Contact: Robert W. Graves, President, The Foundation for Pentecostal Scholarship, 770-516-7300, RGraves@TFFPS.org 

SPRINGFIELD, Mo., March 18, 2014 /Christian Newswire/ -- The Foundation for Pentecostal Scholarship (TFFPS) has conferred its 2014 awards for excellence in Pentecostal scholarship. TFFPS president, Robert Graves, announced the awards during the 2014 Conference of the Society for Pentecostal Studies convening at Evangel University, March 6–8. One book award and two article awards were conferred.

This year's Book Award of Excellence went to Robert P. Menzies for his book Pentecost: This Story Is Our Story, published by Gospel Publishing House (Springfield, Mo., 2013). Menzies (PhD, University of Aberdeen, Scotland) is the director of Synergy, a rural development organization based in Kunming, China.  He also serves as adjunct faculty at the Asia Pacific Theological Seminary in the Philippines and has taught widely in the Asia-Pacific region as well as in the United States and Europe.  His other books include Empowered for Witness: The Spirit in Luke-Acts; Spirit and Power: Foundations of Pentecostal Experience; and The Language of the Spirit: Interpreting and Translating Charismatic Terms.

Two Awards of Excellence for short works were conferred this year to the following scholars: Paul Elbert for his essay "Acts 2:38 in Light of the Syntax of Imperative-Future Passive and Imperative-Present Participle Combinations" (Catholic Biblical Quarterly), and Randy J. Hedlun for "Rethinking Luke's Purpose: The Effect of First-Century Social Conflict" (Journal of Pentecostal Theology).

Other books nominated for the 2014 Award of Excellence were William Atkinson's Trinity After Pentecost (Wipf & Stock), Aaron Frieson's Normaling the Abnormal (Wipf & Stock), Jon Ruthven's What's Wrong With Protestant Theology? (Word & Spirit Press), Wolfgang Vondey's Pentecostalism: A Guide for the Perplexed (Brill)¸ and Joshua Zieffle's David du Plessis and the Assemblies of God (Brill).

Essays by the following authors were also nominated for the Award of Excellence: Scott A. Ellington, Lee Roy Martin, Angel D. Santiago-Vendrell, and Donatus Pius Ukpong.

TFFPS was formed in 2005 with the goal of advancing doctoral and post-doctoral biblical scholarship by sponsoring research and publishing projects within the global Pentecostal-Charismatic family. TFFPS is a tax-exempt, 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation. More information about the Foundation and its projects is available at its Web site: www.tffps.org.