The Fastest-Growing American Denomination

Attending an Assemblies of God worship service can be like going to a football game.

Church watchers may have suspected as much, but two new statistical studies make it clear: the fastest-growing denomination in America is the Assemblies of God (AG).

In a report the size of a suburban telephone book, a new analysis (CT, Oct. 22, p. 64) shows at least one Assembly of God church in 79 percent of U.S. counties—more coverage than anyone except the United Methodists and the Catholics. The national total (at 1980 census time) of 1.6 million adherents puts this Pentecostal denomination in twelfth place, right behind the American Baptists and ahead of the Churches of Christ.

Meanwhile, the annual Moody Monthly/International Christian Education Association study turned up some even more dramatic figures: six out of the ten fastest-growing Sunday schools in the nation belong to Assemblies. Almost half (24) of the 50 state winners turned out to be AG.

The denomination that spawned Teen Challenge founder David Wilkerson and Korean superchurch pastor Paul Yonggi Cho is home to a variety of other achievers: Reagan aide Herb Ellingwood, TV preacher Jimmy Swaggart, Gordon-Conwell Seminary president Robert Cooley, Interior Secretary James Watt, PTL Club hosts Jim and Tammy Bakker, and Missouri attorney general John Ashcroft. Musicians with Assemblies roots range from the Blackwood Brothers Quartet to Dallas Holm, John Hall, Evie Tornquist Karlsson (who once lost an AG national teen talent contest), Dino Kartsonakis, and New York Metropolitan Opera singer Dale Deusing. Neither their working-class heritage nor their controversial beliefs—speaking in tongues as one evidence of the Spirit’s infilling, divine healing, worship that includes charismatic manifestations—seem to have slowed the pace of the Assemblies of God.

In fact, they may have helped. “Their worship is a very powerful element in their growth,” says Carl F. George, director of the Charles E. Fuller Institute. “It may be informal, but it carries a higher-voltage focus on the presence of God.” Assemblies of God general superintendent Thomas F. Zimmerman agrees. “The first thing that strikes a visitor walking into an Assemblies church is the aliveness,” he says. “People sense that something is moving here; there’s more than lip service, ritual. Throughout the years, we’ve always been called ‘emotional,’ but that isn’t all bad. People want a suitable expression of their internal devotion.”

Thus, attending an Assembly of God worship service is a little like going to a football game—it is a case of suspense within parameters. A general structure has been laid down, but within those guidelines, it is wait-and-see-what happens. Those in charge are adjusting their plans minute by minute to the flow (a favorite Assemblies word) of the meeting.

Newcomers on Sunday morning are often perplexed to open a bulletin and find no order of service. That is intentional. Says Karl Strader, senior pastor of First Assembly in Lakeland, Florida, “The staff and I have a definite order in our minds when we go onto the platform, but we don’t publish it. What we want most is to lead the congregation in praise—the Psalms say God inhabits the praise of his people. The Spirit is drawn almost like a magnet to a praising people, and he quickens them—not just in the resurrection someday, but now. If we’re bound to an agenda, the moving of the Spirit is hindered.” The soft-spoken Strader, who earned two degrees at Bob Jones University before becoming a Pentecostal, came to Lakeland 17 years ago to a congregation of 325. Today, the average Sunday attendance is 3,700.

Tongues speaking, followed by interpretation, is not done to complete a written liturgy. It is done, Pentecostals believe, to move along under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Music is often the lubricant of such worship, and it is not all up-tempo. In recent years Assemblies of God churches have tempered exuberance with moments of stillness; the quiet refrain “Alleluia” was born in a Teen Challenge prayer meeting.

This has made things more hospitable for incoming charismatics from the mainline churches. There is no question that the Assemblies of God have reaped a windfall from both the Jesus movement of the early 1970s and the wider charismatic renewal. “The truth is, we were leveling off in the late fifties,” says Richard Champion, managing editor of the Pentecostal Evangel, the AG, weekly. “Then the Spirit began planting ‘our’ theology and experience in all sorts of unlikely places. If it had happened first among the Nazarenes and the Baptists, we might have been more threatened. As it was, it happened in the National Council groups and the Catholics, and we mainly watched in amazement.”

Superintendent Zimmerman, who is glad to be called a charismatic but dislikes the label classical Pentecostal (“too mildewed”), says, “The Assemblies have been available to give ballast to some of the excesses. Many charismatics, in their first burst of excitement, wanted to kick the institutional habit altogether and be free. Now they’ve lived to see the need for roots and church organization. Some of the exaggerations that cropped up had been faced by us years ago, and we were able to help them see that the Spirit and the Word always agree.”

The Assemblies’ growth, however, is more than a matter of house churches and prayer groups coming in from the cold. Evangelism and church planting continue to be important items on nearly everyone’s agenda. Zimmerman believes the denominational self-study in the mid—1960s was crucial. “We were 50 years old as a movement then,” he recalls, “and a sampling of our constituency revealed some creeping ambiguity about our reason for being.” The result was the 1968 Council on Evangelism in Saint Louis, which declared a three-pronged mission: worship to the Lord, maturation for the saints, and outreach to the world. We then asked whether we were putting our human and financial resources in these three areas. These have been our guiding goals ever since.”

The subsequent success stories are impressive indeed. Between 1971 and 1981, scores of congregations grew at a blistering rate: Springfield, Illinois—from 950 to 5,200 on Sunday morning; San Jose, California—660 to 3,600; New Orleans, Louisiana—335 to 2,400; Joplin, Missouri—95 to 2,450.

Outside observers notice that the Assemblies have not soured on Sunday school. Whereas in many churches the classrooms are only half as full as the sanctuary, AG Sunday school attendance often matches and sometimes even exceeds morning worship. In the denomination’s five largest situations, Sunday school is running at 100 percent, 190 percent, 146 per cent, 96 percent and 116 percent of church attendance respectively.

“They’ve grown because they intended to grow,” says Elmer Towns, dean of Liberty Baptist Seminary, Lynchburg, Virginia, and long-time compiler of Sunday school statistics. “They talk about growth from top to bottom. And they haven’t been afraid to learn from others. They’ve brought me to Springfield [national headquarters in Missouri] three different times to lecture; they’ve reprinted Southern Baptist training materials. Tommy Barnett, who’s built their second-largest Sunday school out in Phoenix, openly admits he learned busing from independent Baptists.”

Carl George adds, “They have a lean system that still rewards achievers. Assemblies of God pastors are not expected to be intellectuals, giving carefully balanced presentations every time they open their mouths. Instead, they must be enthusiastic and warm, vigorous, with strong social leadership skills.” That sometimes makes fellow clergy nervous in their presence, but it apparently meets the average American on comfortable ground.

The Assemblies of God are strongest in the Pacific states—the highest concentration’ is, surprisingly, in Alaska, where 5.3 percent of churchgoers are AG. Next come Oregon (4.9 percent) and Washington (4.7 percent), followed by Arkansas, Oklahoma, then Montana, Nevada, Missouri, Idaho, Colorado, California, and Florida. In other words, the denomination tilts west.

General secretary Joseph Flower (a distant cousin of Zimmerman) points to a sociological explanation. “When people move, they are more open to new things, new associations.” AG growth consultant David Torgerson says, “Churches grow best in populations that change. Outgoing congregations flourish there. Maybe that explains why First Assembly in Fairbanks is the largest church in town.”

Evangelism in the Pentecostal church has changed drastically since early in the century, when the movement began to grow. “In the early days,” says Flower, son of one of the founding fathers, “every church had revival meetings that sometimes lasted for weeks. Now they don’t usually run more than three or four nights. Some churches have formal home visitation programs, but the bigger mode of contact is media. CBN and PTL have generated tremendous interest and inquiries. Some churches have more than doubled as a result.”

Assemblies of God church planting is less a matter of master planning than of individual burden and district encouragement. “Nobody sits down in Springfield and says, ‘Let’s start another church in Roanoke,’ ” explains Torgerson. “The fellowship is much too autonomous for that. All we do is fan the flame of the Great Commission. It’s up to the districts to decide where, who, and when.”

What happens is basically entrepreneurial. A would-be pioneer—usually young—steps forward and claims a divine leading to start a congregation in his area. If the district officials agree, they endorse the enterprise, help find a meeting place, often collateralize the mortgage at building time, and provide published materials free for six months. Salary subsidies average three years, with a descending scale.

When the new church chooses a name, it may not include “Assembly of God.” Denominational flag waving has slacked in recent years, with 8 of the 13 largest congregations (according to Sunday school totals) calling themselves things like Calvary Temple, Willamette Christian Center, Calvary Community Church, and Crossroads Cathedral. That sometimes confuses listeners to “Revivaltime” (aired on 541 stations) when they try to follow the sign-off suggestion to “go to the Assembly of God church near you,” but it also removes a barrier to many who dislike partisan labels.

Once they arrive, they are likely to hear simple, fervent, Bible-centered preaching. “God’s Word, the Bible, is our final rule of faith and practice,” says Zimmerman, in reply to occasional criticisms that Pentecostals are ruled by experience. “We stand unashamedly on that premise. The Holy Spirit will never take us beyond or outside the bounds of Scripture.”

Visitors are frequently referred to Scripture to decipher ecstatic happenings during worship. Robert Schmidgall, whose Naperville, Illinois, congregation has grown from zero to 1,900 in 15 years, is one Assemblies pastor who uses almost a stock explanation after prophecy or tongues with interpretation: “Just a word for those who might not understand—1 Corinthians 12–14 tells us about several special gifts the Holy Spirit has given to edify the church, and what you just heard was an example of one of them. If you have further questions, we’d be glad to talk with you afterward.”

Far from being embarrassed, most Assemblies of God people are eager for evidence of the supernatural. “Miracles are God’s advertising,” says Dave Sumrall, missionary pastor in Manila. (The Assemblies are five times as large overseas as in the U.S.) Stories of healing and other divine interventions pepper AG conversation, sometimes verified by doctors, sometimes not. Both valid miracles and wishful thinking succeed in piquing the interest of outsiders.

Sometimes the desire for health and well-being goes to questionable limits, as in the “positive confession” teaching of independent author/speakers Kenneth Hagin and Kenneth Copeland, among others. They teach that God responds primarily to our faith, especially when it is verbalized; thus, affluence and health are available to all sincere Christians who will declare that they have it. The teaching is something of a siren song to Assemblies laity, despite a 1980 general presbytery warning against “statements which make it appear that man is sovereign and God is the servant.” AG theologian Gordon Fee, New Testament scholar at Gordon-Conwell, was more blunt in a 1979 Evangel article when he called this teaching an “alien gospel.” Said Fee: “In the new order brought about by Jesus, wealth is an irrelevancy.”

Throughout the ranks, there is an intense desire to stay on course, to keep the momentum rolling, and not to put too many kettles on the denominational stove. “As church bodies age, they take on more and more good things,” says Zimmerman, “and they diffuse their energy.”

What lies ahead for the fastest-growing denomination in the nation? A changing of the guard, for one thing. Thomas Zimmerman will be 73 when his current term expires at the end of 1985. He is widely praised by such leaders as Billy Melvin, executive director of the National Association of Evangelicals, who calls him a gifted administrator. “He has been committed to making the Assemblies part of the evangelical mainstream, and he’s pulled it off.” Zimmerman, as head of NAE’S largest member denomination, served a term as NAE president.

It remains to be seen whether the Assemblies network of ten colleges and a graduate school can survive the chill winds of rising costs and student aid cutbacks. Valley Forge Christian College outside Philadelphia faces the stiffest gale. Only one of the schools escaped an enrollment decline this past fall. Further erosion could affect the future supply of ministerial leadership.

At the grassroots level, the greatest challenge is to indoctrinate the new wave of members. “A weakness of our current growth spiral,” says David Torgerson, “is too much rejoicing over the attendance, the cash flow, and the people at the altar without enough grounding in the Scriptures. We have to train more regarding the full significance of the work of the Holy Spirit.” As Carl George sees it, “The Assemblies have not had to be responsible for the Christian formation of many of their newcomers. But they will in the future.”

Such a problem is, of course, entirely welcomed by the denomination’s 24,000 credentialed ministers. The veterans among them are glad to be done with the isolation of the past, when many Christians considered them a cult. The current upsurge is explained in part by the fact that since 1970, many non-Pentecostals have adopted the policy of 1 Corinthians 14:39—“Forbid not to speak with tongues.” Meanwhile, the Assemblies of God seem to have rediscovered the next verse: “Let all things be done decently and in order.” The combination of those two adjustments has unleashed a growth curve that shows no signs of leveling off.

DEAN MERRILL

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