Reading different theological perspectives. Historical readings express their authors' perspectives, including Arminian and Reformed or Calvinist traditions. Inclusion does not make an author's position settled CTS doctrine. Read with Scripture and the assigned material. A supported answer from another evangelical perspective should be assessed on its reasoning, not penalized simply for differing from the author. If an automated score rejects such an answer, ask CTS for review.

Master’s Assigned Readings (all five)

M.Div. and Th.M. students read all five assigned selections and take their separate exam after activation. The test page states the current rule; valid earlier completions remain valid.

Optional Honors (choose three)

Honors is optional on every track. Certificate and Associate students may read three honors selections without a required-reading exam. Honors does not replace either master’s exam.

The Master's textbook test: read The Apostolic Faith, 1907–1908: Selections on Leadership and Mission, then take its test: twenty fill-in-the-blank questions, drawn from forty; eighteen right passes. Each answer is marked right or wrong at once. Correct answers and explanations are available after the attempt passes. It is separate from the reading test on the five digests below: passing one does not pass the other. On the M.Div. and Th.M. tracks both tests are being introduced; each test's page says whether it is in force yet. Until then any student may take them, and a pass is kept in your record.

The Master's reading test: separate from the honors invitation below. Honors asks you to read any three of these digests; the Master's test covers all five. It has twenty fill-in-the-blank questions, four from each reading, drawn from forty; eighteen right passes. Each answer is marked right or wrong at once; correct answers and explanations are available after the attempt passes. You may try again after a short wait. The test is being introduced: its page says whether it is in force yet. Until then any student may take it, and a pass is kept in your record.

Honors option: Complete any three of the five readings below. These readings supplement the course and do not replace its units or examinations.

On this site: Each of the five readings is a Chapala Theological Seminary digest, written by CTS, available in English, Spanish and French here on the site — every one opens directly from this page, with nothing to download. Each card names the work its digest is made from.

Selected: 0 of 3

Reading 1 · Cross-Cultural Mission

In Their Own Tongue: Missionary Tongues Revised

A CTS digest of The Apostolic Faith, Los Angeles, Vol. I No. 11, October 1907–January 1908, pp. 1, 4; with Vol. I No. 8, May 1907, p. 3, and Vol. II No. 13, May 1908, p. 2

Missionaries sail from Los Angeles expecting the Spirit to give them the languages of China, Japan and Liberia. The paper’s unsigned editors report Lucy Farrow preaching in Kru, while its teachers urge order and interpretation by prayer. CTS traces how the Garrs and others found otherwise, and how Pentecostal missions turned to language study, interpreters and national leaders.

CTS DIGESTRead the full digest — opens right here

The Chapala Theological Seminary digest — an original summary written by CTS, available in English, Spanish and French, readable offline. This is the CTS digest, not the full original source text.

“In Their Own Tongue”: Missionary Tongues and Cross-Cultural Mission

A Chapala Theological Seminary reading — how the Azusa Street paper first hoped that tongues would replace language study, and how Pentecostal missions learned a slower and wiser way

A CTS digest of a historical periodical: “Pentecostal Missionary Reports” and “The Baptism with the Holy Ghost,” The Apostolic Faith (Los Angeles), Vol. I No. 11, October 1907–January 1908, pages 1 and 4; with “Unlocked by Prayer,” Vol. I No. 8, May 1907, page 3, and “Character and Work of the Holy Ghost,” Vol. II No. 13, May 1908, page 2. CTS quotes only unsigned editorial and teaching matter, briefly, for study and commentary.

Missions
Primary source
1907–1908
Tongues and language

A word before you read. Between May 1907 and May 1908 the Azusa Street paper reported missionaries leaving Los Angeles for Liberia, China, Japan, India and Europe. Many of them believed that the Holy Spirit had given them the languages of the peoples they were going to reach. This reading looks at what the paper’s unsigned editors and teachers wrote about that hope, and at what happened when the missionaries arrived. The reports of languages spoken and understood are the claims of participants, not tested linguistic findings. Signed missionary letters are named and quoted briefly, under the seminary’s rule of 26 October 2026 for material published before 1931.

1.A Paper Full of Departures

The eleventh issue of The Apostolic Faith covered four months, from October 1907 to January 1908, and its front page was crowded with farewells. Under the heading “Pentecostal Missionary Reports,” the editors listed Spirit-filled workers who had gone out from Los Angeles since the last paper: missionaries to Monrovia, Liberia, two women to South China, and a band of nine to North China. A further band of fourteen had sailed from Spokane, Washington, for Japan and China. The Azusa Street mission was barely eighteen months old, and it was already thinking in continents. To understand why, we need to remember what these believers expected. They were sure that Jesus was coming soon. They believed the gospel had to be preached to every nation first (Matthew 24:14). And many of them believed that God had just given them a gift that would make that task possible in a single generation.

2.“In Their Native Language”: The Early Hope

The same report shows that hope plainly. Of the Spokane band, the editors wrote that the missionaries were “able to talk to the Chinese and Japanese at the dock and on the ship in their native language.” Charles Parham, whose Topeka Bible school had first linked tongues with the baptism in the Spirit in 1901, taught that tongues were real human languages, given so that missionaries could preach without years of study. Historians call this belief “missionary tongues,” or xenolalia, from Greek words meaning “foreign speech.” The page-four teaching article in the same issue, “The Baptism with the Holy Ghost,” built the case from Scripture. When Jesus first sent out the twelve, it says, He sent them to people who spoke Greek and Hebrew: “They did not need the languages of the nations.” But after Pentecost the commission was to all the world, and on that first day “seventeen nationalities” heard the gospel “in their own tongue without confusion” (Acts 2:9–11). The writer concludes that God “is doing the same today.” If Pentecost had returned, the logic ran, God would do it again.

3.Lucy Farrow in Liberia

The most detailed example on the front page concerns Lucy Farrow (about 1851–1911), a Black holiness preacher from Houston who had helped bring the Pentecostal message to Los Angeles in 1906. The editors report that she spent seven months at Johnsonville, about twenty-five miles from Monrovia, “in that most deadly climate,” and had now returned. Twenty people, they say, received the baptism in the Spirit, and others were saved, sanctified and healed. Then comes the claim that matters for this reading: the Lord had given her “the gift of the Kru language,” and she was able to preach “two sermons to the people in their own tongue.” CTS presents this as the paper’s report, not a verified fact. We do not know who judged the language, or how much of it was understood. What we can say is that Farrow’s journey was real, costly and courageous. A Black woman in her fifties crossed an ocean to preach in West Africa at a time when few mission boards would have sent her at all. The same front page adds a sentence that shaped the movement’s view of itself: “There is no man at the head of this movement.” The editors meant that the Spirit, not a human director, was sending people out. Reading 4 will look at what that meant for organization.

4.Tongues, Order and Interpretation

Alongside the hope of missionary languages, the paper taught something more careful. In May 1907 an unsigned teaching piece, “Unlocked by Prayer,” told readers that God does not give “that which is no language or has no meaning.” But it did not tell them to look for a foreigner who could identify it. It said the opposite: you need not hunt around for an interpreter, because “the interpretation is unlocked by prayer.” The writer then turned to 1 Corinthians 14. The Corinthian church, he says, was zealous, and everyone wanted to speak in tongues at once, so that seekers and the unsaved were left out. Paul wanted order so that souls could be reached. If you speak in tongues and have no interpretation, the article advises, “you may sit down and give somebody else a chance.” The one who speaks “in the plain tongue,” it says, is of more account to the assembly. This is pastoral common sense. It treats tongues mainly as prayer and praise addressed to God, which needs interpretation to build up others, rather than as a ready-made sermon for foreign listeners. The two ideas sat side by side in the same paper. One looked outward to the mission field; the other looked to the order of the local meeting. In time, the second would help Pentecostals understand what had gone wrong with the first.

5.When the Languages Did Not Come

On the mission field the hope of instant languages met reality quickly. The best-known case is that of Alfred G. Garr (1874–1944) and his wife Lillian, white holiness pastors who received the baptism in the Spirit at Azusa Street in 1906 and reached Calcutta, India, around the turn of 1907. Standard histories record that Garr had expected to preach in Bengali and found he could not. Neither he nor most of the other early missionaries were able to use their tongues to preach to the people around them. The Garrs did not go home. They stayed, ministered among missionaries and Indian Christians, and in 1907 moved on to Hong Kong, where a Chinese believer, Mok Lai Chi, worked with them as interpreter and later led a Pentecostal work of his own. In issue 9 the Garrs’ own report from India even argued that the best way forward was to reach missionaries already on the field, because “they know all the customs of India and also the languages.” That was a quiet but real change of strategy. Historians such as Gary B. McGee have traced how, within a few years, most Pentecostal leaders stopped teaching that tongues were a shortcut to language learning. Parham never fully gave up the idea, but the wider movement did. It kept its conviction that tongues are a gift of the Spirit and came to understand them chiefly as prayer and praise “in the Spirit” (1 Corinthians 14:2), with interpretation for the church.

6.From Shortcut to Long Obedience

What replaced the shortcut was not less faith but a different kind of faith. Pentecostal missionaries began to study languages for years, to work with interpreters, and above all to train national believers who already spoke the language of their own people. When the Assemblies of God was formed in 1914, missions was one of its central purposes, and over time its missionaries embraced what was called the “indigenous church” principle: churches on the field should become self-governing, self-supporting and self-propagating. Pentecostals such as Alice Luce, who worked among Spanish-speaking people in Mexico and the United States, and later Melvin Hodges, who served in Central America, gave it a strong Spirit-centred shape. A May 1908 teaching piece in the Azusa paper had already pointed in this direction. Describing the Holy Spirit, it said, “His character is love,” and added that it was no wonder that people “get the missionary Spirit as soon as they get the baptism.” Love for people is what sends missionaries out, and love for people is what keeps them at the hard work of learning a language and a culture. The early hope was wrong about the method. It was right that the Spirit gives a burden for the nations.

7.What a Pastor or Missionary Takes from It Today

What does a Pentecostal pastor in Guadalajara, Nairobi or Seoul take from these pages? First, that zeal and error can live together in sincere people. The missionaries of 1907 were brave and devoted, and some of their beliefs about tongues were mistaken. We honour their sacrifice without copying their mistakes. Second, that Scripture must test experience, not the other way round. The church that read 1 Corinthians 14 carefully was better prepared to correct itself. Third, that mission requires patient incarnation. Jesus learned a language, lived in a culture and spoke in the idioms of Galilee. Missionaries who learn a people’s language and listen to their stories follow His pattern. Fourth, that the best messengers are often local believers. The Garrs needed Mok Lai Chi; the gospel spread through China by Chinese voices. A pastor who sends missionaries today should ask how they will learn, whom they will serve under, and how soon local leaders will take charge. Fifth, that honesty about failure strengthens faith. Pentecostals did not abandon the baptism in the Spirit when the missionary-tongues idea failed. They grew wiser.

8.Taking It to Heart

For reflection. The early missionaries expected God to remove the need for language study. Where might your church be hoping for a shortcut that God has not promised? “Unlocked by Prayer” taught that the one who speaks plainly is of more use to the assembly. How does your church balance the gifts of the Spirit with clear teaching that others can understand? And if you were sending a missionary from your congregation today, what would you want them to learn about the language and culture before they began to preach?

Select

Reading 2 · Leadership and Accountability

The Holy Spirit Bishop of the Church

A CTS digest of The Apostolic Faith, Los Angeles, Vol. I No. 9, June–September 1907, pp. 2–3 (W. J. Seymour); with Vol. I No. 11, p. 3, and Vol. I No. 12, January 1908, p. 2

Seymour teaches that the Holy Spirit presides over every assembly as its chairman and bishop, that credentials come first from heaven and then from the visible church, and that gifts never excuse anger, backbiting or unpaid bills. An unsigned article asks who may prophesy and answers broadly; CTS sets out complementarian, egalitarian and team-ministry readings fairly.

CTS DIGESTRead the full digest — opens right here

The Chapala Theological Seminary digest — an original summary written by CTS, available in English, Spanish and French, readable offline. This is the CTS digest, not the full original source text.

The Holy Spirit as Bishop: Leadership and Accountability at Azusa Street

A Chapala Theological Seminary reading — Seymour’s teaching on who presides over the church, how leaders are tested by their fruit, and who may preach

A CTS digest of a historical periodical: “The Holy Spirit Bishop of the Church,” signed W.J.S., and “To the Baptized Saints,” The Apostolic Faith (Los Angeles), Vol. I No. 9, June–September 1907, pages 2–3; with “Christ’s Messages to the Church” (W. J. Seymour), Vol. I No. 11, page 3; “Who May Prophesy?”, Vol. I No. 12, January 1908, page 2; and short unsigned notes in Nos. 8 and 10. CTS quotes only Seymour and unsigned teaching, briefly, for study and commentary.

Leadership
Primary source
1907–1908
Women in ministry

A word before you read. The leader of the Azusa Street mission, William J. Seymour (1870–1922), was the son of formerly enslaved parents in Louisiana, a Black holiness preacher who had once been made to sit outside a classroom door to hear Charles Parham teach. In 1907 he led a mission where Black, white, Latino and Asian believers worshipped together, in a country where most churches were divided by race. This reading looks at what he and the paper’s unsigned teachers said about leadership: who really presides over the church, how leaders are held to account, and who may preach. Two hymn verses quoted in Seymour’s article are left out of the CTS selection.

1.“To Preside over the Entire Work of God”

Seymour’s article in the June–September 1907 issue begins with a bold sentence: “It is the office work of the Holy Spirit to preside over the entire work of God on earth.” He takes the language of church government, words like bishop, elder and presiding officer, and applies them to the Holy Spirit. Jesus was the church’s bishop while on earth, he writes, and He sent the Holy Spirit to take His place, “not men.” He goes further: “No religious assembly is legal without His presence and His transaction.” For Seymour, a church meeting is not valid merely because the right officers are present and the rules have been followed. It is valid when the Spirit is present and at work. This was not a rejection of human leaders. It was a claim about where their authority comes from. The Holy Spirit, he says, is “the Teacher of teachers.” Human teachers serve under Him.

2.Buildings, Choirs and the Lack of Power

Seymour then describes the churches of his day. Many people think, he writes, that what is needed is new buildings of stone and brick, trained singers from the conservatories, fine pews and chandeliers. He pictures sinners going to church and hearing an eloquent oration about Jesus, or about a church, or about some noted man, among people dressed in the latest fashions. The music is sweet and the people seem loving, “but there has always been a lack of power.” His diagnosis is direct: “men have taken the place of Christ and the Holy Spirit.” He is careful, though. “The church had the right idea,” he says, “that we need bishops and elders.” The problem is not offices but what fills them. Leaders must be given authority by Christ, and “their qualifications for these offices must be the enduement of the power of the Holy Ghost.” He even writes that instead of new preachers from the theological schools, “the same old preachers,” deacons and “plain church buildings will do,” if they are filled with the Spirit. A seminary student should hear that sentence honestly. Seymour was not against learning; he was against learning that replaced the Spirit. A degree is not a credential before God.

3.Credentials and the Chairman

The heart of the article is a pair of images. The first is credentials. Jesus ordained the disciples with His own hands, Seymour writes, but He put “the credentials in their hearts” on the day of Pentecost. So he urges all ministers to “stop by the headquarters, the Jerusalem before God,” for their credentials. “Then they are entitled,” he adds, “to receive credentials from the visible church.” Notice the order. Seymour does not abolish church recognition. He puts it second. The second image is the chairman. “The first thing in every assembly,” he writes, is to see that the Holy Spirit is “installed as the chairman.” Dried-up missions and churches have “some man in His place.” Yet he adds at once, “Man is all right in his place,” when he is filled with the Spirit. A pastor is not the owner of the congregation but a servant of its true President. Seymour also reminds readers that “a meeting house is simply a place” where Christ’s people gather. The church is planted in hearts through the blood of Christ.

4.Fruit, Not Only Gifts

How is a leader tested? The unsigned teaching “To the Baptized Saints,” in the same issue, answers clearly. “It is one thing to receive the baptism and another thing to keep the anointing.” Tongues, the writer says, are one of the signs that go with every baptized person, but they are not the real evidence in everyday life. “Your life must measure with the fruits of the Spirit.” Then comes a sentence every Pentecostal leader should remember: “If you get angry, or speak evil, or backbite, I care not how many tongues you may have,” you have not the baptism. The writer warns that some “have learned how to preach” and advises them to ask God either to use them or set them aside. A note from Azusa Street in May 1907 shows the same spirit in practice. After three days of fasting, one worker came saying God had shown him “that self was creeping in,” and another had heard the same. So the workers knelt together. “This is the way of victory,” the note says, “to go down before God.” Accountability began with leaders humbling themselves.

5.Honest Bills and Hard Discipline

Seymour’s later article “Christ’s Messages to the Church,” on the letters of Revelation 2–3, brings accountability down to earth. When Christ walks among the churches, he writes, all wrong must be cleansed away: sexual sin, and also “not paying grocery bills, water bills, furniture bills, coal bills, gas bills, and all honest bills.” That list is a gift to pastors. Holiness is not only an inner feeling; it shows up in how a church and its ministers handle money and keep their word to neighbours. The paper’s discipline could also be severe. In issue 11 the editors explained that the mission had once allowed divorced and remarried preachers to minister but now did not. Many Pentecostal churches today hold different convictions on that question, and CTS does not settle it here. The point for this reading is that Azusa Street expected its leaders to be examined by Scripture and to change course when they believed they had been wrong.

6.“Who May Prophesy?”: Women in Ministry

In January 1908 an unsigned article asked “Who May Prophesy?” and answered that it is “the privilege of all the members of the bride of Christ to prophesy, which means testify or preach.” Quoting Joel 2 and Acts 2, it argued that at Pentecost God brought the faithful women into the upper room, “made no difference,” and that the women were able to preach as the men did. An earlier unsigned note said the anointing at Pentecost qualified them all “to minister in this Gospel.” The same article also says that no woman who has the Spirit of Jesus “wants to usurp authority over the man,” and it closes, “It is the same Holy Spirit in the woman as in the man.” Azusa practice matched the mixed language. Women such as Lucy Farrow, Florence Crawford, Clara Lum and Jennie Evans Moore preached, wrote, prayed with seekers and went out as missionaries, while Seymour remained the mission’s pastor. Later Pentecostal bodies took different paths. The Assemblies of God, formed in 1914, sent women as missionaries and evangelists and approved their full ordination in 1935; other bodies have reserved some offices for men. Christians today hold complementarian views (men and women equal, with some leadership roles reserved for men), egalitarian views (all roles open to both) and team-ministry views (shared leadership in which gifts are honoured whatever the title). CTS presents these fairly and does not take sides. Each view can find language in this article to work with.

7.What a Pastor Takes from It Today

What does a Pentecostal pastor today take from Seymour’s bishop? First, that the pastor is not the head of the church. Christ is, and the Spirit presides. That truth should make leaders humble and congregations hopeful. Second, that gifts are not proof of character. A preacher who speaks in tongues and abuses people has failed the Azusa test. Third, that accountability has to be concrete: honest finances, paid bills, kept promises and a willingness to kneel when “self” creeps in. Fourth, that human structures matter, but in second place. Seymour wanted credentials from heaven first and from the visible church after. Pentecostal history shows the danger of having only the first: without clear structures, disputes over property and authority later divided many missions, including his own. Fifth, that the question of women’s ministry deserves careful and charitable study, not slogans. Finally, Seymour’s own story is a lesson. He led a mixed-race congregation in a segregated country, and he lived to see much of the movement divide along racial lines. Leadership under the Spirit includes the hard work of keeping the church one.

8.Taking It to Heart

For reflection. Seymour asked every assembly to install the Holy Spirit as its chairman. What would change in your church’s meetings and decisions if that were true in practice? “To the Baptized Saints” said that anger and backbiting cancel out any number of tongues. How does your church hold leaders to account for their character, and not only for their gifts? And as you study the different views of women in ministry, how can you hold your own convictions while honouring believers who read the same Scriptures differently?

Select

Reading 3 · Mission Travel and Support

Trusting God Alone for Their Support

A CTS digest of The Apostolic Faith, Los Angeles, Vol. I No. 12, January 1908, p. 2; Vol. I No. 11, pp. 1–2; Vol. I No. 10, September 1907, p. 1; Vol. I No. 8, May 1907, p. 2

A free paper printed only when the money was in hand, with no editor’s name; a band of missionaries leaving for famine-stricken North China trusting God alone; preachers supported by free-will offerings, not salaries; and sober advice not to sell family homes in a burst of zeal. CTS weighs the courage and the cost of the faith line.

CTS DIGESTRead the full digest — opens right here

The Chapala Theological Seminary digest — an original summary written by CTS, available in English, Spanish and French, readable offline. This is the CTS digest, not the full original source text.

Trusting God Alone: Mission Travel and Support on the Faith Line

A Chapala Theological Seminary reading — how the Azusa Street mission paid for a free paper, sent missionaries with no salaries, and taught its people about money, homes and work

A CTS digest of a historical periodical: notices and reports in The Apostolic Faith (Los Angeles), Vol. I No. 12, January 1908, page 2; Vol. I No. 11, October 1907–January 1908, pages 1–2 (including part of “Questions Answered”); Vol. I No. 10, September 1907, page 1 (“Everywhere Preaching the Word”); and Vol. I No. 8, May 1907, page 2. CTS quotes only unsigned editorial matter, briefly, for study and commentary.

Mission support
Primary source
1907–1908
Faith missions

A word before you read. The Azusa Street mission had no denomination behind it, no missionary board and no budget. Yet in its first two years it printed tens of thousands of free papers and sent workers across the United States and overseas. This reading looks at how the paper’s unsigned editors explained that way of working, which historians often describe as living by faith or working on faith lines. It also looks at the hardships it brought. Letters signed by individual missionaries are named and quoted briefly.

1.A Free Paper on the Pentecostal Way

Every issue of The Apostolic Faith carried the words “Subscription Free.” In May 1907 the editors explained how it worked. The money for the paper, they wrote, had all been freely donated, without collections and without charging for it. “All expenses are met in advance.” The last issue had cost about half a cent a copy, “about $200 for 40,000 papers,” with postage on top. Then they gave their verdict: “This is the most blessed way of running a paper we ever saw. It is the Pentecostal way.” They added a warning that the Spirit would be grieved “by any carelessness or extravagance” in the Lord’s work, and that they sent papers only to people who would pass them on with care. By January 1908 the notice had grown. “This paper is free,” it said. “We accept all donations toward it as free will offerings—not as subscription price.” The editors recalled that they had started the paper “when we had not a dime in sight,” and said that if the money had not come, they would not have published. Faith, in their practice, did not mean going into debt and hoping God would pay. It meant waiting until God supplied, and then spending carefully.

2.No Name at the Head

The January 1908 notice also explained something readers had noticed. The paper printed no editor’s name. “The reason we put no name of editor at the head of this paper,” it said, “is because we want Christ exalted.” In practice the paper was put together by a small team at the mission, under Seymour’s leadership, with Clara Lum, a white stenographer from a holiness background, doing much of the editing. The editors also offered a simple service to the scattered workers. Anyone who wrote to a missionary in care of 312 Azusa Street would have the letter forwarded. The little office was a post office for the movement. The same notice closed with a gentle word that every mission community needs: “May the saints overlook each other’s faults and not speak evil of any.” If anyone saw a fault in another, he should go to that person privately and admonish him in love, following Matthew 18:15. Money and relationships were handled in the same spirit: openly, carefully and without display.

3.Everywhere Preaching the Word

The September 1907 front page described what happened after the great Los Angeles campmeeting of that summer. “This is a time as never before,” it began, when “the baptized saints are scattering abroad everywhere preaching the Word.” Some had gone to Canada, some east and south, and some to foreign fields. The campmeeting itself had run on the same faith principles as the paper. There were over two hundred tents, a large tabernacle, an “upper room tent” for seekers and a children’s tabernacle. Hundreds ate in the dining tent with “no charge made except as the Lord laid it on them to put into the box.” The editors were honest that not everyone stayed the course. The Lord, they said, had taught His people some practical lessons that would “stand them in good stead on the field,” and they added, “Some, it is sad to say, will not pay the price.” The campmeeting was a training ground. People learned there to pray, to work together and to trust God for daily needs before they went out to do it alone.

4.A Band to North China

The October 1907–January 1908 issue reported one such departure. A band of missionaries had left Los Angeles for North China by way of Seattle, where others joined them, making twelve in all, besides children. The band included Bernt Berntsen, a Norwegian-born missionary who had already served in China, Brother and Sister Hess, and six workers from the Swedish Mission. “We never saw a more humble and Spirit-filled band of missionaries,” the editors wrote, and then gave the key fact: “They went out trusting God alone for their support.” They were going, the paper said, into “the famine district.” In his own words, God had laid it on his heart “to go to a new field and open up the work there,” on the railway line south of Peking, and to make his home a place where other independent Spirit-filled workers could stay while they found their calling. In issue 13 Berntsen wrote that they met people on the streets every day and “give the hungry a little food daily,” and had rented a store on the main street for preaching. Berntsen went on to serve in China for many years and to publish a Chinese Pentecostal paper.

5.How Is a Preacher Supported?

On page two of the same issue, the editors answered questions from readers. One was about money: “What is the Bible way for a preacher to get his support and to raise the expenses of the church?” Their answer was to pray, and to depend on “free will offerings and donations, as God lays it on the hearts of the people” among whom the preacher works. “God will graciously supply all needs,” they wrote, “if you simply will trust Him and look to Him.” There were no salaries, no fixed pledges and no fundraising campaigns. Two other answers show that the editors were not naïve about money. Asked whether believers must leave home duties to wait for the Spirit, they said no: “you can wait right in the kitchen or in the parlor or in the barn.” Asked whether people must sell their property and hold all things in common, they again said no. “God has made us stewards over all that we have.” The sharing in Acts 2 and 4, they explained, met a special need in Jerusalem and was not a condition of salvation. They had seen large families sell their homes in enthusiasm when God had not told them to, and “regretted it afterwards.” So they counselled people “not to run ahead of the Spirit in selling their homes,” and affirmed that believers can hold decent jobs and stay saved.

6.The Cost of the Faith Line

The Azusa missionaries were not the first to work this way. Nineteenth-century faith missions, such as Hudson Taylor’s China Inland Mission, had also refused to solicit funds and promised no salaries. Pentecostals added a strong expectation that the Spirit would guide each worker directly. The results were mixed. Some missionaries, like Berntsen, stayed for decades and built lasting churches. Others arrived with little money, no language and no local partners. Standard histories record that several of the first Pentecostal missionaries to Liberia died of fever within months, and that others came home sick, discouraged or in debt. An Indianapolis notice in the January 1908 issue shows a different approach beginning: a missionary convention with a large hall, after which a band of workers expected to leave for South Africa. Gathering, praying and sending together was already a step toward organized support. Within a decade, the new Pentecostal denominations had begun to receive offerings centrally and pass them on to missionaries, while still honouring the principle that mission is funded by willing gifts and trust in God.

7.What a Pastor or Missionary Takes from It Today

What does a Pentecostal pastor or missionary take from the faith line today? First, that God really does provide. The free paper and the missions it supported are a lasting witness to generous, prayerful giving. Second, that faith and carefulness belong together. The editors who refused debt also counted the cost of every copy and warned against extravagance. Third, that money should never make the leader the centre. A paper with no editor’s name and a preacher supported by free offerings point beyond themselves to Christ. Fourth, that a missionary needs a community behind them. The faith line was strongest when a church prayed, gave and kept in touch, and weakest when workers went out alone. Fifth, that wise counsel protects families. The editors’ advice not to sell homes in a burst of zeal is still good advice to churches that ask for sacrificial giving. Pastors in places like Jalisco, where many churches are poor, can learn here that the size of a budget does not limit the reach of a praying church.

8.Taking It to Heart

For reflection. The Azusa editors would not publish without money in hand. How does your church decide between stepping out in faith and avoiding debt? The North China band went out trusting God alone for their support. If someone from your congregation felt called to mission, how would your church pray, give and stay in touch with them? And how can you teach generous giving without pressuring families to make choices God has not asked of them?

Select

Reading 4 · Organization and Church Planting

Every Mission Will Have Its Own Elders

A CTS digest of The Apostolic Faith, Los Angeles, Vol. I No. 11, October 1907–January 1908, p. 2; Vol. I No. 12, January 1908, p. 1; Vol. II No. 13, May 1908, pp. 1–2

The editors insist the movement is no new sect, that fellowship rests on Christ rather than on tongues, and that every mission will have its own elders. The saints buy the old Azusa building, and in May 1908 the paper tells readers to write to Portland. CTS carefully sets out the Seymour–Crawford break and the rise of Pentecostal denominations.

CTS DIGESTRead the full digest — opens right here

The Chapala Theological Seminary digest — an original summary written by CTS, available in English, Spanish and French, readable offline. This is the CTS digest, not the full original source text.

“Every Mission Will Have Its Own Elders”: Organization and Church Planting

A Chapala Theological Seminary reading — how the Azusa Street mission described itself, bought its building, planted missions with their own elders, and lost its paper to Portland

A CTS digest of a historical periodical: part of “Questions Answered,” The Apostolic Faith (Los Angeles), Vol. I No. 11, October 1907–January 1908, page 2; “From Azusa Mission,” Vol. I No. 12, January 1908, page 1; and the front-page report “What Hath God Wrought?” with the Portland notice and statement of faith, Vol. II No. 13, May 1908, pages 1–2. CTS quotes only unsigned editorial matter, briefly, for study and commentary.

Church planting
Primary source
1907–1908
Seymour and Crawford

A word before you read. In its first two years the Azusa Street revival produced dozens of new missions across North America and beyond. The paper insisted that it was not a new denomination and that no man controlled these missions. Yet within a few months of the last issue studied here, the paper itself had moved to Portland, Oregon, and the movement had begun to form the denominations we know today. This reading looks at what the paper’s unsigned editors said about organization, and at what actually happened. Where historians differ, CTS says so.

1.“Undenominational and Unsectarian”

In the “Questions Answered” column of late 1907, readers asked a pointed question: “Is this movement a new sect or denomination?” The editors replied, “No; it is undenominational and unsectarian.” They believed in “unity with Christ’s people everywhere,” and described the movement as “the old-time apostolic assembly,” new to the world in the last days but as old as the New Testament in its teaching. This was how most early Pentecostals saw themselves. They were not founding a church; they were calling all churches back to Pentecost. Their statement of faith, printed on page two of the later issues, opened with the words that the Apostolic Faith Mission “stands for the restoration of the faith once delivered unto the saints” (Jude 3). It listed what that meant in practice: “camp meetings, revivals, missions, street and prison work and Christian Unity everywhere.” And it summed up their attitude: “We are not fighting men or churches,” but seeking to replace “dead forms and creeds and wild fanaticism” with “living, practical Christianity.” Their watchwords were “Love, Faith, Unity.”

2.Fellowship Through the Blood, Not the Gift

The same column drew a line that still matters. Readers asked whether speaking in tongues was the standard of fellowship. “No,” the editors answered: “our fellowship does not come through gifts and outward demonstrations but through the Blood by the Spirit of Christ.” Then they added: “If a man is saved and living according to the word of God, he is our brother,” even without the baptism with tongues. That sentence kept the door open to the many holiness, Baptist, Methodist and other believers who visited Azusa Street or read the paper. It also limited what a Pentecostal mission could demand. Order in worship was another concern. Should many people speak in tongues at the same time? The answer was that sometimes the Spirit comes “as a shower or a rushing wind,” but that it is “not in order or Bible regulation for all to speak in tongues at once.” The church must “get back to the 14th chapter of First Corinthians.” A movement that wanted to plant missions everywhere needed both open fellowship and orderly meetings.

3.“Does Any Man Control the Missions?”

Another question went to the heart of organization: “Does any man control the missions of the Apostolic Faith?” The answer: “No; every mission will have its own elders and teachers as the Holy Ghost shall appoint.” Every mission, the editors added, would be “in harmony and work in unity.” This was a model of local self-government. Workers went out from Los Angeles, held meetings, and when a group of believers formed, it chose its own leaders. Many of these new works took the name “Apostolic Faith Mission,” and they looked to Azusa Street as a mother church, writing letters and sending reports for the paper. But they were not legally branches of it. In some ways this was a strength. Missions could be planted quickly by ordinary believers, without waiting for permission or funds from a central office. A front-page note in the same issue, studied in Reading 1, said much the same: no man stood at the head of the movement. In other ways it was a weakness, as the next sections show. When disagreements came, there was no agreed way to settle them, and no clear rule about who owned property, mailing lists or names.

4.A Barn, a Cottage and a Building Paid For

The paper often described its own home in humble terms. In January 1908 the editors wrote that when Christ was born it was in a barn, and that the latter rain had begun in a barn in Los Angeles, “for the old Mission is like a barn in its humility and plainness.” The “Spirit falls on humble hearts,” they said, “and in humble missions and churches.” They also admitted a loss: “Some went away from Azusa Mission because they thought the teaching on divorce was too straight.” The May 1908 front page looked back over two years. The revival had begun “in a little cottage on Bonnie Brae street,” and soon afterwards the saints rented the lower room of the old building at 312 Azusa Street, a former African Methodist Episcopal church that had been used as a warehouse and stable. When the building was to be sold, the editors reported, the saints agreed to buy it, with “three years’ time to pay the $15,000,” and God had sent the money in before the time was up. A second note mentions the “little faith cottage back of the Mission,” where Lucy Farrow, back from Liberia, prayed with seekers. The mission had become a settled congregation with property, a staff and a plan.

5.The Paper Moves to Portland

The same May 1908 issue carried a small notice at the top of page two: “For the next issues of this paper address” the Apostolic Faith Campmeeting in Portland, Oregon. That line marks one of the most painful episodes in early Pentecostal history. Florence Crawford (1872–1936), a white woman who had been a leading worker at Azusa Street, had carried the message to the Pacific Northwest and led a strong work in Portland. In 1908 Clara Lum, who had done much of the editing of the paper, moved to Portland and took the national and international mailing lists with her. Later issues of The Apostolic Faith were published from Portland under Crawford’s leadership. Seymour, who married Jennie Evans Moore in May 1908, is reported to have travelled to Portland to ask for the lists and to have been refused. Historians do not agree on all the reasons for the break. Many connect it with Seymour’s marriage, which Lum and Crawford are said to have opposed because they believed Christ’s return was too near for marrying; others stress Crawford’s growing independence and differences over leadership; the Portland church has told the story in its own way. What is clear is the result. Seymour lost his means of reaching the wider movement, and Azusa Street became a local congregation. The Apostolic Faith Church that Crawford founded continues today, and it keeps the archive of these papers.

6.From Missions to Denominations

The Portland break was not the only one. Some existing holiness bodies accepted the Pentecostal message as whole churches. Charles H. Mason, who visited Azusa Street in 1907, led the reorganized Church of God in Christ, a largely Black body. G. B. Cashwell carried the message to the Southeast, and in 1908 A. J. Tomlinson of the Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee) received the baptism in the Spirit under his preaching. Other missions, independent like the first Apostolic Faith missions, came together in 1914 at Hot Springs, Arkansas, to form the Assemblies of God, to cooperate in missions, set standards for ministers and hold property. Organization also followed the racial lines of American society. The Assemblies of God was largely white from the start, and for decades most Pentecostal bodies were divided by race, until a 1994 gathering in Memphis, Tennessee, publicly repented of that division and formed a new interracial fellowship. Seymour’s own 1915 book of doctrine and discipline for the Azusa mission reserved its chief offices for people of colour, a choice he explained by painful experiences with white leaders who had left. These stories show that the question was never whether to organize, but how to organize without losing the Spirit, the unity and the humility the early paper prized.

7.What a Church Planter Takes from It Today

What does a Pentecostal pastor or church planter take from these pages? First, that local leadership is biblical and powerful. The Azusa model let ordinary believers start missions and appoint elders where they were, and that is still how the gospel spreads fastest in much of the Majority World. Second, that freedom needs agreements. Clear understandings about property, finances, names and communication protect relationships when disagreements come, as they always do. Third, that fellowship should rest on Christ, not on a single gift or experience. The editors called any saved and obedient believer a brother. Fourth, that organization is not the enemy of the Spirit. The denominations that grew out of Azusa Street helped send thousands of missionaries and train pastors. Fifth, that divisions leave long shadows. A pastor who plants a church today should ask early how it will handle conflict, how it will include believers of every race and class, and how it will make sure no single person can take its mailing list, or its people, away.

8.Taking It to Heart

For reflection. The Azusa editors said every mission would have its own elders, yet they had no way to settle disputes between missions. How does your church balance local freedom with accountability to a wider body? The editors said fellowship comes through Christ, not through gifts. Whom might your church be keeping at a distance because they do not share all your experiences? And if a painful split came to your congregation, what agreements made now would help you act with honesty and love then?

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Reading 5 · Weighing the Reports

Rather Let It Be Understated

A CTS digest of The Apostolic Faith, Los Angeles, Vol. I No. 9, June–September 1907, p. 1; Vol. I No. 12, January 1908, p. 2; Vol. II No. 13, May 1908, p. 1

A glowing 1907 report of revival in Portland, and the paper’s own correction four months later: fewer baptized than claimed, no record kept, healings not complete, and a plea that every report be understated. CTS uses that correction to read the world round-up, the later histories that sidelined Seymour, and today’s claims of Majority World growth.

CTS DIGESTRead the full digest — opens right here

The Chapala Theological Seminary digest — an original summary written by CTS, available in English, Spanish and French, readable offline. This is the CTS digest, not the full original source text.

“Rather Let It Be Understated”: Weighing the Reports of Growth

A Chapala Theological Seminary reading — a revival report from Portland, the paper’s own correction of it, and how a pastor today can read reports of revival and growth honestly

A CTS digest of a historical periodical: “The Revival in Portland,” The Apostolic Faith (Los Angeles), Vol. I No. 9, June–September 1907, page 1; the “Correction,” Vol. I No. 12, January 1908, page 2; and the front-page round-up “Fires Are Being Kindled,” Vol. II No. 13, May 1908, page 1; with two short notes from Seymour’s travels (Nos. 9 and 12). CTS quotes only unsigned editorial matter and Seymour, briefly, for study and commentary.

Revival reports
Primary source
1907–1908
Honest numbers

A word before you read. Revival papers are full of numbers, healings and sweeping claims. The Azusa Street paper was no exception, but it did something unusual: it printed a correction of one of its own reports and asked its readers to understate rather than overstate. This reading puts that report and that correction side by side, and then asks how to read the paper’s other claims, and today’s claims about global Pentecostal growth, with both faith and care. Healings and numbers described here are the claims of participants. CTS does not offer them as medical or statistical findings.

1.A Mighty Revival in Portland

The June–September 1907 issue opened with a report from Portland, Oregon. It called the work “one of the mightiest revivals that Portland ever knew.” Opposition was fierce, the paper said: shots were fired and some workers were arrested. In June a campmeeting had begun at which “100 souls were baptized with the Holy Ghost.” Ministers had joined the work, and “the Christian and Missionary Alliance in Portland came into the work in a body.” The report then told of healings. A woman who had spent five years strapped to a bed in an asylum was said to be healed and saved. A lady was healed of a muscle condition doctors had treated for eleven years. An elderly woman’s eyes were restored. During a plague among children, the paper said, not one family in the Pentecostal flock lost a child. The campmeeting opened, it reported, with about a thousand people attending, and the needs were supplied with no collections taken. Three people from the asylum were said to testify daily of their healing. For readers in 1907, this was thrilling news. It was meant to be. The report ended with a glowing letter from a sister in Portland, which CTS does not quote.

2.The Correction

Four months later, in January 1908, a short notice appeared on page two under the plain heading “Correction.” “We want to correct some errors,” it began, “that were in the last published report from Portland.” It then took back the main claims one by one. The Christian Alliance “did not come into the work or discontinue their meetings,” as readers might have understood. On the figure of one hundred baptized at the campmeeting, the editors wrote, “The saints believe there were not so many. No record was kept.” And on the asylum healings: “The insane persons that were brought for healing were not fully healed,” or else had lost their healing through weakness or lack of faith. Then came the principle: “The saints’ want the simple truth stated about the work.” And a request to every correspondent: “May no one from any place send in a report that is overstated but rather let it be understated.” This is one of the most important paragraphs in the whole paper for a pastor. A revival newspaper, whose purpose was to spread the fire, publicly admitted that its own report had gone too far.

3.Why Reports Grew in the Telling

Why had the Portland report been overstated? The correction does not say, but the pattern is familiar. The paper depended on letters. Correspondents were excited, often new to the experience, and sure that Jesus was coming soon. Numbers were estimated in crowded meetings where no one was counting. A group of ministers attending became a whole denomination joining. People who felt better on the night of prayer were reported healed before anyone knew how they would be a month later. None of this requires dishonesty. It requires only enthusiasm, distance and haste. The editors themselves had said in the first issues that they kept no record of numbers, and in September 1907 they said of the Los Angeles campmeeting that only God knew how many had been baptized in the Spirit. Even the correction leaves some questions open, since it explains failed healings partly by a lack of faith. The language of “insane persons” and the hope of instant cures for mental illness also belong to their time. Today we know that mental illnesses are medical conditions that can often be treated. CTS does not offer these reports as medical guidance. A church can pray in faith for the sick and also help them find good medical care.

4.Reading the World Round-Up

With the correction in mind, look at the front page of May 1908, headed “Fires Are Being Kindled by the Holy Ghost Throughout the World.” Ireland: Belfast and Bangor “visited with Pentecost.” England: “news comes that probably 500 people have received the Pentecost.” South China: “about 100 have received the baptism,” and there is now a Chinese paper. West Africa: a worker from Long Beach, California, has opened a mission in Monrovia, Liberia. India: at Pandita Ramabai’s Mukti mission, girls are praying with a sound “like the mighty roaring of the sea.” Notice the careful words: “news comes,” “probably,” “about.” The editors were passing on reports, not counting converts. Some of these reports are confirmed by other sources. The revival at Mukti, for example, had begun in 1905, before Azusa Street, and Ramabai’s own writings describe it. Others are harder to check. A wise reader holds them as the paper held them: as hopeful news from far away, worth giving thanks for, but not as proven totals.

5.Seymour’s Own Measure

Seymour’s brief notes from his travels show what he valued. Writing from Zion City, Illinois, in 1907, he said that people received the baptism in their pews during the service, and that children too were filled with the Spirit. “It reminds me of old Azusa ten months ago,” he wrote. “This is another Azusa.” From Portsmouth and Richmond, Virginia, early in 1908, he wrote that the saints there were “so simple” that they received the Pentecost quickly: “They are ready for the power.” Seymour gives no totals. He describes what he saw and compares it with what he had known. His measure was the character of the people: joy, freedom, simplicity, readiness. That is a useful guide. Numbers can be inflated; changed lives are harder to fake, and easier to check over time.

6.The Limits of the Accounts

The paper has other limits too. It printed mostly good news and said little about failures, splits or missionaries who came home. Its voice was that of the Los Angeles mission; after mid-1908 the paper spoke from Portland instead, as Reading 4 explains. And for decades afterwards, many written histories of Pentecostalism gave the leading place to Charles Parham and white leaders and pushed Seymour and the interracial character of Azusa Street to the margins. Early reports, even from critics, had described Black and white believers worshipping together, at a time of strict segregation. Within a few years most Pentecostal bodies in the United States had divided along racial lines. Since the 1970s, historians from many backgrounds have restored Seymour’s central role. The same caution applies to later growth. Pentecostal and charismatic Christianity has become one of the largest movements in world Christianity, and most of its people now live in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Large churches grew in places such as Brazil, Chile, Nigeria, Ghana, South Korea and Mexico, often led by national believers with little help from abroad. In Mexico, historians trace an early Pentecostal work to Romana Carbajal de Valenzuela, who brought the message home to Chihuahua in 1914. But estimates of the movement’s total size vary widely, because researchers define and count “Pentecostal” and “charismatic” in different ways. CTS gives no global figure here. Honest growth needs no exaggeration.

7.What a Pastor Takes from It Today

What does a Pentecostal pastor take from the Portland correction? First, that truthfulness is part of holiness. A church that reports more converts or healings than it can show is bearing false witness, however good its motives. Second, that it is right to say “about” and “we do not know.” The editors’ phrase “no record was kept” is not a failure of faith but a mark of honesty. Third, that a correction can strengthen trust. Readers who saw the paper admit error had more reason to believe its other reports. Fourth, that follow-up matters more than first impressions. Healings, conversions and baptisms should be cared for and checked over weeks and months, with love and without pressure. Fifth, that growth stories should give credit fairly, including to women, to believers of every race and to national leaders in the Majority World, whose work early accounts often left out. Finally, that the best measure of a revival is not the size of a crowd but the lasting fruit of the Spirit in people’s lives and churches.

8.Taking It to Heart

For reflection. The Azusa editors asked that reports be understated rather than overstated. How does your church report its numbers, healings and growth, and would it be willing to publish a correction? Think of a revival story you have heard told many times. What would you want to know before you repeated it? And how can your church celebrate what God is doing among believers in other nations while giving honest credit to the people who carried the work?

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Further Study: Seven Public-Domain Works

These seven works are for further study, for the student who wants to go on reading. They are not part of the honors reading above: that stays as it is — the five CTS digests, any three read in full and recorded on your honor. All seven are in the public domain; each link opens the work online, and most can also be found in the Internet Archive or Project Gutenberg. Most are in English: the Chrome browser can translate a page (right-click, “Translate to…”; on a phone, the browser menu).

The Original Pages · Archive

1. The Apostolic Faith (Los Angeles), 1906–1908

William J. Seymour, ed. · Apostolic Faith Mission, 312 Azusa Street, Los Angeles; archive at apostolicfaith.org

The archive of the Los Angeles paper, with a picture of every original page. The textbook and the readings come from Nos. 8–13; look up a report or letter there to see it as it was first printed, before you cite it.

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The Whole Issue · No. 8

2. The Apostolic Faith (Los Angeles), Vol. I, No. 8, May 1907