All with One Accord (Donald Gee) - Deal Pentecostal Church

Experimental Christianity
In Leslie Newbigin's book The Household of God he finds three
main types of Christianity - the Catholic, the Protestant
and, as he calls it, the Pentecostal; laying predominant stress
on order, faith, and experience respectively. This highly
interesting analysis is valuable so long as it is recognized that
the Pentecostal churches are firmly within the broad
Protestant tradition of Christianity since the Reformation. If
they are distinguished from other Protestants it is in emphasis.
Mr. Newbigin, who is a bishop of the United Church of
South India, admittedly uses his terms in a typical and not a
denominational sense. Therefore we who are "Pentecostal" by
designation among other Protestant churches can find
something well worth examination, in this analysis by a
theologian of repute.
We accept the proposition that the type of Christianity
broadly called "Pentecostal" emphasizes experience. We plead
guilty without apology. We believe that spiritual experience is
not only scriptural but vital to the Christian gospel.
Christianity as a religion is based on events—the Incarnation,
Death, and Resurrection of Jesus—that happened in history.
The first Christians had known Jesus personally. The apostles
testified, "We have not followed cunningly devised fables ...
but were eyewitnesses," and that "which we have looked upon
and our hands have handled of the Word of life" (2Peter1:16;
1John1:1). They had "experienced" Jesus Christ. Moreover,
the Church was born in a mighty experience of the Holy
Spirit, made overwhelmingly real by wind and fire and
tongues. They possessed a baptism, not a philosophy, of the
Spirit. This was far removed from a vague "receiving by faith
without any manifestation," or a merely creedal belief that
somehow or other all Christians have received the Holy Spirit
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