27 March 2006
THE ‘NEW PENTECOSTALISM’
Australian Cricket Chaplain Dr Mark Tronson and Chairman of Well-Being Australia reveals that the responses to his May 2005 published paper “New Pentecostalism” has intellectually and emotionally helped free some Pentecostal pastors from their “predicaments of mandate”.
“There continues to be an array of positive correspondence, but I’ve sensed some obligation of entrapment and sadly not surprised at a $25 mid-week bible study fee,” he explained.
Dr Tronson’s working paper “New Pentecostalism” premise was that there is a definitive shift by major Pentecostal Churches to a more centralist “Evangelical Renewal” position.
He illustrated this by demonstrating the “excesses” of the traditional Pentecostal movement and his proposition was that “New Pentecostalism” became inevitable in order to capture their researched market place.
Dr Tronson a Baptist Minister stated in the working paper’s preamble that for a Pentecostal congregation to experience exponential growth it taps into a market place of the upwardly mobile, the better educated and the politically savvy, an age bracket up to the mid ’40s, moreover the statistics are unquestionable.
“Recent correspondences illustrated that a restating might be helpful”, he said.
Mark Tronson gave two examples, the first came from a discussion with a Pentecostal pastor who said that within his 10 kilometer area there were eleven Pentecostal churches.
“He’s set a goal to ‘enlarge his committed core group’ from families who regularly move from Pentecostal church to Pentecostal church”, Dr Tronson said.
The second example came from a family who moved from a Pentecostal church to a very stayed main line Protestant Reformed ‘free church’ congregation whose Minister said: “They was surprise there wasn’t a fee to attend the mid-week church bible study, they were being charged $25 a time,” Dr Tronson explained.
The nine excesses in his “New Penetcostalism” working paper were listed as:
Understanding of the Holy Spirit, Words of Insight, Prophesies, Understanding of the spiritual world, Spiritual Gifts, People as Subjects, Multiple spirit baptisms, Practical and Character Issues, and Theological preparation.
Dr Tronson said that the nine excesses in the working paper were not necessarily excesses of evil in themselves, rather in their execution and or development.
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