“Why do you push us around?” Rosa Parks asked the bus driver.

In an era of Jim Crow laws that discriminated between blacks and whites, many people recognized the conflicting messages of freedom “for all” with these unjust laws of the land and they rejected them. With the threat of violence and economic repercussions, change came slowly.

Rosa Parks had no other expectations that day, but to get home from work. “I had given up my seat before, but this day, I was especially tired. Tired from my work as a seamstress, and tired from the ache in my heart.” Emboldened with a divine courage, this working-woman knew “what must be done does away with fear” and she refused to give up her seat.

The power of one.

One ordinary person who was bursting with a dream of freedom, respect, and equality. One non-conformist who refused to fit into predetermined societal roles. One person’s courage to see and declare things the way they should be, and expose the glaring inconsistencies between rhetoric and conduct in a nation who prided itself as “under God, with liberty and justice for” some.

Her decision and subsequent question is referred to as “the spark that ignited the Civil Rights movement in the USA.” God used this ordinary woman in extraordinary ways.

Similarly, nearly fifty years earlier, Christianity experienced a “spark” at the Azusa Street Mission in California with a second Pentecost, which birthed the modern-day Pentecostalism. The Azusa Street Revival of 1906 spawned the Pentecostal movement in America “where the color lines were washed away,” and men and women were preaching and leading together.

From its inception the Assemblies of God (AG) adhered to a Pentecostal theology, undergirded by a core interpretation of Acts 2 to be both historical and the standard for church today.

Pentecostals and those in the Assemblies of God, fundamentally believe God poured out His Holy Spirit on men and women, gifting both genders for all levels of ministry without regard to gender, race, or economic status (Joel 2:28, Acts 2:17, Galatians 3:28).