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Since the 1990s, the issue of succession has been a pressing one in the UK throughout what are now commonly referred to as the ‘Apostolic Networks’, the networks of neo-Charismatic churches that developed out of the House Church movement and which laid particular stress upon present-day apostles. Within an avidly relational and informal structure, the government of each of these networks resides to a significant extent within key apostolic leaders. Over the last twenty years, almost all of these networks arrived at a situation in which they were overseen by a still energetic yet ageing apostle and with no obvious successor to hand. The beginnings of the networks were often associated with big personalities, credited with high apostolic gifts. The Old Testament similarly abounds with anointed kings and prophets and their successors who were sometimes very unsubtle in the way they then wielded the power bequeathed to them. The New Testament centres on a founder whose act seems especially hard to follow. This study will seek to synthesize the biblical data, and what it implies about how to do it and how not to do it, into a form that can be the biblical basis for Pentecostal and charismatic leadership transition today. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG), London (United Kingdom) is one example of the transnational networks of African Pentecostal churches that have changed the Christian landscape in Britain. The proliferation of RCCG parishes in London and nearly all the urban cities in Britain further reaffirms previous scholarly claims that Pentecostalism is a religion made to travel. The theoretical entry point of this paper is to identify the internal dynamics of RCCG that have enhanced the missionary agenda of the denomination particularly in London, situating it within the broader missionary endeavours of the denomination in the West and North America. This paper examines the interface between migration, mission and church growth of the denomination in London. The paper further explores to what degree RCCG has utilized the urban church planting strategy of St Paul in its church planting agenda as well as identifying and prescribing solutions to the missionary challenges of the denomination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article sets out a narrative of the interaction of a seasoned theologian/ church leader with the leadership of two national Pentecostal churches at their respective centenaries. Both denominations had changed their leadership models in 2000 and 1999 respectively to a modified approximation of the New Apostolic model. Executive power, pastoral oversight, and even doctrinal delineation were centred on one or a very few central leadership figures. The article offers a short constitutional history of the two denominations, and traces the course of the largely negative response of the new leadership to theologically substantiated analyses and suggestions that the current leadership models be revisited at constitutional level, as their past record and future prospects for the next century were not necessarily propitious. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]