Church Family Tree

The family tree

The main branches, simplified. Dates are approximate where movements grew gradually.

Where the streams came from

The Protestant streams that later fed the Pentecostal revival.

The Pentecostal Revival

How a longing for New Testament power became a worldwide movement, in the words of people who were there.

1. 1

   1896–1905

   The longing

   Across the late 1800s, Protestants of many backgrounds asked why their churches lacked the vibrant faith of the New Testament; many joined Holiness churches and prayed earnestly. In 1896 a Holiness revival at the Shearer Schoolhouse in North Carolina saw people speak in tongues. The Welsh Revival of 1904–05 stirred hearts far beyond Wales, and Los Angeles believers began praying for the same.

   “He described the great revival then going on in Wales, which he had just visited. He had met Evan Roberts. My soul was stirred to its depths.”— Frank Bartleman, How Pentecost Came to Los Angeles (1925)

   Sources:AG historyShearer Schoolhouse RevivalWelsh RevivalBartleman (1925)

2. 2

   January 1, 1901

   Topeka

   At Charles Parham's Bethel Bible School in Topeka, Kansas, students studied the book of Acts and prayed. On January 1, 1901, Agnes Ozman asked to have hands laid on her so she might receive the Holy Spirit, and she spoke in tongues. Parham taught tongues as the “Bible evidence” of Spirit baptism.

   “So they laid aside all commentaries and notes and waited on the Lord, studying His word.”— The Apostolic Faith, September 1906

   Sources:Agnes OzmanAG historyThe Apostolic Faith, Sept. 1906

3. 3

   1906

   William Seymour

   William J. Seymour, an African-American Holiness preacher, learned Parham's teaching in Houston, Texas, then was invited to Los Angeles. At prayer meetings around a home on Bonnie Brae Street, believers began speaking in tongues on April 9, 1906. As crowds grew, they moved into an old building at 312 Azusa Street.

   “It was the divine call that brought me from Houston, Texas, to Los Angeles.”— W. J. Seymour, The Apostolic Faith, September 1906

   Sources:William J. SeymourAzusa Street RevivalThe Apostolic Faith, Sept. 1906

4. 4

   1906–1909

   Azusa Street

   For about three years, meetings ran nearly every day, often from morning until late at night. Black and white believers and people of other backgrounds worshiped side by side, something eyewitnesses remarked on. The mission's free paper, The Apostolic Faith (1906–08), carried the reports to thousands around the world.

   “There were far more white people than colored coming. The “color line” was washed away in the blood.”— Frank Bartleman, How Pentecost Came to Los Angeles (1925)

   Sources:AG historyAzusa Street RevivalBartleman (1925)

5. 5

   1906 onward

   Around the world

   Visitors carried the message home and missionaries left for other lands; A. G. Garr and his wife, Spirit-baptized at Azusa, went to India and later Hong Kong. William Durham took it back to his Chicago mission, which became a hub for the Midwest and Canada.

   “They have been and are daily going out to all points of the compass to spread this wonderful gospel.”— The Apostolic Faith, September 1906

   Sources:PentecostalismWilliam DurhamThe Apostolic Faith, Sept. 1906

6. 6

   April 2–12, 1914

   Hot Springs

   As the revival spread, many Pentecostals saw the need for more organization and accountability. About 300 delegates met at Hot Springs, Arkansas, to promote unity and sound doctrine, gain legal standing, coordinate missions, and start a ministerial training school. They formed the General Council of the Assemblies of God, with E. N. Bell as chairman.

   Sources:AG historyAssemblies of God USA

Nine eras

1. 🔥

   Era 1 · AD 30–100

   The Apostolic Age

   After the resurrection, the Holy Spirit is poured out at Pentecost (Acts 2) and the apostles carry the gospel from Jerusalem to Judea, Samaria and across the Roman world. Churches form in homes, Paul's letters circulate, and the Gospels are written.

   • Peter
   • Paul
   • James
   • John

   Pentecostals, including the Assemblies of God, look back to Acts 2, where the Spirit is given to the first believers.

   ▸StoryWind and fire in Jerusalem

   Seven weeks after Passover, about a hundred and twenty believers are gathered in one place when a sound like a rushing wind fills the house and tongues like fire rest on each of them. Pilgrims from across the empire hear these Galileans praising God in their own languages. Peter stands up, preaches Jesus crucified and risen, and about three thousand are baptized that day.

   “They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other languages, as the Spirit gave them the ability to speak.”

   Read more:Acts 2 (WEB)Schaff, History vol. 1: Apostolic Christianity

2. 🕊

   Era 2 · 100–313

   The Early Church and Persecution

   A growing, often persecuted church defends its faith and organizes around bishops, baptism and the Lord's Supper. Writers answer critics and false teaching, and the churches gradually recognize which books belong in the New Testament.

   • Ignatius of Antioch
   • Polycarp of Smyrna
   • Justin Martyr
   • Irenaeus of Lyon
   • Tertullian

   ▸StoryPolycarp in the stadium

   Around the middle of the second century, the aged bishop of Smyrna is arrested and brought into a roaring stadium. The proconsul, pitying his age, offers him freedom if he will only curse Christ. Polycarp refuses and is put to death. His church's letter describing that day is one of the oldest accounts of a Christian martyr outside the New Testament.

   “Eighty and six years have I served Him, and He never did me any injury: how then can I blaspheme my King and my Saviour?”

   Read more:Martyrdom of PolycarpIgnatius, Letter to the RomansJustin Martyr, First Apology

3. 🏛

   Era 3 · 313–451

   The Imperial Church and the Great Councils

   Under Constantine, persecution ends and the church gains public standing. Bishops meet in councils to state the faith about Christ and the Trinity: Nicaea (325), Constantinople (381), Ephesus (431) and Chalcedon (451). In North Africa, Augustine shapes Western theology for centuries.

   • Constantine
   • Athanasius
   • The Cappadocian Fathers
   • Augustine of Hippo

   ▸StoryTake up and read

   In a garden in Milan in 386, a brilliant teacher named Augustine sits weeping, unable to break with his old life. He hears a child's voice from a nearby house singing the same words over and over. He opens Paul's letters, reads Romans 13:13–14, and later writes that the darkness of doubt simply vanished. He goes on to become bishop of Hippo and one of the most influential theologians in history.

   “Take up and read; take up and read.”

   Read more:Augustine, Confessions Book 8Council of Nicaea (325): creed and canonsSchaff, History vol. 3: Nicene Christianity

4. 🌄

   Era 4 · 431 and 451

   The Church of the East and the Oriental Orthodox

   Disagreements over how to describe Christ's divine and human natures lead churches beyond the Roman Empire to part ways. The Church of the East, centered in Persia, does not accept Ephesus (431) and later carries the gospel along the Silk Road to India and China. The Oriental Orthodox churches (Coptic, Ethiopian, Armenian, Syriac and others) do not accept Chalcedon (451).

   • Cyril of Alexandria
   • Coptic and Armenian churches
   • Missionaries to China

   ▸StoryA stone in China

   In 781, Christians of the Church of the East erect a tall stone tablet in Chang'an (today's Xi'an), the Tang dynasty capital. Carved in Chinese and Syriac, it tells of missionaries who arrived about a century and a half earlier, a reminder of how far east the gospel traveled long before European missions.

   Read more:Church of the East (overview)Oriental Orthodox ChurchesThe Xi'an Stele (781)

5. ⚖

   Era 5 · 1054

   The Great Schism

   Until 1054 East and West were one communion. Long-growing differences between the Greek East and Latin West, including the addition of the filioque ("and the Son") to the Nicene Creed and the authority of the bishop of Rome, come to a head in mutual excommunications in 1054. The sack of Constantinople by crusaders in April 1204 deepens the divide. The result is two sister churches, Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic, each tracing itself to the same undivided early church; neither branched off the other.

   • Pope Leo IX
   • Patriarch Michael Cerularius

   ▸StoryA bull on the altar

   On July 16, 1054, papal legates led by Cardinal Humbert walk into Hagia Sophia in Constantinople as the Divine Liturgy is being prepared and lay a bull excommunicating Patriarch Michael Cerularius on the altar. The patriarch answers with excommunications of his own. Few at the time saw it as final, but the breach hardened, especially after crusaders sacked Constantinople in April 1204. In 1965 the pope and the patriarch lifted the mutual excommunications.

   Read more:East–West SchismSack of Constantinople (1204)Schaff, History vol. 4: Mediaeval Christianity

6. 📜

   Era 6 · 1054–1500

   The Medieval West

   Monasteries preserve learning and serve the poor. Scholars like Anselm and Thomas Aquinas join faith and reason, and universities grow. Reform movements arise within the Western church: the Waldensians, followers of Valdes of Lyon (late 1100s), and later John Wycliffe and the Lollards in England and Jan Hus in Bohemia, who call for Scripture in the common language and for reform of the church.

   • Benedict's monastic rule
   • Valdes of Lyon
   • Anselm of Canterbury
   • Thomas Aquinas
   • John Wycliffe
   • Jan Hus

   Shared heritage: the Western (Latin) branch is the shared heritage of Catholics and Protestants; the Eastern Orthodox are its sister branch from the same early church.

   ▸StoryJan Hus at Constance

   Jan Hus, a Prague preacher who championed Scripture and preaching in the people's language, travels to the Council of Constance under a promise of safe conduct. He is tried, refuses to recant what he believes he never taught, and is burned at the stake on July 6, 1415.

   Read more:Jan HusJohn WycliffeWaldensiansAquinas, Summa Theologiae

7. 📖

   Era 7 · 1517

   The Reformation

   Martin Luther's Ninety-five Theses (1517) spark a movement within the Western church emphasizing Scripture, grace and faith. Lutheran, Reformed (Zwingli, Calvin), Anglican and Anabaptist churches take shape, while the Catholic Church renews itself and defines its teaching at the Council of Trent (1545–1563).

   • Martin Luther
   • Ulrich Zwingli
   • John Calvin
   • Thomas Cranmer
   • Menno Simons

   The Reformation's Protestant family is the background for the several streams that, centuries later, fed the Pentecostal revival.

   ▸StoryLuther at Worms

   In April 1521, Martin Luther stands before Emperor Charles V and the princes of the Empire at the Diet of Worms. Shown a table of his books, he is asked to take back what he has written. After a night to consider, he answers that unless he is convinced by Scripture and plain reason, his conscience is captive to the Word of God and he cannot recant. He leaves an outlaw, and is hidden at the Wartburg castle, where he translates the New Testament into German.

   “Our Lord and Master Jesus Christ, when He said Poenitentiam agite, willed that the whole life of believers should be repentance.”

   Read more:Ninety-five Theses (full text)Diet of Worms (1521)Council of Trent (1545–1563)

8. ⛪

   Era 8 · 1600s–1800s

   Awakenings and New Families

   New Protestant families form: Baptists (1609), Congregationalists, Quakers and, in the 1700s, the Methodist movement led by John and Charles Wesley. The Great Awakenings spread revival across Britain and America. In the 1800s, the Holiness movement stresses a deeper work of the Spirit, and Restorationists seek to recover New Testament Christianity.

   • John Smyth
   • George Fox
   • John and Charles Wesley
   • George Whitefield
   • Phoebe Palmer

   Three streams that later fed the Pentecostal revival take shape: Methodist and Holiness (from Wesley's 1700s revival), Baptist, and Reformed and others.

   ▸StoryA heart strangely warmed

   On the evening of May 24, 1738, a discouraged Anglican priest named John Wesley goes unwillingly to a small meeting on Aldersgate Street in London. Someone is reading Luther's preface to Romans. Wesley later writes that he suddenly knew he trusted Christ alone. Within a year he is preaching in the open fields, and the Methodist movement spreads across Britain and America.

   “About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed.”

   Read more:The Journal of John WesleyBaptists: first church, Amsterdam 1609Holiness movement (Vineland camp meeting, 1867)

9. 🌍

   Era 9 · 1900s–today

   Pentecost Again and a Global Church

   On January 1, 1901, students at Charles Parham's Bethel Bible School in Topeka, Kansas, begin speaking in tongues. In 1906 the Azusa Street revival in Los Angeles, led by William J. Seymour, sends Pentecostalism around the world. The Charismatic renewal (from 1960) brings similar experience into older churches, non-denominational churches multiply, and Christianity's center of gravity shifts to Africa, Latin America and Asia.

   • Charles Parham
   • Agnes Ozman
   • William J. Seymour
   • E. N. Bell
   • J. Roswell Flower

   This is the direct origin of the Assemblies of God: a Pentecostal fellowship organized at Hot Springs, Arkansas, April 2–12, 1914, by about 300 Pentecostal delegates. It adopted its Statement of Fundamental Truths in 1916.

   ▸StoryFrom Bonnie Brae Street to Azusa Street

   In early 1906, William J. Seymour, a Black Holiness preacher, is locked out of the Los Angeles church that invited him. He keeps holding prayer meetings in the home of Richard and Ruth Asberry at 216 North Bonnie Brae Street. On April 9, 1906, the first of the group speaks in tongues, and soon crowds spill into the street. They move to an old building at 312 Azusa Street, where Black and white, rich and poor worship together, and visitors carry the revival around the world.

   Read more:Azusa Street RevivalAgnes Ozman and Topeka (1901)Pew: Christian movements (charismatic renewal from 1960)

The major Christian families today

Approximate 2010 estimates from Pew Research Center, Global Christianity (2011), of about 2.18 billion Christians.

Across these families, the same Pew report cites estimates of about 279 million Pentecostals and 305 million Charismatics worldwide (approximate, from the Center for the Study of Global Christianity), together about 27% of all Christians. Source.