In practice the movement is marked by expressive, participatory worship: contemporary music, raised hands, spontaneous prayer, prayer for healing, and the exercise of spiritual gifts within otherwise traditional services or in dedicated prayer groups. It has no single organisation or founder; it spread instead through conferences, itinerant speakers, prayer fellowships and publishing, crossing denominational and national boundaries with unusual ease. Its influence has been enormous and diffuse. Together with Pentecostalism it forms part of what scholars call the Renewalist movement, counted among the largest and fastest-growing currents in modern Christianity, with particular strength in the global South, Africa, Latin America and Asia.
A later, related development, sometimes called the Third Wave or neo-charismatic movement, extended charismatic practice to independent and nondenominational churches that identify with neither classical Pentecostalism nor the historic denominations. The movement has reshaped worship styles far beyond its own boundaries, and has also drawn criticism, over the excesses of some healing and prosperity ministries, over the authenticity of ecstatic phenomena, and over tensions with more traditional understandings of church authority and order. It remains an influence within, rather than a replacement for, the churches it touched.
Sources The Century of the Holy Spirit: 100 Years of Pentecostal and Charismatic Renewal, 1901-2001Vinson Synan (ed.) with The Oxford Handbook of New Religious MovementsJames R. Lewis (ed.)