The Apostolic Faith Church (AFC), formerly the Apostolic Faith Mission, is a Pentecostal Christian denomination with headquarters in Portland, Oregon, United States. The Apostolic Faith Mission of Portland was founded in 1906 by Florence L. Crawford, who was affiliated at that time with William J. Seymour and the Azusa Street Revival of Los Angeles, California. By 1908, Crawford and Seymour had severed ties, and Crawford founded what would become the Apostolic Faith Church. Since July 2000, the President and Superintendent General of the Apostolic Faith Church has been Darrel D. Lee, who also pastors the headquarters church.
The Apostolic Faith Church has a presence in the United States, Canada, Africa, Asia, and Europe.[1] In 1997, the AFC had 2,013 members in 115 local churches served by 188 clergy in the United States.[2] There are ten churches in Canada, several hundred in Africa (six-hundred in Nigeria alone), twenty throughout the Philippines and Korea, nine in Europe (centrally Romania), and over sixty in West Indies. Church-affiliated groups also regularly assemble in other parts of the world and recently include India. In some locations, member churches carry instead the name Trinity Apostolic Faith Church in order to differentiate themselves from non-affiliated churches in the same area.[1]
Contents |
The founder of the Apostolic Faith Church was Florence L. Crawford. Crawford was a participant in the Azusa Street Revival. This revival began in 1906 at the Apostolic Faith Mission in Los Angeles. The Azusa Street Mission, as it was called, quickly became the center of the Apostolic Faith movement mainly through the publication of The Apostolic Faith newspaper. Seymour appointed Crawford as the state director of the Pacific Coast Apostolic Faith movement where she would help other missions and churches join the movement. While the exact date of Crawford's break with Seymour is disputed, it was complete by 1908. She began an independent work in Portland, Oregon, with the same name as Seymour's mission and most of the churches under her supervision followed her.[3]
This considerably weakened Seymour's undisputed leadership of the Apostolic Faith movement as most of the churches which had fed the movement chose alignment with Crawford. According to Crawford, the separation was necessitated by rumors that Seymour had abandoned the Wesleyan position that entire sanctification was a second work of grace after conversion. Crawford's mission gained further influence when Clara Lum, editor of The Apostolic Faith, transferred the paper, under controversial circumstances, to the Portland mission in mid-1908.[3] The Apostolic Faith would become the Higher Way at a later date and is still published.[4]
Through the years, the Apostolic Faith Church's leaders have maintained the doctrines outlined in Seymour's editions of the Apostolic Faith papers printed in 1906 through 1908. As a Trinitarian and fundamental church, their doctrinal position centers on a born-again experience, supports the Wesleyan teaching of holiness (Christian perfection), and stresses the need of sanctified believers to receive the Pentecostal experience of the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Their teachings are in direct conflict with Calvinistic beliefs regarding sin, predestination, and eternal security.
The doctrinal statement of the Apostolic Faith Church can be found on the headquarters' website.[5] The text of the page is reprinted below: