Start With the Structure
Lets start with the structures, because they explain most of the rest. An Assembly of God church belongs to the Assemblies of God, a Pentecostal denomination organized in 1914, with a written Statement of Fundamental Truths and a General Council standing over its districts. A congregation like ours has none of that. Here at Christians in Honesdale we’re simply Christians, with no creed on paper and nothing organized above this local church. Then there’s the second big difference: the two of us read the Holy Spirit’s work today in very different ways.
Two Blueprints, Not One
The Assemblies of God came out of the Pentecostal revivals of the early 1900s and was formally organized at a meeting in Hot Springs, Arkansas, in 1914. Today it’s one of the largest Pentecostal bodies on earth. Its churches sit inside districts, and both districts and local congregations answer doctrinally to a General Council, which sets the Fundamental Truths that bind the whole fellowship and has final say over who is credentialed to minister. People in those buildings give generously, love the Bible, and pray expecting God to act. We’re not going to pretend otherwise.
Our aim points a different direction. We’re not carrying forward a movement or reforming one. We’re trying to reach back past all of them and simply do what the New Testament describes, with nothing added on top. This congregation stands on its own, overseen by its own men, answering to no office anywhere on earth (Acts 20:28; Titus 1:5; 1 Peter 5:2). Restoration instead of reformation. Catch that one aim and the differences below stop feeling random.
What Settles a Question of Doctrine
The Assemblies of God publishes sixteen Fundamental Truths, and those statements define what its churches teach and hold their clergy to.
We keep no such document, and we don’t want one. The faith was handed over once and then finished. Jude wrote urging Christians “to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3). Once for all. If that’s true, no later summary can add authority to it, however carefully it was drafted. So the Bible is the only standard we hold, and it’s the only one we’d ask to be measured by.
Tongues, Healing, and the Spirit Today
This is the sharp one. Assemblies of God teaching holds that a believer receives a baptism in the Holy Spirit sometime after conversion, and that speaking in tongues is the initial physical evidence of it. Divine healing stands on the same footing, one of the four doctrines the fellowship treats as cardinal. Those convictions shape a whole service.
We read the New Testament differently on this. The miraculous gifts had a job: confirming a message that hadn’t yet been written down. “It was declared at first by the Lord, and it was attested to us by those who heard, while God also bore witness by signs and wonders and various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit” (Hebrews 2:3-4). Once that revelation was complete, the confirming signs had done what they came to do. Paul points the same direction even while the gifts were still in daily use: “Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away” (1 Corinthians 13:8-10). We take “the perfect” there as the completed revelation those gifts pointed toward — worth saying plainly that other believers who likewise hold the gifts were temporary read that phrase differently, more often as Christ’s return. None of that shrinks God. He still hears prayer, and He still works in this world. He simply isn’t distributing miraculous gifts now.
Sunday Morning in Each Place
Walk into an Assembly of God building on a Sunday and you’ll usually meet a band, contemporary songs, raised hands, and room in the service for tongues or prophecy. Communion is observed, though in a lot of their congregations it comes monthly rather than weekly.
Ours is plainer, and that’s on purpose. Everybody sings, and no instrument plays, because singing is the part handed to every Christian: “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God” (Colossians 3:16). Prayers come in everyday words. The preaching walks through a text rather than around it. And we observe the Lord’s Supper every first day of the week, following what the early church did (Acts 20:7), where “to break bread” most likely refers to the Lord’s Supper. We take it as a memorial proclaiming the Lord’s death until He comes (1 Corinthians 11:26).
Baptism: What It Actually Does
Both of us baptize believers, and both of us immerse. So the question isn’t the method. It’s the purpose. Assemblies of God teaching treats baptism as an ordinance, an outward witness to a salvation the believer already possesses.
We read Peter’s answer as saying more than that. A convicted crowd asked what they should do, and Peter told them, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:38). Forgiveness lands there. Not earlier. That’s why we won’t reduce baptism to a symbol, and why we speak of being buried with Christ and raised to walk in new life (Acts 22:16; 1 Peter 3:21; Romans 6:3-4).
Where That Leaves You
Not with a vote on which service stirred you more. The Bereans got commended for checking even an apostle against the Scriptures, daily (Acts 17:11), and that’s the test we’d want run on both churches, ours very much included. Keep one thing in view while you do it: we’re an independent congregation with no denomination or headquarters behind us, so we answer for nobody but ourselves. What’s written above is our own conviction out of the New Testament, not a ruling handed down to us. Go read it. Take whatever pace you need.
Ask Us the Hard Ones Too
Sizing up a congregation really comes down to sitting with one and opening the Bible, and we’d be glad to do that with you, a question at a time. Ask us for a free Bible study, get to know who we are, or reach out before you stop by.
Our schedule:
Our building is 416 Main Street, Suite D, Honesdale, PA 18431. Drive around to the rear for parking, and use the back entrance when you come in.