The Swedish Pentecostal Movement () is a Pentecostal movement in Sweden. Many, but not all, of these, are members of the Pentecostal Alliance of Independent Churches, which was founded in 2001. The Pentecostal movement spread to Sweden by 1907 from the 1904–1905 Welsh Revival and the Azusa Street Revival in Los Angeles in 1906.
The Pentecostal Alliance of Independent Churches is made up of 439 churches and 87,392 members , making it one of Sweden's largest free church organizations. The Pentecostal movement is also part of the broader Charismatic Christianity (which includes both Pentecostals and the non-Pentecostal Charismatic movement).
Size of the Pentecostal movement
In terms of membership, the Pentecostal movement is the second largest free church movement in Sweden after the Uniting Church in Sweden. In 2017 it had 87,392 members in 439 congregations. The movement had its peak in the 1980s, with just over 100,000 members. The Pentecostal Movement has thus had a greater impact on the free church movement in Sweden than in many other countries.
In terms of the number of people served (registered in activities or as members), the Pentecostal movement was the largest free church in 2007–2010; this amounted to 113,527 people in 2010.
The largest Pentecostal congregations in Sweden in 2016 were:
Filadelfia Stockholm, 5,378 members
Smyrna Church in Gothenburg, 3,229 members
Pentecostal Church in Jönköping, 2,465 members
Sion Church in Linköping, 1,522 members
Europaporten in Malmö, 1,315 members
History
The Swedish Pentecostal revival has its origins mainly in the Holiness movement that arose in North America in the 1860s and which reached Sweden in various ways towards the end of the 19th century.
In January 1901, several students at Bethel Bible School in Topeka, Kansas, USA, began speaking in tongues after studying the Bible and spending time in prayer. Agnes Ozman was the first among them to have this experience, but she was soon followed by more students and her teacher Charles Fox Parham.
In 1906, an African-American revival began at 312 Azusa Street in Los Angeles, California and came to Sweden that year through Swedish-American . He was part of the first group of missionaries sent out from Azusa Street. He first intended to go to Palestine as a missionary, but for various reasons ended up in his hometown of Skövde, where he started work in November 1906. Just over a month later, Norwegian Methodist pastor Thomas Ball Barratt arrived in Kristiania, now Oslo, and started a parallel ministry there. Through heavy media coverage, news of the movement spread quickly in both Norway and Sweden, and many Swedes travelled to Kristiania to experience the much talked-about revival first-hand.
History in Sweden
In 1881, Swedish preacher Fredrik Franson returned from the United States, bringing the seeds of the early Pentecostal movement and engaging in preaching to large groups. He returned in 1907 to again preach.
The Pentecostal revival in Sweden was spread partly through the travels of Andrew G. Johnson, and partly through a large number of evangelists, mainly women, from the Örebro Mission. The leader of this mission was John Ongman, and the women thus came to be called ('Ongman sisters'). Through Ongman's support of the revival that came with Johnson, Örebro became an early Pentecostal center in Sweden, along with the aforementioned Skövde. Through the Örebro Missionary Society, which Ongman founded in 1908, his followers began to run their own evangelistic and missionary activities. Ongman's group welcomed the new movement, and after a schism with the Baptist Church in 1938 became a separate denomination, the Örebro Mission.
The next strongest center of activity was Gothenburg, with ecumenical activities held in on Kungstorget. The first Pentecostal magazine in Sweden, (Glow from the Altar), was also published in Gothenburg.
From 1911, a strong leader in Stockholm became increasingly prominent, young Baptist pastor Lewi Pethrus. From his Kölingared Declaration of 1919 onwards, the Filadelfia Church in Stockholm increasingly became the movement's center and Pethrus its unofficial leader.