[In
the next several posts, I will share a chapter from my dissertation, The People of the Name: Oneness Pentecostalism in the
United States (Florida State
University, 1985). Each subsequent post
will deal with the defining reality of Oneness Pentecostalism: corporate, participatory worship. Several of the examples used in these posts reflect American
evangelicalism in the 1980s when the dissertation was written.]
To
truly hear the voice of Oneness Pentecostalism, one should not turn to official
documents or even the written page, for this voice is heard most clearly in the
acts of ritual worship—especially the corporate practices of song, testimony,
and sermon—upon which these believers center their lives. Oneness life is
worship. The regular worship service offers the overwhelming, almost singular
expression of Oneness community life. The emergence and subsequent development
of Oneness Pentecostalism (as well as classical Pentecostalism in general) resulted most
directly from a novel, distinctive emphasis and interpretation of corporate,
participatory worship. Although these Pentecostals are distinguished from other
Christian groups by differences in theology and culture, at the most
foundational level this separation arose in the Pentecostal redefinition of the
shape and content of ritual worship.1
Peter
L. Berger, in his The Sacred Canopy, recognizes
the crucial role of ritual worship in the development and maintenance of a
religious system. He states,
Men forget. They must, therefore, be reminded
over and over again. Religious ritual has been a crucial instrument of this
process of "reminding." Again and again it "makes present" to
those who participate in it the fundamental reality-definitions and their
appropriate legitimation. The farther back one goes historically, the more does
one find religious ideation embedded in ritual activity—to use more modern terms,
theology embedded in worship.2
For
Berger, religious men are actors (participants) before they ever become
theoreticians. Therefore, through the sacred acts and words of ritual worship,
believers are again "made present" with the deeds and even the person
of the divine. This experience and these activities provide the ground for
subsequent religious thought and the rise of a cogent religious worldview.3
In
the weekly worship service, Oneness Pentecostals engage in and act out all the
essential aspects of their religious life. The worship service, the central arena
and primary function of the Oneness church, defines the characteristics of the
religious community for both participants and observers. In the repetitive
religious rituals, Oneness life expresses its faith most tangibly. To be
Oneness Pentecostal is to fully participate in the public acts of worship and
to ultimately confront the overwhelming power of God's presence in the context
of this corporate action. This worship service—its elements and order—enables
the congregation to directly encounter the person and presence of God. This
"divine epiphany" is the goal of every ingredient of Oneness worship
and the crowning, defining moment of the congregation's life.4
The
forms and expressions of classical Pentecostal worship have undergone a significant
evolution during the history of the movement. The spontaneous, pew-oriented
worship of the Azusa revivals gave way to more formalized, structured worship
forms early in the drive toward denominational and theological stability. Oneness
Pentecostalism attempted to reverse this trend by recapturing the spontaneity
and intensity of the early worship forms. In this attempt, the Oneness
Pentecostals actually radicalized the ritual worship of Azusa when applying
their new understanding of God's person to the moment of "divine epiphany"
in worship and redefining the roles of water baptism (administered in Christ's
name) and Spirit baptism as rites of initiation.
Worship
during the early Pentecostal revivals was almost entirely congregation-centered
and, accordingly, resembled the worship of a large house meeting rather than that
of a fully structured denomination. This worship largely consisted of
spontaneous eruptions of spiritual gifts—those miraculous manifestations of the
Holy Spirit discussed in Paul's Corinthian correspondence, especially the gift
of tongues, interpretation of tongues, and prophecy—and various demonstrative,
emotional responses to Spirit baptism. At Azusa, the elements of worship had
not yet been placed in a fixed order; services were considered most spiritual
when the order emerged spontaneously. Corporate praise and thanksgiving,
expressed most often in concert prayers, singing, and testimonies, outweighed
the importance of preaching in these services. With some exceptions, early
Pentecostals considered preaching merely another element in worship. This
secondary role allotted to preaching was rooted in a reaction against
"clergy dominated" worship, a revolt against the notion of "one man"
ministry.5 Even when preaching occurred, the Pentecostal
"minister" remained open to the "redirection" of the sermon
by the Holy Spirit's leading in the congregation. The congregation as the
central locus of God's action undermined the sermon's priority and the
minister's authority. In all aspects, the spontaneous movement of the Holy
Spirit within the congregation served as the central aspect of early
Pentecostal worship.6
During
the latter years of classical Pentecostalism's first decade, the forms of Pentecostal
worship and congregational structure emerged as the movement organized itself
along the normal lines of American denominations. Church buildings were built
and furnished with pews and pulpits—the first token of a substantial
clergy/laity division in the movement. Public worship became relegated to
certain days and times, while the content and performance of the various ritual
forms of worship became fixed. This crystallizing of worship forms correlated
directly with the rise of ministerial authority, administrative structure, and
denominational organization.7
With
the appearance of independent regional and national Pentecostal bodies, the
early Pentecostal spontaneity that often usurped the leadership of services gave
way to an emerging service order which proceeded from prayer, congregational singing,
and special music presentations to the sermon and altar call. Spiritual gifts
and free demonstrative response to the Spirit's prompting became relegated to
given times within the service (especially during the song service and the
"after service" following the altar call). Although spontaneous disruptions
continued to occur, these came to be the exceptions rather than the rule.
With
the recognition of early Pentecostal excesses and the need for instruction,
preaching gained prominence in the new denominations. Preaching came to equal
and eventually replace the gifts as the means of divine communication. The
message of God's saving action, once expounded in the gifts and spontaneous
testimonies, came to be proclaimed in the preached Word. Rather than just a time of
instruction, the sermon acted as a vehicle for expressing and creating the
immediacy of the "real presence" of Christ and the overwhelming
moment of God's saving action within the community. The new prominence of preaching
did not displace the expression of spiritual gifts, but led to a
reinterpretation of their role in community worship as an extension and
confirmation of the sermon rather than as a substitute for it.8
Along
with this reassessment of the elements of ritual worship, the classical Pentecostals
witnessed a clear evolution in the order of the service—a structuring of the elements
of worship which provided content and direction within the service. These
believers came to see God acting in the entire service, not just in the moments
of "divine interruption." The order of the service as well as the elements
of worship became the arena of the Spirit's acting. Although this shift
paralleled the assimilation of second and third generation Pentecostals into
the mainstream of post-World War II middle class America, it did not spell the
end of spiritual manifestations. While such ordering necessarily hindered the
spontaneity of songs, testimonies, and the gifts, it also provided for their
orderly operation within a structured, and therefore highly efficient,
evangelistic appeal.
In
more recent years, many classical Pentecostal churches, including Oneness churches, have
moved toward more "performance-oriented" worship. With the advent and
prevailing influence of mass media, these Pentecostals have developed a high
degree of professionalism in song and sermon. This has often led to a passive
congregation with these performances replacing corporate worship as the public
expression of God's action and presence.9 (This is nowhere more
clear than in contemporary charismatic television broadcasting such as Pat
Robertson's 700 Club and Jim Bakker's PTL Club.) Nevertheless, as a whole, Pentecostal
worship remains the most highly participatory form of congregational worship. The
immediate access to the Spirit by all believers continues to undermine any notion
of clergy-dominated worship. Pentecostalism—in both its historic and
contemporary forms—offers a distinctive interpretation of the priesthood of the
believer when asserting that the entire assembled group ministers to God and
each other in the acts of community worship.
Almost
every contemporary Pentecostal worship service—except for those on the radical
fringe of the movement—follows a similar order of worship:
I.
Devotional Service
Welcome or Prayer of Invocation
Congregational Singing
(Usually several
lively evangelical "hymns" and a series of repetitive choruses)
Prayer Service
Requests
for Prayer
Congregational
Prayer
(Requests and confessions verbalized by the
entire body simultaneously which often results in moments of ecstatic demonstration)
Announcements
Tithes and Offerings
Special Music
Soloist or group of singers
Choir selection(s)
II.
Ministry of the Word
Pastoral Prayer
(Invoking the Holy
Spirit to save and heal)
Sermon
Altar Call
III.
Altar Service (Here referred to as the
"after service")
Community prayer for those responding to the
altar appeal
Testimonies of those converted or healed
Gestures of greeting and fellowship among
believers
IV.
Closing
Further announcements
Benediction
Despite
this obvious ordering of worship with its restriction on the free operation of
the gifts, Pentecostals maintain that the Holy Spirit continues to operate spontaneously
throughout the service. In fact, the order of the service itself has taken on
an initiatory function of its own as early Pentecostal worship forms succumbed
to the more traditional evangelistic service structure of revivalism.10
But
such clear definition and institutionalization of ritual worship forms often
resulted in a loss of the original worship's appeal and forcefulness. The suppression
of full spontaneity in testimonies, songs, demonstrative acts, and spiritual
gifts often left these rituals as limited, rather hollow expressions of their former
power. It was this weakening of the impact of the various elements of
Pentecostal worship and the "cooling off" of revival fervor which
elicited Oneness restorationism. The Oneness Pentecostals called for a
continually renewing revival, a forever fresh encounter with Christ in enthusiastic
Spirit-led worship. This call sought to reverse the pattern of declining
revivalism which came to emphasize formal worship, education, and increasingly centralized
administration as the early fervor faded.
--------------------------------------------
1Kevin Mathers
Ranaghan, "Rites of Initiation in Representative Pentecostal Churches in
the United States, 1901-1972" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Notre
Dame, 1974), p. 280.
2Peter L. Berger, The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a
Sociological Theory of Religion (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday and Company,
1969), p. 40.
3Ibid., pp. 40-45.
4This term is
introduced in Arthur E. Paris, Black
Pentecostalism: Southern Religion to an Urban World (Amherst: University of
Massachusetts Press, 1982).
5Frederick Dale
Bruner, A Theology of the Holy Spirit:
The Pentecostal Experience and the New Testament Witness (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 1970), p. 135.
6Ranaghan, "Rites
of Initiation," pp. 224-25.
7Ibid., pp. 226,
282-83.
8Ibid., p. 283.
9Ibid., pp. 283-85.
10See Frank C.
Masserano, "A Study of the Worship Forms of the Assemblies of God
Denomination" (Th.M. thesis, Princeton Theological Seminary, 1966), pp.
71-74; Paris, Black Pentecostalism,
pp. 54-71; and Richard Arlen Rooth, "Social Structure in a Pentecostal
Church" (M.A. thesis, University of Minnesota, 1967), pp. 82-90.
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