Missions history of the International Pentecostal Holiness Church

The Simultaneous Principle: The History of IPHC World Missions, The First 100 Years, by Frank G. Tunstall. Franklin Springs, GA: LifeSprings Resources, 2005.

Dr. Frank G. Tunstall, World Missions Ministries board member and pastor of Northwest Christian Center in Oklahoma City, was selected to compose the 100 years of the history of missions, based in part on research and findings of writers from various regions of our mission fields. Dr. Tunstall has done a beautiful job of composing the information into a harmonious 100 years of history. In The Simultaneous Principle: The History of IPHC World Missions, The First 100 Years our rich history is conveyed by detailing the simultaneous movement of one gear, The Homeland, and the second gear, The Nations. Without the simultaneous movement of each gear, the stories and testimonies of the missionaries and people around the globe would not be possible. To catch the “Simultaneous Principle” of God’s Great Commission is to grasp His plan of discipling the nations, while at the same time ministering to people at home.

It is my hope that all who read this book will find it to be an inspiring account of the history of IPHC World Missions - a story worth telling.

–M. Donald Duncan, adapted from Introduction

Paperback, 455 pages, illustrated. $27.99 list price. Order from LifeSprings Resources.

Doris Dresselhaus Menzies Autobiography

Young at Heart: The Story of a Heart Transplant Recipient, by Doris Dresselhaus Menzies. Springfield, MO: Celebration Publishing, 2007.

Doris Dresselhaus Menzies has had two famous last names. Her husband, Dr. William W. Menzies, is one of the most highly-regarded educators in the Assemblies of God. Her cousin, Dr. Richard Dresselhaus, served as the long-time pastor of San Diego (CA) First Assembly of God and continues to serve as an executive presbyter of the Assemblies of God. Few people can claim to be related to one statesman of their caliber, much less two!

But Doris Menzies has her own story to tell. In Young at Heart: The Story of a Heart Transplant Recipient, Menzies recounted her testimony — from her Assemblies of God upbringing in Iowa, to her years in the ministry with her husband, to her roles as wife and mother, to her recent medical triumphs as a heart transplant recipient and as a cancer survivor.

Born on a frigid December day in 1932 on an Iowa farm, Doris was reared in the sturdy Willard and Beatrice Dresselhaus family. Her mother taught Sunday school, and her father was the Sunday school superintendent of the Decorah Assembly of God. Willard, a farmer, served as Farm Bureau president for Winneshiek County, was involved in local politics, and owned his own plane. Young at Heart challenges the assumption, held by certain historians, that early Pentecostals were disinherited or socially uninvolved.

Doris met Bill Menzies, her future husband, at Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois. Bill graduated in 1953 and accepted the pastorate of the little Assemblies of God church in Big Rapids, Michigan. They married soon after Doris’ 1955 graduation and settled into pastoral ministry.

David and Gladys Guenther Missionary Biography

To God Be the Glory: The Story of David and Gladys Guenther, Assemblies of God Missionaries to Guyana, Belize, and Jamaica, by David J. Guenther. Springfield, MO: The Author, 2007.

David J. Guenther and his wife, Gladys, served on the evangelistic field and pastored Assemblies of God churches in Cataract, Wautoma, Marshfield, and Milwaukee, Wisconsin. They also followed God’s call and served as missionaries from 1959 to 1995 in Guyana (known as British Guiana until 1966), Jamaica, and Belize.

Guenther, in his new book To God Be the Glory, preserves and shares the stories and lessons from their lives and ministry. This engaging autobiographical account will be welcomed, not only by those who have counted the Guenthers as friends and ministry partners, but also by church leaders and scholars. Guenther’s careful, detailed account of their ministry years documents the people, events, and places significant in the development of the Assemblies of God in three countries along the Caribbean Basin.

David and Gladys Guenther started life on the northern tier of the United States; David in Wausau, Wisconsin, and Gladys in North Dakota. Both were reared in Pentecostal homes. David’s grandfather, Ernest B. Guenther, was baptized in the Holy Spirit in about 1908, shortly after hearing of the great Pentecostal revival in Chicago. He was ordained by the Full Gospel Assembly in Chicago in 1911 and led German-language house meetings in Merrill, Wisconsin. David grew up in Wausau Christian Assembly of God, where his father was a lay pastor. Gladys was the daughter of Clarence J. Larson, a leader in the North Dakota District who pastored Assemblies of God congregations in Cavalier, Minot, Lisbon, Powers Lake, and Grand Forks, North Dakota, as well as in Eureka, California.

Globalbeliever.com

Globalbeliever.com: Connecting to God’s Work in Your World [Rev. ed.], by Grant McClung. Cleveland, TN: Pathway Press, 2004.

Despite the fact that more than 75 percent of Church of God (Cleveland, TN) membership exists outside North America, Grant McClung still believes in a need to send missionaries overseas “until all have heard.” This conviction is what inspired the 2004 revised edition of Globalbeliever.com: Connecting to God’s Work in Your World, a local church missions resource written by Grant McClung, who serves as field director for the Church of God in Western Europe, the Mediterranean and the Middle East.

Defining a Globalbeliever
The term globalbeliever comes from McClung’s concept of a follower of Jesus Christ who is active in his/her world through intercessory prayer, stewardship, evangelism and positive acts of Christian benevolence. Being a “globalbeliever” is another way of saying that one is a “world Christian”—a believer who is actively involved in ministry beyond the “four walls of the church,” both locally and internationally.

Lithuanian Pentecostal History

Lietuvos Sekmininkų Bažnyčia: Istorine Apybraiza (The Pentecostal Church of Lithuania: Historical Sketch), edited by Rimantas Kupstys, et al. Vilnius, Lithuania: Apyausris, 2002.

Lietuvos Sekmininkų Bažnyčia: Istorine Apybraiza, published in 2002 upon the 90th anniversary of the founding of the Pentecostal church in Lithuania, provides a detailed grassroots account in the Lithuanian language of the development of Pentecostalism across the Baltic nation. The volume was assembled by an editorial committee headed by Rimantas Kupstys, Bishop of the Union of Pentecostal Churches of Lithuania.

The publisher notes the volume is not an exhaustive scientific study. However, this historical sketch is a valuable written account of a national history that, until now, was largely available only in scattered documents or in oral form. The work was based on archival materials, memories of eyewitnesses, published articles, and government documents.

Lietuvos Sekmininkų Bažnyčia begins by tracing Pentecostalism’s roots in the trans-Atlantic revivals of the 18th and 19th centuries, resulting in a significant evangelical and Holiness movement in England and America. The traditional version of Pentecostal origins is retold, identifying Charles Parham and the Azusa Street revival as central to the emerging movement. Thomas Ball Barratt, the Methodist minister from Oslo who received the Pentecostal message while visiting New York in 1906, is commended for, upon his return to Norway, helping to nurture Pentecostal leaders across Europe.

To India with Love

To India with Love, by Mabel Hicok Snyder and compiled and edited by Jean Snyder. Springfield, MO: Jean Snyder, 2007.

Mabel Hicok Snyder has witnessed the growth of the worldwide Pentecostal movement firsthand. Her family began attending a Pentecostal church in the Detroit, Michigan area in the early 1920s. Soon after her Spirit baptism in 1924 at age 16, she felt a calling to serve as a missionary to India. After graduating from T. K. Leonard’s West Park Bible School in Findlay, Ohio, she set sail for India in November 1929. She and her husband Emery — whom she married in 1936 — spent the next four decades as Assemblies of God missionaries to India, working primarily in Kurebhar.

Now 99 years old, Snyder — with the help of her daughter-in-law — has written her memoirs. To India with Love is a careful retelling of the story of the lives and ministries of one missionary family. Readers will appreciate the numerous faith-building missionary stories, such as the rescue of a girl who was raised by wolves. Approximately 45 of the book’s 60 richly-illustrated pages detail the Snyders’ work in India. This book will be of interest to those who counted the Snyders as family and friends, and also to those who wish to better understand the development of the Assemblies of God in India.

Reviewed by Darrin Rodgers

Paperback, 60 pages, illustrated. $10, plus $2 shipping. Order from: Jean Snyder, 1415 E. Buena Vista St., Springfield, MO 65804 (phone: 417-887-0345)

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My Journey: An Autobiography of Dr. Lula Baird

My Journey: An Autobiography of Dr. Lula Baird, by Lula Baird. Turlock, CA: The Author, 2004.

Lula Baird is part of, to use Tom Brokaw’s words, “The Greatest Generation.” Lula — along with thousands of other mostly unheralded men and women who were born in the first two decades of the twentieth century — built the Assemblies of God. Born in 1908 in Utah to a family of Mormon lineage, few could have imagined that Lula Ashmore Baird would serve as a leader in the emerging Pentecostal movement. But she did — serving as an Assemblies of God missionary and pastor to the Chinese people in Asia, Cuba, and the United States.

The Essential J. Philip Hogan

The Essential J. Philip Hogan, edited by Byron D. Klaus and Douglas P. Petersen. Springfield, MO: Assemblies of God Theological Seminary, 2006.

Few missions leaders during the latter half of the twentieth century made a greater impact on the worldwide spread of Pentecostalism than did J. Philip Hogan. Indeed, European Pentecostal leader Peter Kuzmic has deemed Hogan to be “a Churchill in the arena of the post-World War II history of missions” (Wilson, Strategy of the Spirit, p. x). The extent of Hogan’s contributions to Pentecostalism — and by extension, to the broader Christian movement — is only now beginning to be recognized by the scholarly community. Under his leadership as Director of the Division of Foreign Missions (1960-1989), the Assemblies of God grew to be one of the world’s largest associations of national indigenous churches. It is precisely this success that now causes scholars and church leaders to take another look at J. Philip Hogan and to ask how it all happened.

Pentecost to the Uttermost: A History of the Assemblies of God in Samoa

Pentecost “to the Uttermost”: A History of the Assemblies of God in Samoa, by Tavita Pagaialii. Baguio City, Philippines: APTS Press, 2006.

With over 20,000 adherents in 100 churches, the Assemblies of God in Samoa (including both American Samoa and the Independent State of Samoa) claims about nine percent of the residents on these Pacific islands. From the introduction of Pentecostalism to the islands in 1928, the Assemblies of God has become the largest evangelical body in Samoa. Like many of the rapidly-growing Pentecostal churches in non-Western nations, little scholarly attention had been paid to the history and development of the Assemblies of God in Samoa. That is, until now.

Azusa Street and Beyond

Azusa Street and Beyond: 100 Years of Commentary on the Global Pentecostal/Charismatic Movement, edited by Grant McClung. Gainesville, FL: Bridge-Logos, 2006.

Grant McClung, in his timely volume, Azusa Street and Beyond, provides a valuable collection of 21 essays exploring the robust growth experienced by the global Pentecostal movement. McClung, a veteran missions leader and professor at the Church of God Theological Seminary, identifies missions as central to the identity of the Pentecostal movement and traces this missiological focus from Azusa Street through the ensuing century of Pentecostal history.