International Foursquare Gospel Church

Worship and Sacred Actions Throughout the Year in the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel

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Foursquare churches combine important days from the Christian year with national observances in forming their own church year, one that correlates with the yearly rhythm experienced by its members and the surrounding community. Special Pentecost services emphasizing the church’s Pentecostal beliefs were held in its early days and have recently been revived in a different form.

For most of its seventy-year history, the calendar of the Foursquare Church has included the observance of certain religious holidays, such as Good Friday, Easter, Pentecost, and Christmas. In the United States, Foursquare churches have also held rallies on July 4 and Thanksgiving expressing gratefulness to God for the Christian influence in the nation’s heritage, and have emphasized family values on Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, and in some cases, Children’s Day.

Holy Week and Easter

In many Foursquare churches, Good Friday services emphasize the suffering and sacrifice of Jesus Christ at Calvary. Communion is served, providing an expression of the believer’s identification with the death and burial of the Lord. Usually, the service traces the steps of Jesus on the way to his sacrifice for humanity at the cross.

One of the highlights of Easter observance has been sunrise services, conducted with great pageantry and music commemorating the victorious resurrection of the Lord. Many new believers choose this day to be baptized in water. The presentation of cantatas and drama depicting the Resurrection and its eternal impact upon humankind are commonplace.

Christmas remains the most active celebration on the Foursquare Church calendar. As is true during Easter, extensive effort is devoted to presenting the claims of the gospel to the unsaved. Even in congregations that have adopted a relatively low-key pattern of weekly worship, special music ensembles and choirs are formed to present the gospel in music and drama. Church facilities are brightly decorated, and in many congregations, a Christmas dinner is held early in December. A renewed emphasis on family life has given special meaning to returning to “Grandma’s house” on Christmas Day. Despite the numerous activities during the holiday season, the church schedule is adjusted to allow for quality family time.

Pentecost “Holy Ghost Rallies”

During the earliest days of the Foursquare movement, its founder, Aimee Semple McPherson, and others conducted special services on and around Pentecost Sunday. Called “Holy Ghost Rallies,” these services presented the Pentecostal teachings that the Foursquare Church holds dear and offered concentrated opportunity for seekers to be baptized with the Holy Spirit with the evidence of speaking in other tongues, as in the original day of Pentecost described in Acts 2.

During the latter part of the 1950s these rallies began to decline and by the 1980s almost ceased to exist. However, having been influenced by the charismatic revival and the recent “third-wave” of renewal throughout the body of Christ, several of the Foursquare churches are reinstating the special observances of Pentecost into their local calendars. The services are not patterned on the “rallies” of the past, but they do manifest a strong resurgence of teaching and celebration regarding Jesus Christ, the Baptizer with the Holy Spirit.

National Holidays and Observances

National observances provide opportunities for the teaching of responsible, biblical citizenship. On the weekend surrounding U. S. Independence Day, musicals or other presentations focus on the Christian principles on which the United States was founded. Thanksgiving is an outstanding season to teach and appropriate the biblical teachings on gratefulness, giving, and praise. Foursquare churches in some areas of the nation use this time as a season of “ingathering,” wherein offering for missions are taken or other projects take place.

Mother’s Day and Father’s Day are excellent “teaching moments” regarding Christian family, marriage, and the home. It is during these times that many baby dedications are performed. The manner in which churches celebrate these occasions varies, depending upon the age groups predominating in the membership, circumstances with their homes, and the taste of the pastor. In some congregations, the eldest and the youngest are honored.

As can be seen by the above, rather than following a “liturgical” year with uniformity of theme and observance, each Foursquare church is admonished to establish a church year that correlates with and complements the “life” year of its members and the community which it serves. It will include certain “religious (Feast) days,” but will also incorporate the instruction of Deuteronomy 6:6–9: “You shall maintain God’s words in your heart … and teach them diligently to your children, and you shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand [embracing the past], and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes [envisioning the future]. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates [experiencing the present].”

The Arts in International Foursquare Gospel Churches

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Music and the other arts are essential components of worship in Foursquare Gospel churches. A limitless variety of musical styles, including both traditional and contemporary examples, are included in worship services. Drama and dance also play a very significant role. The following article focuses on music and the arts at The Church on the Way, Van Nuys, California, as an example of Foursquare Gospel worship.

Since the days of our founder, Aimee Semple McPherson, the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel has always endeavored to reach across denominational and cultural barriers to bring the “full gospel” to people. This has never been more true than in the area of music, especially in the last twenty years. Taking our cue from our innovative founder, we have sought to be open to exploring the many avenues of musical and other artistic expressions with which the Lord has blessed us.

Characteristic of a Foursquare Gospel philosophy of music is the belief that God created music as a vehicle for people to praise and worship him, for moving their hearts toward receiving him, for celebration, for instruction, and communicating the Word of God, and as a powerful weapon in spiritual warfare. In short, music is an important part of every event, regardless of size, function, or scope of influence. Services, classes, meetings, etc., all have music of some form.

For example, in a presentation of Easter music, The First Foursquare Church of Van Nuys, California (The Church on the Way), explored the jazz and rock idioms to express the timeless truths of a time-honored hymn, “The Old Rugged Cross.” Utilizing the cry of an improvised solo on the soprano saxophone to portray the agony of the cross, coupled with the rough-hewn voice of one of our vocally gifted men, resulting in a dynamic, spiritually-rich experience of worship for that congregation.

On Mother’s Day Evening in May of each year, this same church releases ministry through many art forms in an evening service dedicated to worshipful expressions through the arts, entitled “A Night of Royal Splendor.” Classical music by a string ensemble, dance, and visual art are featured, as well as the presentation of more traditional groups such as a children’s chorale and a newly formed adult gospel choir.

Drama has been part of the Foursquare experience from the beginning when Aimee Semple McPherson wrote operas like The Crimson Road and The Bells of Bethlehem. She herself was quite dramatic in her approach to public ministry—it is reported that one time she even rode a motorcycle into the sanctuary to make a point. Today, many Foursquare churches are exploring drama as an effective supplement to the worship experience, with everything from small “skits” in services to underscore the message to complete plays and musicals.

Dance has been explored both as a beautiful visual complement to worship (by a dance ministry team) and as a corporate expression of worship by having the congregation literally “dance in the Spirit.”

The Sanctuary Choir at The Church on the Way continues to be an “ignition point” to inspire and encourage worship in the congregation. At first, it was a vehicle to launch two musicals in the 1970s: Come Together and If My People. Later, in 1981, it presented Majesty. The philosophy has always been that the people are the choir. Consequently, the Sanctuary Choir is not a “performance-oriented” ensemble that substitutes for the congregation’s need to be worshipers.

The range of musical styles used in The Church on the Way is limitless. Traditional hymns have been put into classical, jazz, Dixieland, contemporary rock, fusion, country, and Latin settings, to name a few. Infants through senior citizens engage in musical activities. Classes are held for infants and mothers to experience music together through games and finger play. Toddlers and their mothers actively participate by singing, marching, and playing rhythm instruments. Organized choirs start at age three and continue through the elderly.

Instrumental support for congregational worship services is provided by a rhythm section consisting of piano, organ, drums, guitar, electric bass, and synthesizer. Rhythm sections are also used for worship by all Sunday school classes. Elementary, junior high, high school, college, and singles each have their own rhythm section. For Communion services (usually once a month), a brass ensemble consisting of three trumpets, two French horns, three trombones, tuba, and percussion are added to the rhythm section. The Communion instrumentation is used to support congregation worship, special choir numbers, and to play preludes. Instrumentation for some seasonal music celebrations usually includes four woodwinds, four trumpets, four French horns, three trombones, tuba, percussion, harp, and rhythm section. There is also a fifty-piece concert band, Jericho, which does other presentations throughout the year. Entire libraries are kept for brass ensembles, string ensembles, Dixieland bands, and trombone bands.

While the church has sought to remain sensitive to the ever-changing cultural climate in the area of music and the arts, that change has never been at the expense of the valued and essential traditional music and art forms already resident in the church. The Church on the Way also adheres to a balanced diet of worship choruses coupled with hymns. The purpose is to make and keep worship music available to the people so that they can easily take it and use it for their own personal and corporate times of worship. This approach to worship is borne out of an “undergirding” philosophy of replacing “the ministry of the professional” (which had allowed the individual a growing avoidance of the responsibility of being a worshiper) with “the ministry of the individual believer.”

The Church on the Way is an example of a church that has set the pace in the composition of hymns, choruses, and other music, but there are variations of music and art forms throughout the Foursquare denomination depending on locality, the taste of its members, and varying philosophies regarding worship service functions. Worship expressions range from specialized music teams such as are being used in the Christian Assembly Foursquare Church in Eagle Rock, California, (which presents four evangelistic concerts per year in addition to its weekly ministry in worship) to more traditional forms of worship, such as found in the Florence Avenue Foursquare Church in Santa Fe Springs, California.

During the Jesus Movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s, many Foursquare churches replaced their organs with guitars and hymns with worship choruses. Many new and “renewed” congregations sought a “full-gospel” experience in worship that was fresh and alive, meaning that many of them abandoned the traditional worship forms of hymnody and organ music. Those congregations that built their new spiritual life on the “rock” of a scripturally-based worship foundation and balanced approach to the “new wave” of the Spirit survived. Those that built on the “sand” of “experience only” or “experience-for-its-own-sake” either withered or became cultists in their practices. It is interesting to note the number of those churches that have recaptured the essence of the meaning of old, doctrinally rich hymns (and even organ music in some cases) with an adventurous new sense of purpose.

Today, the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel seeks to maximize the potential of music and the arts to release its people in praise and worship. This is accomplished by a spiritually responsible approach to wise and sensitive stewardship of all resources, both human and God-inspired, human-made tools produced by current technology.