NCSR 2008 - Urban Diversity and Religious Traditions
13-15 August 2008, Åbo Akademi University

Management Pentacostalism

Anders Lundberg

The Swedish Free Church is experiencing a crisis with local churches loosing members or even shutting down. Various efforts are made to counter this development, and the aim of this paper is to look briefly at two of these strategies, starting with what at this stage may be termed Management Pentecostalism and continuing with what we may call Sacralized Pentecostalism.
Management Pentecostalism is a phenomenon at the fringe of the Pentecostal movement, the Faith movement and EFK – Interact. Management Pentecostalism is characterized by an authoritative leadership style with little or no academic training, the pastor taking on the role of a CEO running a business. There is a low measure of internal democracy and few control mechanisms to counter the absolute freedom of the leaders. It finds inspiration from the G12 Movement of Colombia and from the Hillsong Movement in Australia.
Sacralized Pentecostalism is a movement around Peter Halldorf of the Sion church and of Bjärka Säby, both in the area of Linköping. Life at the community in Bjärka Säby is a mixture of Coptic/Orthodox Christendom and Pentecostalism, focusing on liturgy, priesthood and secludedness. The aim according to Halldorf is, within a near future, to have people taking lifetime vows of celibacy.
I plan to analyze these two movements from the perspective of secularization theory and individualization theory.