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Pentecostalism: World
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Pentecostalism ... spread rapidly around the world after 1906. The leading European pioneer was Thomas Ball Barratt, a Norwegian Methodist pastor who founded flourishing Pentecostal movements in Norway, Sweden, and England. The German pioneer was the Holiness leader Jonathan Paul. Lewi Pethrus, a convert of Barratt's, began a significant Pentecostal movement in Sweden which originated among Baptists. A strong Pentecostal movement reached Italy through relatives of American immigrants of Italian extraction.
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Pentecostalism was estimated to number around 115 million followers worldwide in 2000; lower estimates place the figure near to 22 million (eg. Cambridge Encyclopedia), while the highest estimates apparently place the figure between 400 and 600 million. The great majority of Pentecostals are to be found in Developing Countries (see the Statistics subsection below), although much of their international leadership is still North American. Pentecostalism is sometimes referred to as the "third force of Christianity." The largest Christian church in the world is the Yoido Full Gospel Church in South Korea, a Pentecostal church. Founded and led by David Yonggi Cho since 1958, it had 780,000 members in 2003. The True Jesus Church, an indigenous church founded by Chinese believers on the mainland but whose headquarters is now in Taiwan.
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Pentecostalism grew from occurrences of glossolalia in the southern Appalachians (1896), Topeka, Kans. (1901), and Los Angeles (1906). Working independently, Holiness movement preachers W R Spurling and A J Tomlinson in the South, Charles Fox Parham in Topeka, and William Seymour in Los Angeles, each convinced of general apostasy in American Christianity, preached and prayed for religious revival. Generally rejected by the older denominations, Pentecostals long remained isolated and were reluctant to organize. Now... several groups belong to the National Association of Evangelicals in the United States and to the World Council of Churches. The largest multicongregational Pentecostal body in the United States is the Assemblies of God, with an inclusive membership of about 2.1 million (1988).
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Pentecostalism has become the fastest growing segment of Christianity. "It is growing at a rate of 13 million a year, or 35,000 a day. With nearly a half billion adherents, it is, after Roman Catholicism, the largest Christian tradition" (Christian History, "The Rise of Pentecostalism," issue no. 58, vol. XVII no. 2, p.3). In addition, the largest church in the world (the Yoi Do Full Gospel Church) is a Pentecostal church in Korea, pastored by David Yongii Cho, with a weekly worship attendance of 240,000. Two Pentecostal Churches in Buenos Aires attract together 150,000 each week (ibid.).
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Pentecostalism was conservatively estimated to number around 120 million followers worldwide in 2000; other estimates place the figure closer to 400 million. The great majority of Pentecostals are to be found in Third World countries (see the Statistics subsection below), although much of their international leadership is still North American. Pentecostalism is sometimes referred to as the "third force of Christianity." The largest Christian church in the world is the Yoido Full Gospel Church in South Korea, a Pentecostal church. Founded and led by David Yonggi Cho since 1958, it had 780 000 members in 2003.
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It was not until 1906... that Pentecostalism achieved worldwide attention through the Azusa Street revival in Los Angeles led by the African-American preacher William Joseph Seymour. He learned about the tongues-attested baptism in a Bible school that Parham conducted in Houston, Texas in 1905. Invited to pastor a black holiness church in Los Angeles in 1906, Seymour opened the historic meeting in April, 1906 in a former African Methodist Episcopal (AME) church building at 312 Azusa Street in downtown Los Angeles.
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