The General Council of the Assemblies of God in the United States of America or Assemblies of God USA (AG) is a Pentecostal Christian denomination in the United States founded in 1914 during a meeting of Pentecostal ministers at Hot Springs, Arkansas. With a constituency of over 3 million, it was ranked the ninth largest denomination in the United States in 2011. The Assemblies of God USA is the U.S. branch of the World Assemblies of God Fellowship, the world's largest Pentecostal body.
The Assemblies of God holds to a conservative, evangelical and Arminian theology as expressed in the Statement of Fundamental Truths and position papers, which emphasize such core Pentecostal doctrines as the baptism in the Holy Spirit, speaking in tongues, divine healing and the Second Coming of Christ. It defines for itself a fourfold mission to evangelize, worship God, disciple believers, and show compassion.
The fellowship's polity is a hybrid of presbyterian and congregational models. This tension between local independence and national authority is seen in the AG's historical reluctance to refer to itself as a denomination, preferring the terms fellowship and movement. The national headquarters are in Springfield, Missouri, where the administrative and executive offices and Gospel Publishing House are located. It maintains relationships with other Pentecostal groups at both regional and national levels through the Pentecostal/Charismatic Churches of North America and the Pentecostal World Fellowship. It is also a member of the Wesleyan Holiness Consortium and the National Association of Evangelicals.
Read more about General Council Of The Assemblies Of God In The United States Of America: Worship, Structure, Clergy, Demographics
Famous quotes containing the words general, council, assemblies, god, united, states and/or america:
“Some people are under the impression that all that is required to make a good fisherman is the ability to tell lies easily and without blushing; but this is a mistake. Mere bald fabrication is useless; the veriest tyro can manage that. It is in the circumstantial detail, the embellishing touches of probability, the general air of scrupulous—almost of pedantic—veracity, that the experienced angler is seen.”
—Jerome K. Jerome (1859–1927)
“I haven’t seen so much tippy-toeing around since the last time I went to the ballet. When members of the arts community were asked this week about one of their biggest benefactors, Philip Morris, and its requests that they lobby the New York City Council on the company’s behalf, the pas de deux of self- justification was so painstakingly choreographed that it constituted a performance all by itself.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)
“He who comes into Assemblies only to gratifie his Curiosity, and not to make a Figure, enjoys the Pleasures of Retirement in a[n] ...exquisite Degree.”
—Richard Steele (1672–1729)
“God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and the learned.”
—Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)
“Europe and the U.K. are yesterday’s world. Tomorrow is in the United States.”
—R.W. “Tiny” Rowland (b. 1917)
“It may be said that the elegant Swann’s simplicity was but another, more refined form of vanity and that, like other Israelites, my parents’ old friend could present, one by one, the succession of states through which had passed his race, from the most naive snobbishness to the worst coarseness to the finest politeness.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“What though the traveler tell us of the ruins of Egypt, are we so sick or idle that we must sacrifice our America and today to some man’s ill-remembered and indolent story? Carnac and Luxor are but names, or if their skeletons remain, still more desert sand and at length a wave of the Mediterranean Sea are needed to wash away the filth that attaches to their grandeur. Carnac! Carnac! here is Carnac for me. I behold the columns of a larger
and purer temple.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)