Hi all. I suppose you could call me a ‘Practicing Pentecostal’. I attend a church in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne, Australia.
A few thoughts:
Firstly, you can’t think of ‘Pentecostalism’ in the same way as you can think of ‘Presbyterianism’ or ‘Roman Catholicism’. ‘Pentecostal’ does not refer to a single church body, or even a unified body of doctrine, but rather a certain style of church, emphasising the outward expression of the Holy Spirit including glossalalia, prophesy, and the miraculous, and which does not affiliate itself with a more formal church structure. Pentecostal churches sometimes do form denominational bodies proper (most famously the Assemblies of God), but sometimes don’t, more commonly forming smaller church movements. So when we say something like ‘Pentecostals believe X’ we generally mean ‘Pentecostals
tend to believe X’.
As far as belief in the Trinity goes, I’m yet to bump into ‘Oneness Pentecostalism’ which denies the Trinity. The AoG statement of Faith, (the AoG are the biggest unified body of Pentecostals)
ag.org/top/beliefs/truths_condensed.cfm clearly hold to Trinitarianism, as does my own church:
c3iglobal.org/ (check out the ‘who we are’ section).
About glossolalia, ‘Praying in Tounges’ - I have heard that some churches (maybe even the AoG) at one stage did advocate glossolalia as a nescessary sign of one’s salvation. If so, they’ve changed their position: ‘WE BELIEVE…the Baptism in the Holy Spirit is a Special Experience Following Salvation’
‘Baptism in the Spirit’ is something that’s supposed to happen as a separate event that comes after salvation. Glossolalia is supposed to be a sign of Spirit baptism, not salvation.
Now, emotionalism. I actually have no problem with big, flashy, high-production worship services. The objection is that such things could be manipulative, that they almost force certain emotions on people. To my mind, that’s the whole point. Because the illusion, the falsehood, is not in the moment of rapture that the music and the atmosphere encourage, the illusion is in the everyday humdrum that makes us forget that we have every reason to rejoice. When I go to church, one of the things I want is to be reminded, not only by words but by music and fellowship, and sometimes by dance and drama and performance that God is awesome and loving and good and that things are going to be better than anything I can imagine.
Of course, after years in the church, I can easily float through such things without engaging at all - worship still requires an act of will.
The real problem with Pentecostals, as a rule, is that we’ve got a horrible anti-intelectual streak. The error is not the we emphasise feeling and emotion, but that we denigrate good doctrine. I do bump into unitarian pentecostals, but in thouroughly trinitarian churches! The problem often is that not enough is done to teach the essential doctrines of the faith. This unfortunately goes hand-in-hand with a frequent
silliness displayed in Pentecostal churches, hence the stereotypes.
