Assembly of Christian Churches
Assembly of Christian Churches belongs to the Charismatic and neo-charismatic networks family of churches.
Governance: network.
A Hispanic Pentecostal body born in New York in 1939, carrying the revival heritage of Francisco Olazábal into Puerto Rican and Latino congregations across the Northeast.
Heritage
Organized in New York City in 1939 by leaders from the movement of Francisco Olazábal — the great Mexican-American Pentecostal evangelist — after his death in 1937, the Assembly of Christian Churches (Asamblea de Iglesias Cristianas) grew among Puerto Rican and other Latino communities in the city and spread through the Northeast, Puerto Rico and beyond. It belongs to the first generation of indigenous Hispanic Pentecostal denominations in the US: founded by Latinos, led by Latinos, worshiping in Spanish from the start.
Theological family
Classical Pentecostal: salvation, baptism in the Holy Spirit, divine healing and the second coming, preached with the revivalist fervor of the Olazábal heritage.
Who decides what
A council of churches with elected national leadership and district structures over congregations — Pentecostal connectionalism on a modest, relational scale.
What a first-time visitor would find
A Spanish-language (increasingly bilingual) Pentecostal service: fervent congregational prayer, coritos and hymns, testimony, and preaching that expects a response at the altar.
What it has always cared about
Evangelism and healing in the Olazábal line; the dignity of Spanish-language worship led by its own people; church life as extended family across the barrio and back to the islands.
Its gift to the wider church
It stands among the founding bodies of US Latino Pentecostalism — proof, decades before anyone used the word, that American Pentecostalism's future spoke Spanish.
Commonly confused with
With the Assemblies of God and other Pentecostal councils with similar names, including other bodies descending from Olazábal's movement — the family tree is close-branched, and names overlap.
Range of views inside it
Congregations vary in language balance and worship intensity; classical Pentecostal doctrine is uniform.
A note from the mapmakers: The public scholarly record on this body is thin, and this record is kept deliberately modest for that reason. Nothing here may be asserted of a specific congregation; RCMS 2020 publishes no count for it, so this record carries none. Sentences drawn from this record hedge as "ACC congregations typically…" and yield to the congregation's own materials.
Sources: Melton's Encyclopedia of American Religions (Gale) · The Holiness-Pentecostal Tradition (Vinson Synan, Eerdmans)
Where Assembly of Christian Churches churches are on the map
1 Assembly of Christian Churches congregations appear on The Church Map, across 1 states.
- Ohio — 1
More of the Charismatic and neo-charismatic networks story · Find these churches on the map