Pentecostal Mission Must Learn Across Cultures Before It Leads

Pentecostal Christianity is at home on the move. Testimony travels with migrants, prayer crosses borders by telephone, worship songs circulate through congregations and digital feeds, and ordinary believers carry the gospel into languages and neighbourhoods that established mission structures may not reach. This mobility is one of the movement's great gifts.

Movement, however, does not guarantee intercultural faithfulness. A church can cross a border while carrying an unquestioned hierarchy of cultures with it. A missionary can preach the same gospel in another country yet listen only to people who resemble the sending community. A congregation can be geographically diverse while one language, musical tradition, leadership network or national story still defines who truly belongs.

The question is therefore not whether African Pentecostals should participate in global mission. We already do. The deeper question is whether Spirit-empowered mission will learn across cultures before it claims authority within them. Pentecostal boldness needs intercultural humility: the willingness to proclaim Christ, receive correction, share leadership and recognise that the Spirit has been at work among the people we meet before our programme arrives.

A Lausanne missional paper published on 11 September reports exploratory research conducted between February 2025 and June 2026 among forty active pastors of African diaspora churches or churches with significant African membership across England, Scotland and Wales. The churches described relational, Scripture-centred and spiritually serious discipleship…