Evangelical Covenant Churches

Worship in the Evangelical Covenant Church has been shaped by its Lutheran background in Sweden, by the Pietist movement of the seventeenth century, and by the evangelistic awakening of the nineteenth century. It has preserved the lectionary, the feast days, and a more frequent celebration of the Lord's Supper. Recent trends include the introduction of praise-and-worship music and the use of dramatic arts.

The Evangelical Covenant Church was organized in America in 1885. It was a church of immigrant Swedes who had experienced the spiritual renewal movements engendered by German Pietism, Moravianism, and Methodism. The Covenant Church in Sweden, organized in 1878, stemmed from the churchly tradition of the Lutheran state church and the conventicle tradition of Pietism. Covenanters in Sweden. In the Lutheran church, worship was conducted according to the festivals of the church year, the assigned lectionary texts for reading and preaching, the given liturgical formulas used in worship, and the prescribed rites of the church. Lutheran chorales provided the hymnody. Worship was also conducted in the conventicles held in homes, barns, and schools, which were at times illegal. The Bible was read, discussed, and applied to life. Social classes mattered little; all participants had an equal voice, which made the conventicles a political factor in the eventual democratization of Sweden. Seasons of free prayer occasioned a sense of closeness and intimacy with Jesus Christ and with each other, as lives were opened to faith, hope, and love. The music sung was that of Lina Sandell and Oscar Ahnfelt, an indigenous folk music preserving the relational character of the Christian life but not encouraging narcissistic subjectivism. The theme of Jesus' friendship was dominant and found expression in personal testimony as well as in song. Churchly Influences. Both the churchly and conventicle traditions are in evidence in the development of Covenant worship in America. Covenanters preserved the lectionary and feast days; the lectionary currently used is the Ecumenical Lectionary. Infant baptism and confirmation were present from the beginning, although both infant baptism and the baptism of older persons are administered. The conventional term for baptism and the Holy Communion is sacrament, not ordinance. Since 1900, five editions of pastoral handbooks or worship books have been issued; the sixth is to be published in 1995. The books published in 1900, 1960, and 1981 contain extensive treatments of the theology of worship, the meaning of symbolism, and to some extent, the explication of the Lord's Day service. Preaching remains the central act of the Sunday gatherings, though use of the lectionary is not as prevalent as in earlier times. One of the services provided for Holy Communion is the ancient classical form of the great thanksgiving in contemporary language but rich in biblical and eucharistic motifs. Conventicle Influences. The conventicle tradition issues in a simpler service in which ritual and liturgical formulas are less prominent, though not totally absent. Space and time are frequently given for free prayer and testimony or, more formally, lay witness. Pastoral prayers, sometimes composed beforehand and sometimes not, are in the pastor's own words and intercede for persons, world situations, and congregational concerns. Hymnody consists both of the chorale and conventicle songs, together with music of the wider church, and these varieties have been preserved for use in the six hymnals published by the Covenant Church. The seventh hymnal will be issued in 1995. Revival Influences. Indigenous American influences stem particularly from revivalism. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the image of the pastor as an evangelist gained ascendancy. The service of worship itself held evangelistic potential. A major contributor to that end was the gospel song. Nearly three hundred of Ira Sankey's songs had been translated into Swedish by the late 1870s. More recently, praise music and Scripture songs, together with a variety of electronic instruments, find increasing use in Covenant churches. A hymnal supplement, published in 1990, provides a variety of resources in this area together with psalmody and other liturgical pieces. Newly planted churches in particular have used drama, puppetry, and other media to address the gospel to a culture that finds the language of Zion a foreign tongue. Form and Freedom. Generally speaking, the service of morning worship corresponds to what classical liturgical literature calls the Service of the Word. Seasons of the church year, especially Advent, Christmas, Lent, Easter, Pentecost Sunday, and, not infrequently, All Saints Day are commemorated. Readings from both the Old Testament and New Testament are often used. The lectionary provides four readings per Sunday. The psalm for the day is often used as the call to worship. The use of the Gloria Patri finds its place as a response to the readings of Scripture. The Apostles' Creed is part of the Communion liturgy, baptismal liturgy, service of confirmation, and ordination. One of the prayers appointed for uses of baptism closely resembles the narrative of Luther's "flood prayer," detailing the use God made of water in the history of redemption. Singing may include many types of music, including, on occasion, a period of sustained singing as a prelude to worship. Monthly celebration of Holy Communion is close to the norm. Congregations from Hispanic, African-American, Korean, and Southeast Asian backgrounds worship according to forms consistent with their cultures and with musical expressions that enable their praise and prayer and enrich the church at large. Pastors and congregations are not bound by canonical rites. Worship is not standardized in Covenant churches. Wide divergence of forms exists. In the main, the hymnal and the book of worship are what congregations and pastors have in common. The classical and the contemporary, the churchly and the conventicle are kept in conversation, and the people who use these books are kept in touch with that which has given structure and spirit, form and freedom to the worship and service of the triune God. Covenant life and worship shows that the spontaneous need not be sacrificed to the standardized and intimacy to the institutional. John Weborg