Gunnar Vingren

Gunnar Vingren was born on August 17, 1879, in Östra Husby, Sweden, in a poor family. He grew up in a land with strict Lutheran traditions. As a boy he was thoughtful and eager to learn, and he left school early to work. He emigrated to the United States in 1903, when he was twenty-four, in search of a better life. He settled in the Swedish community in Chicago and worked at odd jobs. He was drawn to the Baptist church and was converted in a Baptist meeting. He felt called to the ministry and went to a Swedish Baptist seminary in Chicago.

He became a Baptist pastor and served a congregation in South Bend, Indiana. In 1909, he came under the influence of the Pentecostal revival that was spreading through the Swedish and other immigrant churches. He was drawn to the message of the baptism in the Holy Spirit and received it. He soon met Daniel Berg, a Swedish immigrant who was also a Pentecostal. The two became close friends and began to pray together. In one of their prayer meetings, a prophetic message came that they should go to a place called Para. They found by looking in an atlas that it was a region of northern Brazil.

In 1910, the two men sailed for Brazil with little money and no promise of support. They arrived in Belém in November. They knew almost no Portuguese. They found work as laborers, and they attended a Baptist church. When they shared their Pentecostal experience, the church was divided, and they were put out. They gathered a small group of believers and began meeting in a house. In 1911 this group was organized as a church. It was called the Assembly of God, and it was the beginning of the Brazilian Pentecostal movement.

Vingren served as the pastor and leader of the work. He was a preacher and a teacher who traveled to the towns of the north, planting churches. In 1917, he was joined by Frida Strandberg, a Swedish nurse whom he married in 1917. In 1924, he moved to Rio de Janeiro, where the work grew rapidly. He was the first editor of the church's newspaper, Boa Semente, and he wrote articles and hymns. He also set up the first Bible school. Under his leadership, the Assemblies of God spread across Brazil, becoming one of the largest Pentecostal bodies in the world.

His work was not free of struggle. He suffered from poor health and was often ill. He also faced conflict with the Swedish mission leaders and with some Brazilian pastors about authority and the role of his wife. The strain was heavy. The troubles in the church wore him down, and he was in debt. In 1932 he returned to Sweden for medical treatment.

He died on June 29, 1933, in Stockholm, at the age of fifty-three. He had given twenty-two years to Brazil. The church that he and Berg started has grown to many millions of members. His life shows the fruit of a few poor immigrants who gave themselves to the Lord, and it reminds us that great works often begin in weakness.