Aimee Semple McPherson and Spanish-Speaking Ministry in Los Angeles: Lessons for the Twenty-First Century Foursquare Church

This project began with my study of the values, mission, outreach, discipleship, leadership development, and training processes of one dynamic and fruitful Hispanic Foursquare Church in Los Angeles, the Angelus Temple Hispanic Foursquare Church in Echo Park, California. The history of this particular congregation and the discoveries that would come from the research and study of this particular church as a whole were to be the centerpiece of the dissertation with any relevant Foursquare history serving only as a backdrop to this main focus. I was completely unaware of the rich history I was about to discover.
For many years, I have partnered with the Hispanic leadership and congregations of the Foursquare Church; therefore, much of my personal preparation for this project has been through the sharing of life with my Hispanic brothers and sisters and in discussion and interviews with many of the Hispanic leaders who serve Foursquare congregations. I have also given myself to reading the relevant and available published literature and that found online within the disciplines of cross-cultural ministry, ministry within the Hispanic community, discipleship, leadership development, and the qualities of a healthy, reproducing congregation. I have also had unfettered access to the archives of the Foursquare Church, and I have studied the writings of Sister McPherson, the relevant historical documents of the church, as well as studies and biographies written by others about Aimee Semple McPherson and the Foursquare Church. Of course, my study of the
Word of God has been most influential in my thinking, planning, and assessing of other materials used to develop this project.
This project has three foci. The most enduring contribution of this project is that it uncovers and reveals the largely unknown early history of Foursquare Spanish-speaking ministry in Los Angeles and the surprising discovery that Aimee Semple McPherson was primarily responsible for this ministry from the dedication of Angelus Temple on January 1, 1923, to her death on September 27, 1944. This is a history that has been too long lost within the pages of our Foursquare history, and it is my great honor and joy to reintroduce it to the Foursquare Church.
Second, this project seeks to understand what contributed to making Sister McPherson, an English-speaking evangelist-pastor, so passionately committed to reaching immigrant peoples beyond the English-speaking American community in Los Angeles and what factors contributed to the remarkable outreach and ministry success among the Spanish-speaking communities in and around Los Angeles. How did Sister McPherson’s missionary and evangelistic ministry experiences impact her theology and missional principles and, then, influence her ministry and outreach to all the peoples of Los Angeles? This project will highlight the elements of a partnership and lift out of the
documents of the Foursquare Church a rich history: In many ways, it is really a love story between Aimee Semple McPherson and the leadership and congregation of Angelus Temple with the Spanish-speaking community.
Finally, this project will consider three significant lessons from the ministry of Sister McPherson. These lessons have to do with what it means to be called to serve a city, how a local church can make disciples and develop leaders, and how leaders who serve different language or cultural communities might partner together to increase fruitfulness. The pastors and leadership of the twenty-first century Foursquare Church would do well to reflect upon and intentionally adapt these lessons and any resulting strategies wherever the United States Foursquare Church serves an ever-increasing diversity of peoples and cultures.
This project is offered to the Foursquare Church with the hope that we will find that the answers to many of our current cross-cultural and urban questions have been modeled to us in the missiology of Sister McPherson and the ecclesiology of Angelus Temple. God is to be praised for all that was accomplished, and He is the One to whom all credit is to be given for the Spanish-language leaders who were developed, trained, and released. It was God’s grace, but it was not a miracle: The twenty-first-century Foursquare Church can experience similar works of God’s grace if we learn the lessons from those who have gone before us.