I've found this idea intriguing. Pentecostalism, especially as it is emerging in the non-Western world, is a postmodern faith. Often I've said, "An evangelical wants to know what you believe, while a Pentecostal wants to hear your spiritual story." Perhaps it's an oversimplification. But Pentecostalism embodies a strong emphasis on narrative and finds reality in spiritual experiences that defy the logic and rationality of modern Western culture.

So speaking in tongues makes its own sense in a culture where words can't be trusted and rhetoric is always being de-constructed. Opoku Onyinah stressed why it was important to trust miracles in the postmodern culture. In these settings, "the Gospel must be incarnational." You have to touch it, taste it, feel it. That also means an active involvement in arts and culture, the full use of the technologies of social media, and involvement in politics.

Onyinah seems as an example of many Pentecostals here from the global South with the spiritual self-confidence and integrity to define their Christian faith out of the context of the gospel's interaction with their own cultures and experiences. Such non-Western forms of Christianity are then lived and shared within Western cultures, often propelled by the modern movements of global migration. At dinner, a Pentecostal leader and friend from Asia said to me, "We don't want to be condescended to anymore."

John Francis, founder and pastor of the Ruach Church in London - the title from Hebrew means "spirit," "breath," or "wind" - spoke of the meaning of being given power and authority, from Acts. His congregation is one of London's fastest growing, now at 7,000, and part of the majority of worshippers in London's churches on any given Sunday who are non-white.

Such congregations blossoming in Western societies do feel like a "new form of Christianity." But their roots are in the ancient process of the gospel's fresh interaction with cultures outside of the West, in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. In my view, both evangelicals and historic Protestants in the global North - people like me - tend not to recognize, and underestimate, the ways in which indigenous Pentecostalism in the global South is freeing Christianity from the heritage of Western, white colonial baggage, producing forms of faith indigenous and often highly contextualized to non-Western cultures. That thesis is not original to me. It's one of the conclusions of the Atlas of Global Christianity, the most comprehensive academic study of the changes in world Christianity over the past century. Its authors, Kenneth Ross and Todd Johnson, put it this way: