The Pentecostal Frontier
The late Elton Trueblood, advocate for Christian learning and discipleship, once compared the state of the church to that of Rome in the moments when its empire began to wane.
Trueblood noted that when the frontier provinces like Britannia, Gaul, and Germanica were lost, life went on in Rome as usual. After all, Rome thought, we’re safe. Our economy is sound. Let’s eat, drink, and be glad.
But Rome’s fate was sealed once it began to lose its outer provinces. Life could go on as normal only for a time, and then there would be collapse at the center.
Trueblood believed youth and education are the church’s frontier provinces. If the church loses them, life might go on as normal for a while in the church—with worship, program, preaching, structure, and the bills paid. It would be only a matter of time, however, until the church collapsed because it lost its young.
The founders of the Assemblies of God recognized this essential truth from the beginning. That is why one of the five reasons given for the convening of the first General Council in 1914 had to do with youth and education:
We may have a proposition to lay before the body for a general Bible Training School with a literary department for our people.
From the beginning, our Movement recognized the need to prepare the next generation for Christian service. It was no easy task for a fledgling church with a strong emphasis on the soon return of our Lord to give itself simultaneously to educational preparation. Nevertheless, our church has done that.
From the standpoint of our Movement today, at the very top of our priorities is the mobilization of our resources to nourish the spiritual gestational process of young people from early childhood, elementary, and secondary school, through college and graduate training. Our goal is for this Pentecostal river to flow on with strength until Jesus comes!
However, programs and ministries by themselves will not pass the torch to a new Pentecostal generation. It will be individuals who take time to invest their lives in young people, one by one.
One of my personal heroes is H. C. Ball, my Sunday School teacher when I was 15 years old and a junior in high school. At the time, I had no idea he had made such a vast contribution to the Assemblies of God by laying the ground floor for ministry among Spanish-speaking people. I just knew him as a tall, white-haired, retired minister who had a real concern for his group of boys.
Each Sunday morning he patiently fielded our many questions—some of them designed to draw him into a debate or throw the class off track from the lesson plan. He patiently deflected our ploys, answered questions, and kept steadily at the task of communicating the gospel to his boys. Each Saturday night he phoned us to ask if we would be in class the next morning. Frequently, he and his wife Sunshine had us over to their home for a party or social, as it was called then. In class, we always sat in a circle around him, and he closed each session by praying for us each by name, placing his giant bony hand on the knee of each boy as he prayed for him.
Only later did I come to understand the magnitude of his contribution to the Assemblies of God and how he was revered by multiplied thousands of people. In retrospect, I realize he could have rested on his accomplishments. Past age 65, he had no obligation to try to reach out to a group of unruly 15- and 16-year-old boys.
However, H. C. Ball understood the Elton Trueblood principle. He was not going to let retirement keep him from reaching the frontiers—even if the frontier was only a handful of boys in a high school Sunday School class.
The General Council, district councils, and local churches can provide great programs to minister to children and youth, and with the touch of dedicated teachers, this Pentecostal torch will be passed on. You may not have the age or experience of an H. C. Ball, but you can share the same ministry by personally touching the lives of young people who will touch the lives of tomorrow.
