The following post was put on New Faithchild forum, a Oneness Pentecostal discussion board. Apparently they did not like it because it was deleted within minutes. So I share with you the text I wrote and the link to the original thread there. Perhaps we can discuss the end of the Pentecostal movement here.
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FCF: Has the Pentecostal Movement died?
http://www.newfaithchildforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=9851
The Pentecostal movement by its nature is unstable, and thus, is not sustainable without an influx from stable people coming in from more stable churches that are liturgical and orderly. Pentecostals cannot produce a Bible nor produce any serious or coherent theology, or seminary or serious theologians. They have to borrow from other churches their very foundations. The best defenders of Pentecostalism in many places are apostate Catholics. Why? Because the Catholics (or Lutherans, or Anglicans) produce a high degree of religious order and these people come into the Pentecostal movement and ironically sustain the otherwise unsustainable.
What one sees when there are people leaving liturgical churches to go to Pentecostal churches is not that they are leaving their former churches; they are leaving Christianity. Pentecostalism is merely some purgatory on the way to atheism. Oneness Pentecostalism is the closest to atheism of all the sects because of the rejection of the Trinity. Almost all Ex-Oneness Pentecostals become atheists.
So, yes, the movement is dying, and it is only being sustained by an influx of people from other churches giving temporary life to the movement. What you are seeing is the decline of Christianity, as one looks at the bigger picture.
All those big plans and ideas about building churches in the mid to late 1990’s are crumbling in the dust. The 21st Century has thus started a serious trend decline and stagnation in most cases of Pentecostalism, and specifically Oneness Pentecostalism.
The buildings are not being built any more. The UPC and other anti-Trinitarian Pentecostals are fragmented and torn by internal hatred and chaos, of which these forums are a microcosm. The AOG is practically dead.
The question is where will Pentecostals go from here? They tend to reject structure and serious institutions to sustain the movement, and thus, if they do not create stability, they will eventually completely die off within about 50 years.
JPI
2 comments:
What is written in this post absolutely confirms what I have seen from experience. Nearly every one of my friends who has become an atheist or an agnostic has left the church through Pentecostalism.
There seems to be a drifting away from liturgical settings in the Christian church nowadays, not just in the pentecostal arena. There seems to be an increasing appeal for emotional Christianity. It hasn't gotten to an epidemic level like Pentecostalism, but I don't like where it is going.
I recently signed up for RCIA. I have always felt a sort of pull in the direction of the Catholic Church. I hope I am making the right decision. But as far as the Lutheran Church is concerned, I have quite a bit of confidence in it; at least, in most if not all of the non-ELCA churches, although there are ELCA churches that are good too.
I hate to say it but you are correct: only the stable people with money keep this mess alive. As the straight thinkers in the board rooms make desicisions about the incorparation (all upc churchs are incorparated)the useful idiots dance in the isles. This thing would crash and burn if we did not have laywers and professional people keeping propped up.
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