The Liturgical-Charismatic Movement

For decades the charismatic movement has been influencing the forms of worship practices in many of the older historic churches. Millions of Catholics, Episcopalians, Lutherans, and others worldwide have found that the informal, spontaneous, and exuberant worship style of charismatics can bring new warmth and energy to traditional services—services whose formal structures and restrained atmosphere once felt cold and routine to them.

Today, more churches than ever are likely to be bridging the gap between ancient forms and Pentecostal fervor. But surprisingly enough, many of them are now building the bridge from the other direction. Across the country, groups of nondenomination charismatic believers seeking to deepen and enrich their worship are exploring the traditional forms of the oldest Christian communions. They're finding that what is often called "liturgical worship" has a balance, breadth, and rootedness often lacking in more spontaneous forms. They're learning that liturgy was a part of the worship of the New Testament church. And they're discovering that the Holy Spirit is not afraid of structure—that liturgical forms can be filled with Pentecostal power to provide the environment for a rich and dynamic encounter with God. The New Liturgical Charismatics Some charismatic churches are merely borrowing (or as they would call it, reclaiming) an eclectic assortment of elements from the liturgies of the Anglican, Catholic, and Orthodox churches: a weekly Eucharist (the Lord's Supper), clerical vestments, litanies, incense, processions, fixed prayers, and creeds. Others, however, have decided to embrace the formal approach to services as a whole, adopting the entire order of worship practices by the Episcopal church or even joining—an entire congregation or denomination at a time—with a historic body like the worldwide Anglican communion or the Orthodox churches of the East. Here's a sampling of the phenomenon: "¢ In Valdosta, Georgia, a whole Pentecostal congregation—Church of the King—has taken a journey that began with processions, vestments, creeds, and weekly communion, and led ultimately to its admittance into the Episcopal Church of America. "¢ St. Michael's Church in San Clemente, California—a charismatic congregation closely associated with the prophetic and pro-life movements—has adopted the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer for its worship services and joined other churches in California and Arizona to form a new denomination: The Charismatic Episcopal Church of North America. "¢ A handful of charismatic students at Oral Roberts University in Tulsa startled their classmates several years ago when they joined the Eastern Orthodox Church. Some of them have even become priests. "¢ Graham Kendrick, internationally known worship leader and songwriter from Great Britain, has incorporated in his works several traditional liturgical elements—the Apostles' Creed, responsive readings, fixed prayers, and words from the ancient Kyrie litany—reintroducing these forms to charismatics through Integrity's Hosanna! worship tapes and the international Marches For Jesus. Meanwhile, the liturgical renaissance among charismatics is only part of a much wider phenomenon. Several evangelical Christian leaders have sounded a call to return to the church's "classical" roots, which include formal liturgical worship. Not surprisingly, Christians who make the move to a more liturgical setting are often viewed with suspicion or confusion by their fellow believers who aren't moving in the same direction. Sometimes the apprehension is simply based on ignorance. For example, when one Pentecostal pastor in Arizona first introduced liturgical elements in his service, he got a call from a local Baptist pastor who thundered, "I hear you folks are worshiping candles!" More common, however, are the thoughtful objections that merit a serious response. Those who were reared in an older Christian tradition yet found its forms of worship unsatisfying may wonder why charismatics in particular would want to go back to "dead forms" and "empty rituals." They question whether liturgy is biblical or merely a "tradition of men," and they fear that so much structure leaves little room for the Holy Spirit to operate. Why Liturgy? What Is Liturgy? To understand why some charismatics are finding a new appreciation for liturgy, we need first a working definition for the term. The English word "liturgy" comes from the Greek leitourgia, which originally meant "work of the people." In the New Testament and other Greek literature of the same period, liturgy typically refers to a public function in which service is rendered—in secular settings, most often a service to the state; in the Bible, a service to God. In this general sense, all churches have a liturgy in their worship, a particular approach to the public meetings in which they seek to serve God. Even churches that emphasize spontaneity and continual novelty in their services typically fall, sooner or later, into a more-or-less standard order of service and a distinctive way of doing things. They may not intentionally establish a liturgy, but regular forms develop all the same. As one pastor raised in a Pentecostal congregation describes it: "On any given Sunday, at any given place in the service, you know what's coming next." For charismatics who are making use of older forms of worship, then, the issue is not whether they will have a liturgy; all churches do. The issue is: What liturgy will they use? On what pattern will they base their services? Charismatic Discontent In this light, then, to speak of charismatics rediscovering liturgy may be misleading. Perhaps we might more accurately say that some charismatic churches are realizing that the liturgy they have is lacking. For some, the discontent with the typical charismatic service grew with the weariness of trying to make every meeting unique. Their search for freshness became in reality a worship of novelty and led only to the pursuit of one charismatic fad after another. As habits and routines developed despite their best intentions, these churches found they could slip into "empty ritual" just as easily with praise choruses as with old hymns. They could be distracted by worries about burning the oven roast back home whether they were making a joint "faith confession" for personal prosperity or reciting the Apostles' Creed. In short, they discovered that Isaiah's words about honoring God with their lips while their hearts were far away (Isa. 29:13) weren't written just for Episcopalians. Other charismatics came to realize that their worship services were more minister-centered than God-centered. Much of their unrecognized liturgical forms tended to focus attention on the worship leader, band, special vocalists, preacher, or healing minister. The more skilled the speakers and musicians, and the more flashy their presentation, the more "anointed" people assumed the service to be. At the same time, charismatic worship forms often seemed to be, as some have termed it, "entertainment-driven." Emphasis was too often placed on the congregation's feelings: how much they "enjoyed" the service, how "excited" they were and how much they "got out of it." Instead of assembling in order to glorify God with their worship, people were looking to be entertained. For still others, the primary motivation for change was a deep sense—often felt more than understood—that the Lord's Supper needed to be recognized as a source of spiritual life and health to be received every Sunday. Through study, they learned that from ancient times the Eucharist (as the oldest churches call it) has been held by the church as the climax of the worship service, when worshipers encounter Jesus in a unique way; and they experienced that reality for themselves. Rediscovered Elements of Liturgical Worship What kinds of traditional liturgical elements are being adopted by charismatics in worship? Here's a partial list: Weekly Eucharist The Lord's Supper—the climax of corporate worship throughout most of church history and in most of the Christian world—assumes prominence in weekly services. Fixed Prayers These are prayers whose words are planned rather than spontaneous, just as the words of most worship songs are fixed. Creeds These confessions of faith are succinct summaries of the essential Christian doctrines as they have been held from earliest times. The two most popular are the Apostles' Creed and the Nicene Creed. Litanies These are prayers or praises consisting of a series of petitions or biddings sung or said by a leader, to which the congregation offers a fixed response. Traditional Hymns and Classical Church Music Many churches are rediscovering the theological richness of lyrics in the great hymns of the faith, as well as the beauty of classical church music. Processions These are ceremonial walks of the ministers (usually in a particular order), who wear vestments and carry items such as crosses, candles, banners, and the Scripture. Processions may, for example, bring ministers into the sanctuary to begin a service. Church Calendar Like the ancient Jewish calendar, the Christian calendar in its simplest form establishes a cycle of corporate celebrations, memorials, and seasons that focus on the most important truths of the faith within the space of a year. The major features are Advent (leading up to Christmas), Epiphany, Lent (leading up to Easter), Easter season, and Pentecost, but it also includes observances like Trinity Sunday and Ascension Day. Lectionaries These books offer systematic collections of scriptural passages, each of which is appointed to be read on a specific day of the year, coordinated with the church calendar (see above). The texts are organized so that all the major teachings of the Bible are included in the yearly reading cycle, and each Sunday provides coordinated passages from (1) the Psalms, (2) the rest of the Old Testament, (3) the Gospels and (4) the rest of the New Testament. Divine Office The practice of saying fixed prayers at certain times of the day or night, inherited from Jewish custom. Vestments, Paraments, and Insignia Vestments are the special clothing worn by those ministering. Paraments are the fabric hangings and the altar and pulpit coverings used in the sanctuary. The colors used are determined by the church calendar and have symbolic significance. The insignia include objects like the crosses carried in processions or standing on the altar. Sacramentals These are traditionally defined as objects or actions used to aid in the church's worship or in personal devotion, such as candles, incense, holy water, table blessings, and making the sign of the cross. Technically, this term also includes vestments and litanies. Biblical Roots Much charismatic teaching tends to assume that worship in the New Testament church was informal and spontaneous—that is, like today's charismatic worship. This view draws its inspiration primarily from two sorts of biblical passages. First are those that denounce Jewish or pagan legalism, ungodly traditions, and hypocrisy (Gal. 4:9–11; Matt. 6:5–18; 15:1–14). Second are those that suggest early Christian meetings were highly participatory and allowed for the spontaneous operation of spiritual gifts (e.g., 1 Cor. 12, Col. 3:15–17). From this perspective, the formal, carefully structured forms of the ancient Christian traditions are viewed as a kind of corruption or regression to Old Testament Judaism that occurred as the church lost its original purity and power. For that reason, many nondenominational charismatics have been startled to discover the historical evidence that New Testament worship included formal liturgy. Divinely sanctioned patterns of Old Testament worship were highly structured, and we know from abundant textual sources that in Jesus' day many of these forms remained the norm among Jewish people. The liturgical services of temple, synagogue, and home had an abundance of fixed prayers, litanies, chanted psalms, and ritual actions, and Jesus and the apostles took part in them (Luke 4:16–21; 24:53; John 2:13; 18:20; Acts 2:46; 3:1; 14:1). Jesus warned against the empty repetition of insincere prayers (Matt. 6:7–8). But in the same breath, he gave us a set form of words—what many call "the Lord's Prayer"—as a model for our conversations with God. That fixed prayer has been on the lips of the church ever since. After Pentecost, the first Christians, who were almost all Jewish, quite naturally incorporated the liturgical structures of the synagogue and temple into their worship as well. For example, the apostles continued to observe the Jewish liturgical "hours of prayer" set for specific times (Acts 3:1). Paul also spoke of Christians singing the Psalms, a practice borrowed from the synagogue, where these texts were chanted according to a fixed traditional schedule (Col. 3:16). In addition, Paul's letters occasionally quote "sayings" that had apparently taken on fixed poetic forms and were used as Christian parallels to the Jewish liturgy (Eph. 5:14; 1 Tim. 3:16; 2 Tim. 2:11–13). Church historians have debated whether Jesus' last supper with his disciples was actually a ritual fellowship meal common among private religious societies of the time, a Passover meal, or something else. But whatever the source of the ceremony, the New Testament descriptions of the Lord's Supper fit what we know of the general structure of domestic Jewish liturgy around the table, with its fixed prayers of blessing and ritual acts. Even today, the words of the Catholic, Anglican, and Orthodox liturgies surrounding the Eucharist still echo at points the ancient Jewish table blessings. Other biblical passages also gave hints that the early Christians thought in liturgical categories. When Luke says the church leaders at Antioch were "worshiping the Lord" (Acts 13:2) the Greek verb is leitourgounton and could just as easily be translated "performing the liturgy." The apostle Paul used the ritual terminology of the Jewish temple when he said he wanted to be—literally translated—a liturgical minister serving in a priestly manner on behalf of the Gentiles, so that they might become a sacrificial oblation that has been ritually purified by the Holy Spirit (Rom. 15:16). Most striking of all is John's description in Revelation of heaven's worship. He paints a picture of elders in special garments, chanting fixed prayers before an altar with incense and burning lamps (Rev. 4–5, 7, 15). This picture is also similar to what Isaiah described (Is. 6). Whether the book of Revelation describes the actual worship of heaven or simply symbolizes spiritual truths with concrete images, it still presents a New Testament affirmation of formal liturgical worship. Either such worship reflects somehow the worship in heaven—and what more powerful reason could there be for practicing it?—or else it employs images drawn from the worship experience of the New Testament church. The earliest post-biblical sources we have for learning about the nature of early Christian worship confirm that much of it was highly structured, though integrated with spontaneous singing, prayer, and the exercise of spiritual gifts. As early as the second century—when the church still had leaders who had known the first apostles personally and long before Christianity became "corrupted," as some would have it, into the state religion of Rome—the church was already developing ritual with roots in the Jewish liturgies of temple, synagogue, and home. Why Use Traditional Liturgy? For those charismatics who insist that we must imitate the New Testament church as closely as possible, the knowledge that the first Christians worshiped with set rituals is sufficient motivation for adopting liturgical forms. But even those who believe Christians aren't bound to imitate the early church in all things have found that many ancient traditions of worship enrich their congregational life. Intentionally liturgical charismatics have often cited these benefits: First, traditional liturgy can help us center our worship on God rather than the ministers. Those portions of the service that are formally structured rather than spontaneous allow less opportunity to speakers and musicians for inserting themselves into the congregation's worship or keeping attention turned on themselves with long-winded and flashy performances. Second, traditional liturgy teaches congregations to view worship as a discipline and privilege rather than entertainment. Though most charismatics by no means want to give up the joy of worship for a sense of grim duty, the discipline of participating in prescribed forms, whether or not we feel like it, takes the focus off what we ourselves gain from services. Instead, it emphasizes that we worship God because he is worthy of it—not because the activity excites us. Third, traditional liturgy contributes to the maturity of our teaching and understanding of the Christian faith. The words of the ancient liturgies, carefully shaped over hundreds of years, have much to say about gospel truths that charismatics have often overlooked, forgotten, or resisted. Liturgical forms can enrich our theology and practice through several advantages: "¢ theological balance—Pastors tend to focus on their pet doctrines, spending a disproportionate amount of time on certain subjects—faith, tithing, prophecy, social action, or whatever—and consequently neglect matters of equal or greater importance. The ancient liturgical forms encourage us to keep our teaching balanced. For example, following the church calendar allows us to make sure that within the course of a year we teach the fundamentals about the nature of God, the nature of Christ, and the nature of the Spirit-filled church. "¢ theological depth—Not all pastors are equally gifted in plunging into the depths of the Scripture and conveying what they find to the congregation. But many profound insights have been stated clearly and succinctly in older liturgical forms, especially in the lyrics of the best hymns. "¢ theological precision—The words of the ancient liturgies are not only concise, but also precise. In particular, our own teaching can be corrected and sharpened by the words of the creeds—those wise and beautiful summaries of Christian doctrine carefully hammered out by some of the most brilliant minds and devoted hearts the church has ever seen. "¢ devotional balance—Measure the time spent on various activities in most charismatic services, and you'll find the great majority is spent in praise, special music, and preaching. How often do such congregations devote time to corporate confession of sin, intercession for government officials and church leaders, praying the model prayer Jesus taught us, or just listening to the public reading of Scripture? Though we tend to neglect these activities, all of them are commanded by the Bible, and the ancient liturgies are designed to include them (cf. James 5:16; 1 Tim. 2:1–2; Matt. 6:9–13; 1 Tim. 4:13). Fourth, traditional liturgical forms encourage the unity of faith. The same sense of agreement and solidarity that comes from singing songs as a group is also cultivated by praying and declaring the creeds in congregational unison. Fifth, traditional liturgical forms have a carefully cultivated beauty of language, color, and movement that makes our worship more fitting for our beautiful Savior. We must be careful not to allow artistic considerations to outweigh other more important concerns; that would only lead to a different kind of "entertainment-driven" worship. But the visual and linguistic poverty—even sterility—of many charismatic services misses an opportunity to honor God by reflecting his beauty. It also inhibits us from worshiping him with all that we are because it neglects the aesthetic part of human nature. Sixth, traditional liturgies connect us to Christians in other churches and in earlier generations. When we sing the same songs, pray the same prayers, and declare the same creeds as those used by believers around the world and across the ages, we gain a greater sense of our place in the body of Christ. We demonstrate our kinship with those who, despite wide differences in race and culture, have all worshiped the same Lord with the same faith. Seventh, restoring the Eucharist to its ancient position of prominence in worship allows us to experience its mystery more deeply. The notion that the Lord's Supper is only a memorial ceremony has found wide acceptance among independent charismatics in this country, but that particular teaching has been rejected by most of the church for most of its history. Even Protestant reformers like Luther and Calvin, though they opposed the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation, nevertheless maintained that Christ is truly present in the bread and cup—and that this sacrament can act as a powerful channel of God's grace. Eighth, most importantly, ancient liturgical forms can benefit us because some aspects of life in the Spirit are best communicated and experienced through concrete, visual, and acted symbols rather than through words. This insight, assumed almost universally throughout the church until the time of the Reformation, is based on several realities. God created human beings not just with wills and intellects, but also with emotions and bodies. Much of our experience—and many of our needs—lie outside the realm of mere rational thought and verbal expression. These experiences and needs are best expressed in symbolic, nonverbal ways. Further, not all spiritual realities can be understood intellectually or expressed verbally. Such mysteries of our faith are best represented by symbols that point to these realities rather than try to explain them. Although much of God's communication with the world has been verbal, his supreme self-revelation was Jesus, the Word made flesh in a living, concrete way. Through this incarnation, God reaffirmed that created matter is good and not to be disdained as "unspiritual." God also demonstrated in Jesus what might be called the sacramental principle: the truth that he can use what is natural, physical, and human as the vehicle for what is supernatural, spiritual, and divine. Spoken words, physical touch, even humble inanimate matter like the hem of a garment or clay mixed with spittle, can be channels of God's love, power, and grace. Through the ages, sacramental theology and practice has reflected these truths with its insistence that worship must involve more than mere words and rational categories. The church has looked to concrete symbols—the carved wood of a cross, the light of candles, the smell of incense—to represent the mysteries of salvation, revelation, and communion with God in prayer. It has also used the material elements in the sacraments—such as the bread of the Eucharist and the water of baptism—to be channels of the grace that the sacraments point to. Sadly enough, Western philosophy—deeply influenced by pagan Greek thought—developed a rationalist orientation over the centuries that disdained human emotion and viewed human beings as spiritual intellects trapped in unspiritual physical bodies. For many, theology lost its mystery and became a pseudo-science that attempted to corral God in rational categories and reduce divine revelation to verbal propositions. The eighteenth-century movement called the Enlightenment, whose leaders often attacked Christian faith, demonstrated this philosophical direction most clearly. But the seeds of the problem had already germinated in the Reformation, when the Reformers reacted to medieval excesses in the church by exalting the role of the intellect and the written Word in Christian experience. This tendency in Christian circles reaches its climax in the so-called liberalism and fundamentalism of the twentieth century. Though these two movements appear to be in opposition, they are actually mirror images of the same rationalist system that seeks to reduce both God and humanity to manageable proportions. The result: Both liberals and fundamentalists typically disdain mystery and deny the role of the supernatural in human affairs. In an important sense, then, the Pentecostal and charismatic movements came as a reversal of this deadly rationalizing tendency in the modern church. Holy Spirit baptism, leading to experiences of nonrational tongues and unexplainable miracles, reintroduced Christians to the mystery of God and his exaltation over our understanding. In addition, the Pentecostals and their heirs recaptured the truth that the human being is body and emotions as well as intellect. They testified that God was interested in physical and emotional healing, and that worship involved not just our minds, but also our emotions and bodies. Furthermore, charismatics found that God could work mightily through the spoken word and the laying on of hands, the anointing oil and the prayer cloth—that is, they rediscovered the sacramental nature of the Christian life. Little wonder, then, that many non-denominational charismatics have begun putting down roots in the traditions of the church. They've been nourished by its sacramental realities all along, though few probably realized it until now. The danger, of course, is that the new liturgical charismatics may replace the power of Pentecost with formal structures of worship, rather than synthesizing the two. But if they can succeed in combining the fertile soil with the life-giving water and sunlight of the Spirit, we may soon witness a thrilling transformation in the vineyard of the Lord.