THE DISCIPLESHIP PRACTICES OF THE SPANISH EASTERN DISTRICT OF THE ASSEMBLIES OF GOD: ENHANCING THE SPIRITUAL FORMATION OF NEW CONVERTS A THESIS-PROJECT SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GORDON-CONWELL THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE DOCTOR OF MINISTRY IN PASTORAL LEADERSHIP BY JOSEPH ANTHONY ANDINO MAY 2017 Copyright © 2017 by Joseph Anthony Andino. All Rights Reserved. CONTENTS LIST OF TABLES v ABSTRACT vi Chapter 1. THE PROBLEM AND SETTING 1 The Spanish Eastern District of the Assemblies of God 1 Who Are These Pentecostals? 2 Hispanic Pentecostals 11 2. THEOLOGICAL FRAMEWORK FOR DISCIPLESHIP 16 Old Testament Examples of Discipleship 16 Examples of Discipleship in the New Testament 28 3. LITERATURE REVIEW: SPIRITUAL FORMATION AND DISCIPLESHIP 47 The Nature of Discipleship 47 The Essentials of Spiritual Formation 53 Discipleship in Community 65 4. PROJECT DESIGN 77 Survey of the Discipleship Practices of the SED 78 Conclusion 87 5. OUTCOMES: TOWARD EFFECTIVE DISCIPLESHIP TRAINING FOR NEW CONVERTS 90 Ogden’s Manual de Discipulado 91 iii Chan and Beuving’s Multiply: Disciples Making Disciples 92 The Discipleship Academy 94 Appendix A QUESTIONNAIRE ABOUT DISCIPLING NEW CONVERTS 102 B DISCIPLESHIP PACT 105 C NEW CONVERT CARD 106 D FOLLOW-UP REPORT 107 E DISCIPLESHIP ACADEMY MONTHLY REPORT 108 F SECRETARY/TREASURER REPORT 109 BIBLIOGRAPHY 110 VITA 113 iv TABLES Table 1: Elements included in the discipleship systems of the SED 81 v ABSTRACT The purpose of this thesis project was to study how the Spanish Eastern District of the Assemblies of God, which is a Pentecostal denomination, is providing for the spiritual development of new converts. The Spanish Eastern District is the largest Hispanic district of the fourteen Spanish-language districts of our denomination, with approximately 478 churches in sixteen states on the east coast of North America. The data compiled in this research is significant because it brings clarity to how our congregants are being developed spiritually and is most likely indicative of the discipleship practices in the churches of the other thirteen Spanish Districts. This claim is based on the uniformity and consistency of Hispanic culture that is intertwined in our ecclesiology. In order to study the discipleship practices in our district, a survey was conducted of seventy-two churches during the annual Pastors’ and Leaders’ Summit in October 2016; the results indicated several strengths and weaknesses within our present discipleship system that are addressed in the project. After compiling and analyzing the data, the researcher presented three different discipleship programs that responded to the weaknesses revealed by the study; any one of these programs can be implemented to strengthen our churches. The third discipleship system includes the basic principles and structure of a program that the researcher will begin to develop after he has successfully accomplished all the prerequisites required in order to complete the Doctor of Ministry program. vi CHAPTER ONE THE PROBLEM AND SETTING The Spanish Eastern District of the Assemblies of God In this thesis-project I will study the past and present discipleship practices of Hispanic Pentecostals in the Spanish Eastern District of the Assemblies of God. It is my experience, based on twenty-five years of service within the Spanish Eastern District, that far too many believers are biblically illiterate and do not have a clear understanding of the gospel message or of Christian orthodoxy. This present reality affects both the church’s proclamation of the gospel and its ecclesial call. I contend that one of the contributing factors to our present condition is the absence of a systematic discipleship curriculum that assimilates new converts to comprehend and embrace what Christians have believed for centuries that will subsequently equip them to propagate the message of the gospel to those within our community. In a discipleship seminar I conducted in Queens, New York, in October 2014 before approximately forty credentialed1 Assemblies of God ministers, I discovered the following: Thirty-one percent surveyed did not get any type of follow-up from the church, nor did they receive any direct or personal mentorship after their conversion to Christ. Forty-six percent reported that the present discipleship process in their own local church needed to be contextualized, upgraded, and/or revitalized. Thirty-eight percent did not have a structured discipleship program for new converts in their church. Sixty-nine 1. A credentialed minister in the Assemblies of God holds one of three ministerial ranks: certified minister, licensed minister, or ordained minister. See the constitution and bylaws of the Spanish Eastern District of the Assemblies of God, article VII – Members. 1 percent of the clergy in the section2 of Queens do not have a mentor they can open up to, and thirty-eight percent are not personally mentoring anyone. These statistics provide a window into a discipleship omission that has gone on for far too long. In this project, I will continue to compile data targeting the discipleship practices of the churches I supervise in northern New Jersey, which is the largest section within the Spanish Eastern District. I will accomplish this by creating questionnaires that will be designed to gather data on the past and present discipleship practices of our churches and follow up on the information obtained by interviewing pastor/leaders in churches where the data reveal information vital to developing a discipleship system that responds to the needs. This will provide a panoramic view of the current practices and highlight the advantages and disadvantages of our methodologies in order to pinpoint some of the deficiencies and strengths in our present systems. The goal is to have at least twenty-five percent of the churches implement a newly developed discipleship program that responds to the deficiencies revealed in the study. This has the potential to turn the tide of biblical illiteracy in our churches, furthering healthy spiritual formation and thus igniting the spirit of evangelism, volunteerism, and a passion for knowing, understanding, and rightly dividing Holy Scripture in our organization. Who Are These Pentecostals? In order to understand the ecclesial culture of the churches in the Spanish Eastern District, let me first provide a brief overview of the Pentecostal movement, which our denomination has been a part of for approximately eighty years. The Pentecostal 2. The Spanish Eastern District is organized into six regional zones and seventeen sections within those zones. Queens is one of the sections in zone two. See the constitution and bylaws of the Spanish Eastern District of the Assemblies of God, article X – Organization. 2 movement has gathered significant attention in the church in the past decades, perhaps because of the extraordinary growth this segment of Christendom has enjoyed in the past one hundred years. Theologian Timothy C. Tennent reveals in his work on World Christianity that the Pentecostal movement has grown from “a few scattered revival meetings to a major global force of a half a billion adherents, second in size only to Roman Catholicism.”3 Eldin Villafañe reports that one out of every five Christians in the world today is Pentecostal and that the movement gains nineteen million new members each year contributing over thirty-four billion dollars to Christian causes every year.4 With a numerical growth this staggering, Pentecostals were destined to get the attention of the ecclesiastical elite eventually. In light of such rapid growth, several questions emerge, such as, who are these Pentecostals? Where did this movement come from? And how did they grow so fast? Some scholars define Pentecostals as “Christians who emphasize the power and presence of the Holy Spirit” in their ecclesiastical praxis; they believe that the gifts of the Holy Spirit are available for Christians today and should equip the church to “proclaim that Jesus is Lord to the glory of God the Father.”5 These Christians believe that the book of Acts provides a “model for the contemporary church” and on that basis “every believer” can experience a “baptism in the Spirit” which is understood by them to be an “empowering for mission, distinct from regeneration, which is marked by speaking in tongues.”6 They also believe that the spiritual gifts (1 Cor 12:8-10) are available for the 3. Timothy C. Tennent, Theology in the Context of World Christianity (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2007), 164. 4. Eldin Villafañe, The Liberating Spirit (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1993), 84. 5. Eldin Villafañe, Introdución al Pentecostalismo (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 2012), 20. 6. Robert P. Menzies, Pentecost: This Story Is Our Story (Springfield, MO: Gospel Publishing House, 2013), 13. 3 church today and therefore exercise them as the Holy Spirit leads, in the context of the local assembly.7 When endeavoring to answer the question of the movement’s origins, it would be wise to consider the four modern “pre-Pentecostal” movements presented by Allen Anderson that predate the famous outpouring on Azusa Street. The first is the holiness movement, which was a “reaction to liberalism and formalism in established Protestant churches.”8 These believers interpreted the Bible literally, preached the need of a “personal and individual experience of conversion,” and believed in the “moral perfection” of all true believers.9 The next significant Pentecostal movement that predates the Azusa Street outpouring was the Keswick revivals, which started in 1875. These revivals were profoundly influenced by revivalists such as Charles Finney, Jonathan Edwards, and Dwight L. Moody, and laid the “groundwork for the birth of Pentecostalism.”10 Another important Pentecostal movement Anderson points to is the Welsh revival of 1904. This revival claimed to have had approximately “32,000 converts throughout Wales” who experienced worship services that lasted for hours, and “spontaneous and seemly chaotic” emotional outbursts with “singing in the Spirit”11 were reported. The final pre-Azusa Street movement communicated here happened in Mumbai, India, in a “Mukti mission for young widows and orphans.”12 This revival, unlike the others, was led by a woman, Pandita Ramabai; it began in 1905 and lasted for two years.13 During this revival, a young woman was “reported to have been baptized in the 7. Menzies, Pentecost, 13. 8. Allen Anderson, An Introduction to Pentecostalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 27. 9. Anderson, Introduction to Pentecostalism, 28. 10. Anderson, Introduction to Pentecostalism, 28-29. 11. Anderson, Introduction to Pentecostalism, 36. 12. Anderson, Introduction to Pentecostalism, 37. 13. Anderson, Introduction to Pentecostalism, 37. 4