As 2024 comes to a close, it is a good time to look back on this past year. I am grateful for the things the Lord has allowed me to accomplish this year. I am particularly thankful for those who read my work on this blog. It is very meaningful to me when people appreciate the content that I share. I am glad to know what I do here matters to so many. Here is a bit of a look back on my year as a historian, scholar, and professor in 2024.

Blog Stats

The number of views of my blog continues to astonish me. In 2024, I had over 43,000 views of my blog. This is up from 30,000 in 2023. The majority of the traffic is people doing Google searches on topics I cover, particularly eschatology. In 2024, here are the top results.

As you can see, the top result is my blog on the “mark of the beast.” This is the post that drives a lot of people to my blog. It is clear that this post resonates with the anxiety people feel about future. It is also clear that my work on Oral Roberts is a big draw to the blog.

In 2024, eight new posts were added to the blog. Two posts were focused on Tulsa’s Pentecostal history. One recent post gives insights into how a different way to understand Revelation. Two were more academic including a response I wrote to Robert Menzies and a profile of Spirit-empowered Christianity that I wrote for an Edinburgh series on global Christianity.

• The Pentecostal History of Tulsa’s Oldest Church Building 
• Two Keys to Interpreting Revelation
• Influence Podcast: Revising AG History
• Introducing Aspects of Assemblies of God Origins
• A Profile of North American Spirit-empowered Christianity
• A Response to Robert Menzies’s “Pentecostal Eschatology: Why Amillennialism is a Better Fit.”
• Vandella Frye, Tulsa’s Pentecostal Pioneer
• The Year I Was Filled with the Holy Spirit

Publishing

2024 was a fairly modest year for me in terms of publishing. The biggest accomplishment was my new volume called Aspects of Assemblies of God Origins which was published by Pickwick in September. This work is a collection of essays on issues related to the early years of the AG. It explores significant issues that scholars have debated about the AG including its relationship to the C.H. Mason’s COGIC fellowship, attitudes toward theology and education, publishing, and evangelical identity.

The feedback on the book so far has been positive. Howard Kenyon wrote a wonderful review of the significance of the research in this book. As a scholar of race and ethics in the AG, he believes this volume answered a “40 year old question” for him about the AG and COGIC connections. I also did an interview with George P. Wood and Influence Magazine about this book.

I also published an essay called “Pentecostal and Pandemics: A Historical Perspective,” in Wonsuk Ma and Opoku Onyihah, eds. The Pandemic & The Holy Spirit: From Lament to Hope and Healing ( ORU Press, 2024). This essay documents the history of how Pentecostals have navigated global pandemics, like the 1918 Spanish Influenza and the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic.

I also published a book review of Phenomenal Phenomenology by Joy Vaughn, in Spiritus 9:2 (2024). And I published “’Agents of Healing,’ A Review of Stephen Seamands, Follow the Healer,” in Influence Magazine.

Another highlight of 2024 was presenting at the annual Society for Pentecostal Studies. I presented a paper called, “The Charismatic Origins of the Rapture: Re-Assessing the ‘Uneasy’ Relationship Between Dispensationalism and Pentecostal Eschatology.” This paper traces the origination of the “rapture” doctrine among the charismatic Irvingites rather than John Nelson Darby. I expect to finish that research later this year and hopefully publish it in one of the Pentecostal journals.

One of the remarkable things about my journey so far is how many opportunities I have had to publish my work since I completed my PhD in 2019. Since then I have published academic 3 monographs, 1 edited volume, 14 articles, 7 book or encyclopedia chapters, and 7 book reviews. I feel so blessed that I have been able to contribute so much to conversations on Pentecostal history, Oral Roberts studies, and Tulsa studies.

Upcoming Book Project

As 2025 approaches, several projects are underway. My work over the past six months has been on writing a popular history for the Assemblies of God. It has been 30 years since the last AG history was written.

This new volume, to be published by the General Council, will be a short, popular volume that will update the story. As a popular history, its goal is to tell the big story of where the AG came from, how it has developed and the key turning points in the story.

It is a great honor to get to be the next historian to tell the AG story. I stand on the shoulders of giants like Edith Blumhofer, Gary McGee, William Menzies, and Carl Brumback. The book is expected out by early 2026.

Thank you to all who read this blog and share it’s contents with others. I am grateful to you to be able to share the insights from my work. Merry Christmas and Happy 2025.