Gary McGee

Dr. Gary B. McGee, longtime Assemblies of God educator, slipped from this life into the arms of his loving Savior shortly before noon today, December 10, 2008. McGee was hospitalized on November 13 with complications due to a bacterial infection and a weakened immune system from a long fight with cancer. McGee was released from the hospital yesterday and passed away at home with his family present.

Few Assemblies of God educators have attained the breadth of influence achieved by McGee. His extensive college and seminary teaching experience spanned five decades (1967-2008), he was a prolific author, and he helped to build bridges through his leadership in numerous professional and interchurch organizations. He was Distinguished Professor of Church History and Pentecostal Studies at the Assemblies of God Theological Seminary, where he taught since 1984. He previously taught at Central Bible College (1970-1984) and Open Bible College (1967-1970).

McGee authored seven books, edited and contributed to three books, and he wrote chapters in fifteen books, 41 journal articles (since 1993), and 129 articles in twelve dictionaries. He was a frequent contributor to denominational publications, including Today’s Pentecostal Evangel, Assemblies of God Heritage, Advance, Enrichment, and Paraclete. He is probably best known for his two-volume history of Assemblies of God World Missions, This Gospel Shall Be Preached (GPH, 1986, 1989), for his biographical approach to Assemblies of God history, People of the Spirit (GPH, 2004), and for coediting the award-winning Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements (Zondervan, 1988). He completed his last book, Miracles, Missions, and American Pentecostalism (Orbis Books, forthcoming 2009), just weeks before his death.

McGee traveled extensively and also taught at Asia Centre for Evangelism and Missions, Singapore; Continental Theological Seminary, Brussels, Belgium; Evangelical Theological Seminary, Osijek, Croatia; Kiev Bible Institute, Kiev, Ukraine; Romanian Bible Institute, Bucharest, Romania; and Southern Asia Bible College, Bangalore, India.

McGee emerged as one of the most highly-respected and loved educators in the Assemblies of God, as well as one of the most articulate voices concerning the history of Pentecostal missions. In the academic community, McGee was best known for his publications on the history of early Pentecostalism and missiology. His family and friends knew him as a man of sterling character, good humor, humility, spiritual sensitivity, and personal warmth. According to fellow historian Grant Wacker, McGee “was always ready for a joke as well as a prayer."

Gary McGee’s family came into the Pentecostal movement after his maternal grandmother accepted Christ in an Aimee Semple McPherson evangelistic campaign in Canton, Ohio, in 1921. The family became faithful members of Bethel Temple Assembly of God in Canton. McGee was born on April 22, 1945, the second oldest of five children.

Upon his graduation from Central Bible College in 1967, he began teaching at Open Bible College (Des Moines, Iowa). He received his ordination from the Iowa District Council in 1969. He returned to Springfield, Missouri, in 1970, where he would become a fixture for the rest of his life. He began teaching at his alma mater, Central Bible College, and in 1971 completed the Master of Religious Studies at Concordia Theological Seminary (St. Louis, Missouri). McGee completed his M.A. in Religious Studies at Missouri State University (Springfield, Missouri) in 1976, and his Ph.D. in Church History at St. Louis University in 1984. Upon completion of his doctorate, McGee began teaching at the Assemblies of God Theological Seminary. He was named Distinguished Professor of Church History and Pentecostal Studies in 2007, the first AGTS professor to be awarded the “Distinguished” title. In March 2008, the Society for Pentecostal Studies conferred on him the Lifetime Achievement Award.

McGee demonstrated how a holy man – a man of God – can die well. During the last ten years of his life he suffered from cancer and arthritis, but McGee did not complain. Instead, he joyfully focused on other peoples’ needs and labored to complete the tasks he believed the Lord had given to him. Former student Jennifer Strickland Hall wrote, “Watching the grace and beauty you have displayed in the midst of your suffering over the years has taught me more than any book on the subject.” And McGee did, by the way, write a book on the subject: How Sweet the Sound: God’s Grace for Suffering Christians (GPH, 1994). Just before his final hospitalization, he finished the manuscript for his last book. In the hospital, McGee told his family that he had completed his life’s assignments and that he was placing his life in the hands of God. In the past two weeks, McGee tied up loose ends, said goodbyes, and did not show despair, but faith in his great God. This has been a difficult, but beautiful, time.

McGee leaves behind a wife, Alice, two daughters, Angela Brim and Catherine McGee, and two grandchildren, Bailey and Marshall Brim, all of Springfield, Missouri.

The AGTS website features a page that will provide information about McGee's funeral: Readers are encouraged to send messages to the McGee family, either by posting them on the AGTS website or by mail: Alice McGee, 1920 E. Sayer Circle, Springfield, MO 65803

New Book by Paul King--Only Believe: Examining the Origin and Development of Classic and Contemporary Word of Faith Theologies

From Higher Life Ministries:
Now Available!
Only Believe: Examining the Origin and Development of Classic and Contemporary Word of Faith Theologies


What do Clement of Alexandria, Charles Spurgeon, A.W. Tozer, and Oswald Chambers have in common with contemporary word of faith movements? And how do they differ? What is a healthy faith? Only Believe answers these questions and many more!

"The definitive, comprehensive study of faith teaching and practice throughout church history."--Mark E. Roberts, Ph.D

Resource: Alexander Street Press

Recently, Estrelda Alexander made me aware of this resource for whom she is doing some work on Black Church sources. The press (unfortunately, not related either to Estrelda or me!) has some sources available online without subscription; others are available with a subscription. They tout themselves as "a premier publisher of scholarly databases in the arts, humanities, and social sciences." The material is categorized by specific disciplines including Religion, Black History and Literature and Women's History and Literature.

From the Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center

Dear Friends:

I am pleased to announce that the Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center has acquired a collection of rare Hispanic Assemblies of God historical materials, including a large run of the elusive but very significant periodical, La Luz Apostolica. The collection was donated by Mary Posos, in honor of her late husband, Rev. Felix Posos, who had served as superintendent of the Northern Pacific Latin American District.

Hopefully, this donation will spur others to deposit additional Hispanic materials at the Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center. The stories of how God has worked through the Hispanic Pentecostal churches have often been left out of the history books, because historians have not had easy access to materials documenting this important part of our Pentecostal heritage.

The Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center is committed to finding, preserving, and sharing the sacred stories from across the ethnic, linguistic, and denominational divides within the Pentecostal movement.

Feel free to share this exciting news with anyone who might have an interest in helping to preserve and promote the contributions of our Hispanic brothers and sisters to the Pentecostal movement. For additional information about this donation, please see the FPHC blog.

Darrin J. Rodgers, Director
Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center
1445 North Boonville Avenue
Springfield, MO 65802 USA
phone: (417) 862-1447, ext. 4400
fax: (417) 862-6203
email: drodgers@ag.org
website

Mel Robeck on the Washington Post Editorial Cartoon

With Mel's permission, I post his reflection.

Dear Friends,

Nothing much has changed since 1906. We Pentecostals are still the laughing stock of the nation and perhaps the world. The first cartoon below was run in a Los Angeles newspaper in 1906. The second one appeared today in the Washington Post. Whatever one may think of Sarah Palin and her politics, this public portrayal of Pentecostalism runs close to blasphemy, and in my opinion it is at least as bad as similar portrayals of Islam. A lot of what is going on in the press regarding Palin and Pentecostals (and it is actually the Pentecostals for which I am most concerned) comes runs from voyeurism to pornography.

Most reporters typically do not know how to talk about the Divine-human encounter that runs to the soul. Please don’t get me wrong. It is difficult for Christians as well. Words betray us. We humans grope for ways to communicate the experience, the intimacy of a Divine-human encounter that features both the transcendent character of that encounter and at the same time features its very immanence as well. It is something akin to describing an abstract concept like intimacy. Perhaps we can take a note from filmmakers who seek to communicate the concept of intimacy as I seek to describe the nature of today’s press.

Filmmakers have yet to find a way of communicating an abstract concept like intimacy that adequately captures its depth, the sense of passion, of fulfillment, or of richness that makes it what it is. Sometimes they employ close-up shots of a person’s face, or they seek a particular look from an actor – a wink or a smile, or a loving act such as a kiss. In many cases, however, these tools provide only distant elements of the abstraction that may ultimately be lost on the audience. The closest film makers have been able to come to expressing the reality of intimacy is to throw a breathless and at times breathtakingly beautiful couple into bed with one another in order to enact before peering, voyeuristic eyes, the ultimate physical intimacy. Yet in that on screen act, the intimacy in which the couple is thought to be engaged (for they are only actors after all) is actually lost. As it is shared it is thereby diluted by those who watch it. And those who watch it feel nothing of the reality that the act can communicate except to those who do not act, but instead, engage in the action as it was intended to be – a gift of God – in the giving of themselves over wholly to one another.

Those who watch do not feel the breath of the lover or the tenderness of the lover’s touch, nor do they savor the smells of love, or the taste of the beloved, or sense the ecstasy of fulfillment in the ultimate intimacy of the most intimate of human acts. Indeed, if a single scene of the love act is taken from the film and published on the glossy pages of some magazine, we call it pornography. It lacks the intended context, a marriage relationship. It lacks the substance, a loving, committed relationship. It lacks the meaning, two becoming one in a spiritual as well as a physical sense. It lacks all the genuine marks of a real, intimate action or relationship. In the end it leaves us empty rather than satisfied, craving more to fill the emptiness of our souls.

Something similar may be said about the experience of Pentecostal worshippers and how their worship is frequently described by members of the secular press, especially the 85% or so who have no religious tradition of their own but seem to think that they are experts on all things religious. The reporter is reduced merely to the role of a voyeur or worse, of pornographer – as he or she turns a rich and intimate reality into a cheap action devoid of context, its content lost, and subject to ridicule. The intimacy of the Divine-human encounter or exchange is something that cannot be described well without losing much of the mystery of that encounter. Human words come up empty. It is something similar to what the Apostle Paul described in Romans 8:26-27 when he noted that “the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.” But when it is twisted as it seems to be in both cartoons below, it becomes blasphemous.

So much for my attempt to theologize about the intimacy of Pentecostal worship in light of secular press coverage.

Mel

Crucible, An Online Journal

Please take note of Crucible, published by the Australian Evangelical Alliance.

Flame of Love Project Research Grants

Project Overview

The Flame of Love project begins its investigation within the broadly-defined pentecostal tradition. This tradition includes historic Pentecostal denominations, neo-pentecostalisms found in mainline and independent congregations, as well as others who adhere to a pentecostal worldview in which the Holy Spirit is deemed an active force in daily life. The project culminates in a national survey not limited to any specific religion.

The primary goal is to use multiple methods to investigate the phenomena of Godly Love with the expressed purpose of fostering a wide-ranging interdisciplinary dialogue. The resulting discourse has the potential to provide answers to the pressing questions of our day. These questions include:

To what extent can the interactive experience of loving God and being loved by God motivate people to engage in selfless service to others?

How can the perceived influence of Godly Love be objectively measured through rigorous scientific methods and how might this knowledge be applied to the benefit of our communities?

How might measures of Godly Love emerging from this project cast light outside the Pentecostal tradition and illuminate universal concerns of the human experience?

In addition to establishing a new field of interdisciplinary scientific study, this project seeks to transform social science by taking God seriously as a perceived actor in human events, while advancing the agenda of an empirical theology.

For more information see the project website.

Latino Pentecostals

In the current issue of Sojourners:
It’s easy—and human—to apply labels according to our assumptions. But we know that categorizing anything, especially whole groups of people, is risky business. Latinos are frequently seen as a monolithic community—particularly by pundits and pollsters in this election season—but as our writers tell us, they’re anything but. Former Sojourners staffer Aaron McCarroll Gallegos and Azusa Pacific University professor Arlene Sánchez Walsh look at one of the most misunderstood groups, Latino Pentecostals, and write about the ways in which Latino Pentecostals are not only defying labels, but defining themselves.

Long Awaited and Finally Here...Sort Of

David Reed's definitive work on the origins of Oneness Pentecostalism, "In Jesus' Name: The History and Beliefs of Oneness Pentecostals, has finally been published. Some were fortunate enough to be able to purchase one of the first copies available anywhere (for $20!!) at the SPS meeting at Duke. Some didn't make it to the Deo table on time...probably because we got lost. It had sold out by Thursday afternoon!

At any rate, it is available....well, almost. I haven't found a source in the US as of yet but it can be purchased on the following UK sites:
Deo Publishing

Premier Shop Online

SCM Press

If you find it on a US site (Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc), please post a comment and let us know!

Thanks, David, for this extremely helpful work!

I'm Sure We'll Have A Lot To Talk About

I'm setting up this blog as a kind of meeting place for the History Interest Group, in between annual SPS meetings. I envision it as a place where I can notify you of publications (by SPS members and otherwise), dissertations, articles, etc. which are of interest as well as info about the upcoming (or past) meetings.

As you know, I'm updating an email list which will be circulated to each of you in the Group.

I'm also putting various links of interest on here. Let me know of any others which you know about.

You can contact me or the group either via email or by way of this blog. Simply click on the "comment" link following each post. An email will be sent to me which includes your comment so that you have my immediate attention. It can also be a way for you to talk with each other in a very public forum! [I recently had a very lively discussion on a non-Pentecostal blog from Australia about the nature of Pentecostal worship and preaching.]

If you want to post something for discussion, you can send it to me via email and I will post it.

We'll see how it works out and just think, we can prepare our own lunches to eat while meeting with each other. They will be less expensive, more satisfying and maybe less fattening!