Pentecostal Free Will Baptist Church
Pentecostal Free Will Baptist Church belongs to the Pentecostal (Trinitarian) family of churches.
Governance: congregational.
Pentecostal Free Will Baptist Church reports 32 congregations in the United States (RCMS 2020 (ARDA national table), 2020).
Free Will Baptists who received Pentecost — a North Carolina body that kept its Baptist name and added the baptism of the Spirit.
Heritage
When G. B. Cashwell returned from Azusa Street and held his 1907 revival at Dunn, North Carolina, the fire spread through the Free Will Baptist churches of the Cape Fear region, whose conference roots ran back to the mid-1800s. Congregations that embraced the Pentecostal experience remained Free Will Baptist in doctrine and name for another half century, finally organizing as the Pentecostal Free Will Baptist Church in 1959, headquartered at Dunn, where it also operates Heritage Bible College. RCMS 2020 counts 32 congregations.
Theological family
A genuine hybrid, and honest about it: Free Will Baptist in soteriology — general atonement, resistible grace, the possibility of falling away — and Pentecostal in experience, with baptism in the Holy Spirit evidenced by tongues and divine healing. It keeps the Free Will Baptist ordinances, including the washing of the saints' feet.
Who decides what
Congregational with conference ties: local churches govern themselves and call their pastors, while an annual conference and elected officers serve the fellowship.
What a first-time visitor would find
Country-church warmth with Pentecostal fire: congregational singing, testimony, prayer for the sick, tongues received in order, footwashing services in the Baptist inheritance, and revival preaching.
What it has always cared about
The Cape Fear region as home soil; revival memory kept local and specific — Dunn, 1907; Bible college education for its ministers; and the both-and of its own name, borne without embarrassment.
Its gift to the wider church
A living exhibit that the Pentecostal revival crossed denominational walls without demolishing them: this body carried a full Baptist inheritance into Pentecost and kept both, which is precisely the kind of fact this map exists to honor.
Commonly confused with
With non-Pentecostal Free Will Baptists, who share its Baptist doctrine but not its tongues; and with the region's other Cashwell-revival bodies, notably the International Pentecostal Holiness Church.
Range of views inside it
With 32 congregations (RCMS 2020) concentrated in one region, national generalization would be false precision; congregations vary mainly in size and worship custom.
A note from the mapmakers: A small regional body: nothing here may be asserted of any single congregation, and body-level claims rest on a small base. Sentences drawn from this record hedge as "Pentecostal Free Will Baptist congregations typically…" and yield to the congregation's own materials.
Sources: Pentecostal Free Will Baptist Church — history (PFWB) · The Holiness-Pentecostal Tradition (Vinson Synan, Eerdmans) · 2020 U.S. Religion Census (ASARB)
Where Pentecostal Free Will Baptist Church churches are on the map
1 Pentecostal Free Will Baptist Church congregations appear on The Church Map, across 1 states.
- North Carolina — 1
More of the Pentecostal (Trinitarian) story · Find these churches on the map