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| 19 1 Congregational Overview The first thing you will likely notice is that our facility is rather large, but you will be met immediately by greeters at the doors who can point you to the right direction. As you enter the church lobby you will also see a lot of younger people, a lot of older people, and a lot of people in between like me. You will also notice that some like to dress up for church and others like to come casual. We have it all—so come as you are! (www.centralassembly .org; accessed on February 24, 2009) The above epigraph was penned by Pastor James T. (Jim) Bradford of Central Assembly of God in Springfield, Missouri, one of the twenty-one congregations included in our study. Bradford has since relocated to the nearby U.S. Headquarters of the AG, where he serves as General Secretary and a member of the denomination’s Executive Presbytery. If Springfield is (as some have affectionately and humorously called it) “Rome on the Ozarks,” Central Assembly has been the AG’s St. Peter’s Basilica. But as we will see, Central Assembly has been in transition, providing an excellent illustration of what sociologist Malcolm Gold (2003) has called a “hybrid church,” a synthesis between traditional Pentecostal beliefs and practices and those of the wider evangelical movement. Bradford left his mark on Central Assembly, just as he left his imprint on another congregation in our study, Newport Mesa Church (NMC) in Costa Mesa, California. As Gold’s work reminds us, congregations do not stand still and our static typologies can be illusive. Central Assembly can serve as a prototype, however, of the most common type of AG congregation, which we call “evangelical AG.” While remaining loyally Pentecostal and committed to the Assemblies of God, evangelical AG congregations have moved or are moving (in varying degrees) away from the unique experiences that were once important markers of Pentecostal identity . “Traditional” congregations, on the other hand, exhibit a strong commitment to the AG (or at least to being Pentecostal) while retaining wider and more intense experiences of charismata, or gifts of the Holy Spirit (espe- 20 | Congregational Overview cially “baptism in the Spirit” and the paranormal experience of glossolalia, as well as those of healing, miracles, and prophecy). Central Assembly is an historical landmark, so to speak—a largely white congregation that traces its history to the earliest days of Pentecostalism. It is a church that reflects well the crossroads between charismatic experience and institutional routinization. Although Central represents perhaps the most common type of AG congregation, its distinct identity is colored by its unique history, as well as its emergence as a twenty-first-century megachurch with strong ties to the denominational leadership. (Three of its former pastors have become General Superintendents of the denomination.) Although it is but one AG church among the thousands that dot the American landscape, in many ways it is prototypical of the ongoing transformation of the denomination. Pentecost Comes to Springfield It was the latter part of May in the Spring of 1907. The rain was falling on the trees in front of our white clapboarded farm house on Division Street, out beyond the city limits of Springfield, Missouri. My sister, Hazel (age 10), and I (age 7) were playing on the front porch when I heard a sound of wagon wheels coming up the road. We were expecting a visit from my Aunt Rachel Sizelove, who had been to the Azusa Street meetings in Los Angeles, California. Hazel and I ran through the front door into the farm house, “Mama, Mama, she’s here! She’s here!” (Corum and Bakewell 1983, 1). It was later during that visit, on June 1, 1907, that Lillie Harper Corum was baptized in the Spirit in her living room while praying with her sister, Rachel Sizelove—an event Central Assembly of God celebrates as its birth date. Sizelove brought with her the power of the Holy Spirit that she had experienced at the famed Azusa Street Revival (1906–9) in Los Angeles. Reinforcements from the Azusa Street Revival would come and go in Springfield over the years that followed, increasing the number of believers who eventually would be counted among AG adherents. Sizelove would return to Springfield in 1913 to preach and rekindle the faith of this small band of followers. By this time the little church had a young pastor, Bennett Lawrence, who would represent it at the first...

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