
Um when I hear old Robert’s teaching on healing and the healing ministry, I just wanna amen and and and shout like the Pentecostals do.
Uh but when he starts talking about seed faith and and prosperity.
at least towards the end of his ministry, I uh I just sigh.
All right.
Uh let’s wrap things up here in our discussion of Pentecostal reality.
So back to Earl Roberts.
Setting aside the destructive excesses of the prosperity gospel, recognizing God as our source, sowing seeds of faith through acts of trust
and expecting God to work miraculously, all fit naturally within a Pentecostal reality
And at the heart of Pentecostal reality, and for me the essence of all Christian spirituality is love.
The goal of this holy convergence is that we may be transformed by love into a people of love.
Known for how we love God and how we love one another.
Each of these seven traditions connects us
In some way to the love of God demonstrated in Jesus and made known to us by the Holy Spirit
Orthodox mystery beckons us to explore the God who is by nature pure and unmixed love.
Catholic beauty conditions us to behold the radiance of love.
Anglican liturgy gives us the form in prayer and worship so we can grow in love.
Prost and Audacity emboldens us to love the truth and sacrifice for it.
Anabaptist peacemaking shows us the way to demonstrate God’s love for all, including our enemies.
Evangelical energy gives us the strength to pursue love and to be transformed by it
And Pentecostal reality shows us to see the greatness of God’s love at the center of it all
As the Apostle Paul wrote, if I speak in the tongues of mortals and angels, but do not have love,
I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal, and if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge,
And if I have all faith so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.
If I give away all my possessions,
And if I hand over my body, so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
And now faith.
Hope and love abide these three, and the greatest of these is love.
Let’s return to Azusa Street in the early Pentecostal Revival
After his disappointing split with Charles Parham, William Seymour carried on preaching and praying and seeking God.
They continued to worship together as a multi-ethnic community and welcomed thousands upon thousands of Christian brothers and sisters seeking all that God had to offer
News of the revival had spread in part because Seymour edited and published a newsletter called The Apostolic Faith.
Midway through the revival, Seymour wrote this in a section of the newsletter entitled Questions Answered.
What is the real evidence that a man or woman has received the baptism with the Holy Ghost?
Divine love, which is charity.
Charity is the Spirit of Jesus.
They will have the fruits of the Spirit, Galatians five twenty two.
The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long suffering.
gentleness, goodness, meekness, faith, temperance.
Against such thing there is no law.
And they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its affections and lusts.
This is the real Bible evidence in their daily walk and conversation and the outward manifestations.
speaking in tongues and the signs following, casting out devils, laying hands on the sick, and the sick being healed, and the love of God for souls increasing in their hearts
So here, Seymour writes that the real evidence that a person has received spirit baptism is love.
That’s the real evidence.
Now he talks about outward manifestations like speaking in tongues, but the real evidence is divine love.
And so I’m not Pentecostal any more than I’m a Catholic, an Anabaptist, or an evangelical, though I have been deeply influenced by each of these.
And by all seven traditions in this holy convergence.
I was trained at a Pentecostal seminary, and for that I am deeply grateful.
So while I am not Pentecostal according to the theological
distinctiveness of that tradition.
I do, however, wholeheartedly agree with my brother William Seymour in what he wrote about the real evidence of the baptism in the Holy Spirit.
In our present-day angry and polarized world, perhaps the greatest evidence of the Spirit’s work?
Is the same as it has always been, the work of love and all the fruit of the Spirit
And if we want to see kindness and peace in our world, then we need the love of God to work in the hearts of all Christians.
From all denominations and theological traditions, so that we can listen to one another, learn
from one another, accept one another, and by the power of the Spirit, love one another.
This, I believe, we gather from the very essence and heart of Pentecostal reality.
And with that, I’ll bring this episode to a close.
Thank you for joining me for this one.
Go in peace and be kind
This transcript was generated with AI and may contain errors.