That sentiment came to mind when I read this comment on my posting of the Word of God album All of Your People:
I was worship leader in an Antioch CA prayer group and an Assemblies of God mission for 5 years in the ’90’s where I used these songs. I first heard them at Friday night Healing Masses at Holy Redeemer Center Oakland, CA.
There’s a lot of history packed into this little comment, and some lessons to be learned.
First: yes there were such things as “Healing Masses,” people like Francis McNutt were very much in the forefront of things like this. Current interest by Pentcostals in liturgical worship and how to integrate the full Gospel into it would do well to take a look at what actually happened. (This was also very evident at the Steubenville conferences of the early 1980’s as well.)
Second: in all of the discussion of the Charismatic Renewal of the 1960’s and 1970’s, there’s very little attention given to the obvious dumb question: “What were the classical Pentecostal churches doing in response?” Since they had carried the standard of modern Pentecost since the turn of the last century, it’s reasonable to ask this question. The answer is simple: it depends…the Assemblies of God churches tended to be more receptive to some kind of involvement in the Renewal. That paid off when many Catholic Charismatics (and others) realised that the metastable nature of communities and prayer groups was unsustainable, and suddenly Pentecostal and independent Charismatic churches reaped the rewards of new members. In some cases (like this one) they brought their music with them.
As for the Church of God…well, not so much, there was some hostility to the Renewal, probably because they didn’t go through the ordeal of legalism that was usual in those days. There were exceptions, the largest of which was Paul Laverne Walker’s Mt. Paran church in Atlanta, but they were exceptional, at least for a long time. (The Church of God eventually rewarded Paul Walker by making him General Overseer in 1996; his son Mark is the new President of Lee University.)
When I joined the North Cleveland Church of God, it was inconceivable that worship music such as the Word of God would be used. It went against nearly a century of music tradition in a stylistic way; most in the Church of God preferred a more lively worship style. That is going by the wayside; that’s one of the complaints I made in this post, what was considered heavenly in the past is no longer, now we are going for a worship style that is slower and more repetitive than was practiced in Ann Arbor! But now we know it’s possible to use Ann Arbor’s music in a classical Pentecostal church.
I think the lesson from all of this is that church music and worship styles are products of many things, including doctrine and theology, culture, ethnicity, socio-economic and generational preferences. To simply get up and proclaim that “this is from the throne room, that’s it” isn’t helpful and has led to a great deal of the conflict on this subject. We need to worship in a way that really does draw us closer to God, and not just because someone says that it should.
Note: my YouTube channel, which is now mostly music from the “Jesus Music” era, has gotten a little boost during this COVID-19 isolation era. Maybe people are taking my suggestion seriously about checking things out!
Positive Infinity 