The divisions of the national black Baptist bodies do not represent distinctions in the types and modes of worship. The emergence of worship among all black Baptists can only be understood against the backdrop of the dehumanizing, servile status imposed upon them, which forced them to initiate the only form of worship they knew.
Their worship was unstructured because they could not reconcile themselves to the structure of their masters’ worship nor their masters’ God, who permitted freedom and servitude to obtain. The earliest worship of black Baptists consisted of spirituals calling upon God to give them strength to endure their servitude, hymns sung in long meter or no meter at all, long prayers uttered in the only language they knew, Scripture reading by those who could read, and a biblical exhortation by a respected leader. Worship occurred on their own time and its location was often at the end of a cotton row or a corn field.
Development of Black Baptist Worship
From its beginnings, worship in the black Baptist church centered in the sermon. The sermon was the crescendo in the worship experience. The content focused upon the hereafter and upon a God who gave his people hope in the midst of their despair and the mundane experiences of this life. Through the gift of his Son Jesus Christ, God would grant eternal liberation if they believed in him. The worship experience was very long, lasting sometimes for three hours and characterized by spontaneous expressions (“Amen,” “Thank you, Lord”), crying, shouting, and seizure-like body movements representing release from everything that seemed to overpower the worshiper.
Remarkable changes affecting worship have occurred among the member churches of the National Baptist Convention of America, Incorporated. Among them are an improved educational status of both the pastors and the congregants, a shift from a “pie in the sky religion” to existential worship that recognizes the precarious nature of life’s experiences and the necessity to apply the Christian message to daily living; greater emphasis upon the importance of the teaching ministry; and an abbreviated, more structured order of worship, with shorter sermons. The traditional “hellfire and brimstone” sermons of the first and second decades of the twentieth century have been gradually replaced by well-constructed, biblically based sermons focusing primarily upon redemption and hope and applicable to contemporary life.
Worship is now generally ordered around the following elements: call to worship, invocation, hymn of worship and praise, offering, intercessory prayer, hymn of preparation, responsive Scripture readings, choral music, pastoral prayer, invitation to Christian discipleship, and benediction.
Worship in the black Baptist tradition has always been free because freedom has always been a distinctive plank in the polity of the Baptist church. A more orderly format has not stymied the freedom of worshipers because they are provided opportunity for active participation. Moreover, black Baptists are spiritually motivated by the knowledge that God’s Holy Spirit is always free and supersedes any prescribed forms or structures.
On the other hand, the Baptist insistence upon “freedom” in worship has often become a treadmill from which some Baptists have not been able to extricate themselves. Instead of being really free in worship, they have become trapped in restructured worship formats.
Since 1975, there has been a growing concern on the part of many black Baptist pastors and congregants to have meaningful worship experiences devoid of the stereotypes that characterized the earliest forms of black Baptist worship. Many black Baptist pastors are assimilating elements of worship from other traditions. Perhaps some of the most noticable changes since 1975 have been changes in musical styles.
The traditional and standard hymns, anthems, gospels, and inspirational renditions have been replaced by contemporary gospel songs and varied arrangements of anthems and standard Baptist hymns. Drums, other percussion instruments, woodwind instruments like the saxophone and the clarinet, and the trumpet, very seldom integral parts of the black Baptist worship experience seventy-five years ago, are now used in several churches.
While most member churches of the National Baptist Convention of America, Incorporated, have not made full use of the calendar year, many pastors and their parishioners are now using the Christian calendar in planning worship and as a teaching ministry aid.
Denominational Resources
Revisions in the National Baptist Hymnal reflect the concern for future directions in black Baptist worship. Since 1977, black Baptists have produced six editions of the National Baptist Hymnal. The New National Baptist Hymnal, 6th edition, was published in 1980 and represents a thorough examination of the theology and the biblical foundations of hymns for black Baptist worship. More importantly, the committee responsible for the publication represented a broad cross section of clergy and lay persons to upgrade the worship experience.
There are other hopeful signs of continued progress regarding worship. Pastors and laypersons are constantly being exposed to seminars, workshops, conferences, and a plethora of worship resources that have expanded the horizons for meaningful worship beyond the traditional sermon as the center of worship. Nonetheless, even with these new directions in worship, member churches of the National Baptist Convention of America, Incorporated, will continue to remain focused upon the mission of this particular aggregate of worshipers, which includes implementing the great commission at home and abroad, serving as an agency of Christian education, propagating Baptist doctrines of faith and practice, safeguarding full religious liberty and spiritual independence at home and on the foreign fields, and vouchsafing the principles of civil liberty, social justice, and equity of humankind as children of God.