Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, April 17, 1993 TAG: 9304170052
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: C-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JOSH LEMIEUX ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: SPRINGFIELD, MO. LENGTH: Medium
ASSEMBLIES OF GOD REACHING OUT TO THE POOR NATIONS
Sex and money scandals involving Assemblies of God preachers Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Bakker haven't slowed the ambitious outreach plans of the denomination.Experts say the Springfield-based Pentecostal church is finding fertile ground in many poor countries for its evangelical fervor.
"They have a very sizable missionary contingency," said Edith Blumhofer, project director at the Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals in Wheaton, Ill. "They are a presence to be reckoned with."
Success in countries from Asia to Latin America to Africa has made the Assemblies easily the largest Pentecostal denomination in the world, Blumhofer said, although she questioned some Assemblies' growth statistics and said its national numbers have been flat since the late 1980s.
The Assemblies counts 2.2 million followers in the United States and more than 22 million in 128 countries.
Loren Triplett, executive director of the church's foreign missions, said the denomination, founded in 1914, always has pursued "The Great Commission, which was the command of Christ to go to all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature."
"That's 5.5 billion creatures today, but we take that literally," said Triplett, whose foreign missions division reported 1991 income of $96 million. "It's one of the easy commands of the Lord to understand."
Triplett sees the breakup of communism as new turf for Assemblies missionaries, who have been working in previously taboo places such as Russia and Mongolia.
Pentecostalism, a group of Protestant evangelicals, generally focuses less on theology and more on a personal relationship with God and tangible manifestations of the Holy Spirit. Essential Assemblies beliefs include faith healing and glossolalia - praying in unknown tongues.
Margaret Poloma, a sociology professor at the University of Akron who has written a book on the Assemblies, said spirit-filled faiths in poorer countries make Pentecostalism an accessible conversion to Christianity.
"It doesn't tell these people that the spirit world isn't real," Poloma said. "It says, `Yes, the spirit world is real and here's what's good and what's bad about it."'
Martin E. Marty, a professor at the University of Chicago Divinity School, said the message is appealing for many long-neglected people in Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa and other impoverished places.
"They want the experience of God now, and that's what the Assemblies of God offers," Marty said. "If you're in Guatemala or Namibia, it's almost limitless the potential of people to join you."
But many converts leave the churches as rapidly as they join, yet tend to remain on the congregational rolls, Marty said.
"If you investigate further, you find they have tremendous back-door losses," said Marty, who conceded that overcounting is common among many other denominations, as well.
Still, the Assemblies are well-poised to reach Third World people looking for a better economic lot, just as their churches in the United States shifted from a mainly blue-collar to middle-class congregation during the 1970s, Marty said.
Triplett said a pastor can reach out in poorer countries - with small radio stations, for example - on a much lower budget than in the developed world.
"We believe that the Bible teaches that 10 percent of your income belongs to God. If we had everybody cooperating, we wouldn't be scrambling so much to pay the bills around here," Triplett said with a smile during an interview at the sprawling headquarters.
But Triplett cited a rule of thumb for poorer countries: If 10 families give 10 percent of their income to the church, then the pastor can live as well as the average of the 10 families.
Blumhofer, an historian at Wheaton College, said Assemblies churches have grown impressively in Brazil, Korea and the Philippines but have been slower to attract followers in other places such as India.
Triplett and the scholars agree that a chief ingredient to the Assemblies' worldwide success has been allowing local rule at national and congregational levels.
Marty said the diversity and local rule allowed Assemblies churches to survive highly publicized scandals of Bakker and Swaggart, once the denomination's most visible preachers.
"They were temporarily set back a little bit, but it didn't set them back too far," Marty said.
Swaggart was ousted in 1988 after he was caught using prostitutes. Bakker lost his Assemblies credentials a year earlier amid charges of sexual misconduct and later was convicted of bilking his followers of millions of dollars.
"It is a chapter we wish were closed," Triplett said.