theology

The Artist-in-Residence in the Local Congregation

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One creative approach in integrating the visual arts into the life of the local congregation involves employing an artist-in-residence. In return for studio space and appropriate monetary remuneration, the artist-in-residence is available to create visual arts for worship, to instruct worshipers about the nature of the visual arts in worship, and to involve members of the congregation in the design and fabrication of the arts in worship.

Art and theology are both about the discipline of the imagination. Thus, they have a natural affinity, one with the other, making an advocacy role by the church for artistic expression in process and product a wise investment. In fact, the local parish provides an optimal setting for a resident artist and gives the congregation and artist alike the mutual benefit of each other’s imaginings.

The sense of awe and wonder triggered by watching a resident artist work kindles the religious imagination. The reality of radical faith is brought to light when watching an artist trust a creative process to reveal resolution. The presence of grace is experienced when watching an artist transform material and transcend the medium by creating a whole greater than the sum of its parts.

The intermingling of creative processes with religious ideas is productive for the church and empowering for the artist. This mutually beneficial arrangement lifts up the notion that applied creativity is an essential resource for building our world, while the faith of the church lifts up the notion that the capacity to create is a reflection of our being in the divine image. By building on the intrinsic relationship between the artistic and spiritual dimensions of human existence, an artist-in-residence program promotes the idea that the artistic vision and the vision of faith see possibility in all things.

Although the following discussion sets forth parameters for a visual artist’s residency, its concepts are adaptable to residencies of artists working in nonvisual mediums (dance, music, drama, or other arts). Furthermore, the issues and suggestions outlined in this discussion are pertinent to churches of contrasting membership sizes. Only slight modifications are required in establishing an artist-in-residence in a small church of approximately 200 members as opposed to a corporate-sized church of 2,000 members. (See Arlen Rauthge’s Sizing Up Your Church for a definition and discussion of categories of congregational size.)

In a large church, it is politically astute to align the arts committee with another (worship, liturgy, education, or music) for support or status. As a catalyst for arts activity, the arts committee negotiates between professional staff and members of the congregation, recommending to both on behalf of the other.

Since the arts committee functions to enhance the life of the congregation through art, and since art is easily dismissed or misunderstood, this committee must supplement all of its programmings with a persistent educational agenda. First, however, the committee must educate itself. An organized study of several books that bridge art and theology will enable the members to field such questions as: “What is religious art?”, “What is Christian art?”, “What is sacred art?”, “What is liturgical art?” Members will be prepared to point out invalid distinctions as well as amplify meaningful ones. If asked, “Is the best church art the best secular art, or what purpose in Christianity should art serve, or can a non-Christian artist produce a work of art for liturgy?” committee members will answer by asking more questions. Compelled to such discourse with the congregation, committee members animate interest and understanding of the arts and lay the groundwork for the appointment and arrival of an artist-in-residence.

It is wise to select an artist who not only is professionally competent but also is articulate and engaging. Give the artist ample room. Convert a Sunday school classroom to a studio. Such a room often exists in a heated building otherwise empty during the week. Forty hours per month of working time on behalf of the church is an equitable exchange for a modest salary and in-kind contribution of space and utilities. Give the artist a key and expect him or her to come and go at will, creating in the studio a place where the creative process is given high visibility for the church. The congregation and the artist need at least a year together to realize the benefit of each other. A renewal contract or a contract with another artist is a viable option at the end of the first year.

Traditionalism versus innovation is the critical issue the church faces in committing to an artist-in-residence, and the arts committee helps the congregation understand this issue. The artist works at the boundary between tradition and innovation. A work of art by nature has the capacity to take a person to a new place of being because the newness of the experience excites, distresses, delights, disturbs, challenges. The role of the artist, like that of the priest, is a prophetic one.

The arts committee helps to integrate the artist with the professional staff and advocates for his/her presence in planning sessions. Inclusion achieves two major things: first, the artist has time to incubate, a critical step in the creative process when the artist wrestles with ideas and searches for solutions; second, the artist is not ghettoized, thereby enabling his/her works to be understood as essential to the life of the church rather than “extra,” like frosting on a cake or stripes on a pair of stockings. If the artist is well integrated into the staff and understood and accepted as one of them, his or her visual proclamations will be taken in stride much the same way the pastor’s work is.

When West Coast artist Nancy Chinn was artist-in-residence with a congregation in San Francisco, she appointed two committees to work with her—one, a Dream Committee, and the other, a Recruitment Committee.

The Dream Committee, comprised of approximately half a dozen members from the congregation, interacted with Nancy regarding the use of sanctuary space around themes of worship. Referring to the appointed Scripture for that week or season, Nancy would ask, “What does this Scripture mean to you? What are the feelings this Scripture evokes from you? What is the mood we are trying to get across with this theme?” These questions provoked a “feeling” response, enabling Nancy to incubate ideas and visualize creations.

The Recruitment Committee, also comprised of members of the congregation, helped paint, fabricate, cut, install, and otherwise construct the work designed by the resident artist. Thus the work in the sanctuary became the work of the people. This work, inspired by Scripture, might accompany the procession, amplify the reading of the lessons, embellish a prayer, accompany the bringing of the gifts, elaborate upon the sermon, or surface during dismissal. With the help of this committee, the artist designed the work (a painted paper carpet down the center aisle with images of Holy Week on which congregants walk); organized the project; worked out mechanics of installation (e.g., a concealed drop-line system supportive of an evocative swoop of red, orange, and yellow ribbons during Pentecost, or 1,400 cut and folded paper dove images during Epiphany); and instructed people how to work with the chosen artistic medium.

The artist embodies and enfleshes the Word with the aid of the community in other ways. He/she might offer intergenerational “how-to” workshops during off-school times that thrive on the spontaneity of children and adults of all ages. Retreats which lift up the creative process as a meditative process, sessions with Sunday School teachers helping them incorporate the artist’s expertise in their teaching situations, an artist’s chat on Sunday morning about work in the church studio, or a dialogue sermon about applied creativity as rootedness in the divine image, all represent possibilities for engagement.

It is empowering to the artist to interact with a nurturing community. Furthermore, artists need space and the church needs the fresh insights of its artists. Why not risk such a relationship? Without risk, art and theology will not take us to an enlarged vision of reality where the religious imagination can take flight.

African-American Preaching

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African-American preaching arises out of the cultural and religious experiences of the oppressed. It reaches people in their dislocation and relocates them in God and in the promise of a brighter future.

“Telling the Story”

The proclamation of the Word of God, the “telling of the story” is essential to authentic African-American worship. There is a saying among some African-American preachers that the brothers and sisters will forgive you for anything but not preaching. African-American folk expect the preacher to “tell the story.” What does it mean to “tell the story?”

Biblical Emphasis. African-American preaching, almost without exception, is biblical. It takes the biblical message and the biblical stories and weaves them in such a way that the stories come alive and relate to the lives, needs, feelings, and existential situations of those gathered in the congregation. Each story is told in a way consistent with the biblical story, yet having relevance and application for African-American people. This storied preaching is rich with sharp words and vivid imagery for disillusioned and disinherited people. African-American preaching is filled with stories that set hearts aflame and spirits right to have faith that God is more than a match for the evil structures of oppression. This preaching supremely illustrates Jesus’ power to overcome these structures through his death and resurrection.

Prophetic Rather than Pastoral. African-American preaching is characterized generally as prophetic rather than pastoral. The Old Testament and the prophetic literature are used as material for sermonizing rather than the more pastoral material of the Bible. In addition, the synoptic Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke are used as the testimonies of those who knew the prophet Jesus and his revolutionary activities in and around Galilee as he struggled with the powerful Roman government and the religious establishment of his day.

One illustration of African-American preaching’s prophetic edge is that on the Sunday morning on which the four African-American children were bombed to death at Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, a survey of the sermons preached in that city on that Sunday morning revealed that, almost without exception, the African-American preachers preached from the Old Testament. The white preachers without exception preached from the New Testament. That was not a coincidence. African-American preaching tends to announce judgment on the nation, and to call into question the institutions in society in a prophetic fashion whereas white preaching tends to be of a pastoral nature. Part of the reason for this is that the Anglo-American church has a different relationship to the establishment than the African-American Church.

Anglo-American Christianity is so inextricably bound to the American way of life that it sees God, country, and the American flag as almost synonymous terms. The emphasis more often than not in Anglo-American preaching is personal behavior and the individual rather than the revolutionary ethic of Jesus and the prophetic judgment on the whole community. In addition, there is not the strict dichotomy in African-American preaching of the priestly and the prophetic, the sacred and the secular. The priestly and the prophetic coexist as part and parcel of the same reality. Even where there is a clear element of judgment and the prophetic message, the celebration of life is present.

Poetic in Style. Generally, African-American preaching is poetic rather than rigorously logical and stymied by rationality. As Hortense Spillers has pointed out in her analysis of the style of the African-American sermon in reference to Martin Luther King, there is considerable use of metaphors and a greater number of nouns, adjectives, and adjectival clauses rather than verbs and verb forms. These combine to create a picturesqueness and grandness of speech. The African-American preacher relies on imagery to carry the subject, much like the language of the Bible. In the following excerpt from a sermon preached in 1962 by J. H. Jackson, president of the National Baptist Convention, it is clear that the preacher is painting a picture on the canvas of the mind. Jackson addresses facing the future with God:

But I say to you my friends, fear not your tomorrow and shrink not from the task or the lot that is yet to come. The future belongs to God, and the last chapter in the story of human life will not be written by the blood-stained hands of godless men but by the God of history himself. The same hand that raised the curtain of creation and pushed back the floating worlds upon the broad sea of time and flashed forth the light of life that put an end to ancient chaos and darkness; the same hand that erected the highways of the skies and rolled the sun like a golden ball across the pavement of the dawn; the same God whose hand has guided the destinies of nations, fixed the time and seasons and superintended the whole order of time and eternity will at His appointed hour pull down the curtain of existence, and will Himself write the last paragraph in the last chapter of the last book of human life and cosmic destiny. (Warner R. Traynham, Christian Faith in Black and White [Wakefield, Mass.: Parameter Press, 1973])

Such poetry, vivid imagery, and word pictures can be heard again and again in African-American preaching. The African-American preacher is confident that preaching is primarily an effort at communication both to the mind and to the emotions.

Dialogue between Pastor and People. African-American preaching is dialogical; it is a cooperative effort between the pulpit and the pew. The dialogue does not take place after the sermon but during the sermon. Sometimes an unpoetic preacher can be brought to new life, brilliance, and lyrical power when there is cooperation in the pew, with the help, expectancy, encouragement, and enthusiasm of the congregation.

Part of the African-American preaching tradition has been the prayers of the laypeople for the preacher and/or the expectancy about the sermon. These prayers reflect the same vivid imagery and poetry and imagination mentioned earlier. The following prayer is an example:

And now, O Lord, this man of God,
Who breaks the bread of life this morning—
Shadow him in the hollow of Thy hand,
And keep him out of the gunshot of the devil.
Take him, Lord, this morning
Wash him with hyssop inside and out,
Hang him up and drain him dry of sin.
Pin his ears to the wisdom post,
And make his words sledgehammers of truth,
Beat on the iron heart of sin,
Put his eye to the telescope of eternity
And let him look upon the paper walls of time.
Lord, turpentine his imagination,
Put perpetual motion in his arms,
Fill him full of the dynamite of Thy power,
Anoint him all over with the oil of Thy salvation,
And set his tongue on fire.

The dialogical style of African-American preaching reaches back into the wombs of Africa engendering, a call-and-response style that elicits participation of all those gathered. This makes African-American preaching a uniquely creative and beautiful art.

Teaches and Inspires. African-American preaching is didactic as well as inspiring. It seeks to inform as well as inspire. It seeks to discern the action of God in history as it relates to the existential dilemma of the African-American person, lends healing to people’s hurts, and proclaims a liberating word while not denying the reality of pain.

Some have accused African-American preaching and the African-American church of anti-intellectualism. What may be more accurate is that there is little tolerance for rarefied abstraction. The African-American preacher can discuss anything of philosophical and theological import as long as it is presented in such a way as to make sense of life and relate to the lives of the hearers. How an issue is presented is often more important than what the issue is. People such as Gardner C. Taylor, Howard Thurman, George Outen, Vernon John, and Martin Luther King, Jr. have proven that African-American preaching can contain intricate historical, political analyses while at the same time “feeding the flock.”

Declares Rather than Suggests. African-American preaching is characterized as declarative rather than suggestive. Someone once said when the Roman Catholic priests speak, they say, “The church says … ” When the Jewish rabbis speak, they say, “The Torah says … ” But when the African-American preachers speak they say, “My God told me … ”

There is little room in African-American preaching for equivocation and spurious sophistry. The moral issues of the nation are far too clear, the presence of evil too certain, to be tentative. A stand is taken on an issue. Even when a logical argument is used to present the case, the force of the preaching does not depend on argument and logical persuasion, but rather on the ability of the African-American preacher to probe the depths of the issue, to guide the hearers to reach the same conclusion. But always it is declarative rather than suggestive, a matter of fact rather than tentative. The African-American preacher is neither too timid nor hesitant to say, “Thus saith the Lord!”

Slow and Deliberate in Buildup. African-American preaching is characterized by a slow and deliberate buildup. The path the preacher takes may be winding with a few detours, but always he or she is expected to be heading someplace and to take time getting there. In fact, in many congregations, the African-American preacher can hear some members of the congregation admonishing, “Take your time.” He or she is expected to allow time for both the mind and the emotions to react in a natural process. The African-American preacher is deliberate with the material, and nobody has the sense that he or she is in a hurry, for there is no place more important and nothing more significant than what the preacher is doing: rightly dividing the Word of truth. It is more important to say fewer things and be heard and felt than to present many ideas that are merely words and concepts introduced.

The Dramatic Pause. The dramatic pause by many preachers is used as an effort to force the congregation both to reflect upon what has been said and to anticipate what is to follow. This leads to an antiphonal response and sometimes into a rhythmic, harmonious singsong. One can describe this pattern as the Four Rs: rhetoric, repetition, rhythm, rest. This was heard often in the preaching of Martin Luther King, Jr., and thousands of other African-American preachers. Often it is the repetition of a single word or phrase in which the congregation picks up the cadence of the preacher and there is almost a refrain. Recall King’s speech at Lincoln Memorial in Washington in 1963 in which he repeats, “I have a dream … ” By repetition and amplification, the speech builds. There is rhetoric, repetition, rhythm, and rest. The congregation echoes and verifies the preacher’s own words in such a way as to make them emphatic.

King was familiar with this technique, for he had learned it from his elders and had seen it work time and time again. He was a master at euphony, carefully selecting and using a combination of vowels and consonants so as to make his sounds and words pleasing. These need to be heard to be understood, for the most effective observer of this style and technique is the human ear.

Life Situational. African-American preaching is expected to relate to life and the life situations of the audience. When it does not, no matter how well-conceived or how well-constructed or how theologically sound, that sermon is considered a failure. Illustrations are often used—drawn from history, everyday experiences, African-American history and culture, and literature. Illustrations from biblical literature are shaped in such a way as to relate the experience to the lives of as many persons as possible.

The Element of Hope. There is always an element of hope and optimism in African-American preaching. No matter how dark or gloomy a picture has been painted, there is always a “but” or a “nevertheless” or an element in the climax of the sermon that suggests holding on, marching forward, going through, or overcoming.

This is illustrated in a sermon preached by Otis Moss in which he described drug addiction and its terrible effects on the minds of African-American families and the African-American community.

The last time that I saw the man he was on his way home. His eyes were clear with sight and insight. The scars of dull and dirty needles had been washed from his body. He was no longer the vehicle of dope but the instrument of hope. The last time that I saw him he was on his way home. His children saw him walking and smiled to themselves and said, “That looks like my daddy.” His wife looked out and saw him and said, “That’s my husband.” And I could hear the man describing what had happened to him. Can’t you hear him saying, “I met a man named Jesus and I had an exchange with him.”? I gave him my sorrows, he gave me his joy; I gave him my confusion, he gave me his peace; I gave him my despair, he gave me his hope; I gave him my hatred, he gave me his love; I gave him my torn life, he gave me his purpose. I met a man—a man named Jesus.”

African-American Preaching and African-American Theology

Authentic African-American preaching provides a gospel message to African-American people whose lives and very existence are threatened daily by the insidious tentacles of power and oppression. If preaching fails to speak to the condition of African-American people and offers no promise of life for the African-American person, then it is not gospel to them. It is simply lifeless rhetoric.

Preaching is at the heart of Christianity. Not rapping, not unintelligible gibberish, not “sound and fury signifying nothing,” not hip anecdotes from Playboy magazine or comic vignettes from “Peanuts,” not recovery groups (as helpful as those may be), but preaching in which the Word of God is declared with clarion sound and an impassioned heart that has been set on fire by inspiration and the experience of a God who calls the person to declare his Word. Such persons do not just preach sermons but preach that event in history and eternity by which God entered most fully and effectively into human life. Preachers must be persons who preach the judgment and the grace of God with passion and preparation, with fervor and faith, with prophetic vision and priestly hearts.

As important as ritual is to symbolize the acts of the faith and experience with God; as important as music is to convey the gospel of hope and the beauty of God’s holiness, in the Christian religion these can never be substitutes for the proclamation of the Word of God, the “foolishness of preaching,” the “inescapable claim” upon us. Jesus did not neglect the blind and the lame, the deaf and the lepers, the poor and the broken-hearted, the captive and the bruised—his gospel of liberation, love, and freedom was a declaration of the rule of God breaking in upon the forces that hold humans captive. He did not separate a gospel of changing conditions in society from changing the individual. His gospel is always personal and social. He knew nothing of a religion that spoke to the heart and not the conditions in which men and women live. But his words in Matthew 10 are clear: “As you go, preach!”

The Jesus that African-American preaching must proclaim has to be able to walk the dark ghetto streets of the North and the hot, dusty fields of a sharecropper’s farm in the South. The Jesus that African-American preaching proclaims is the Christ of faith who is relevant to the needs, feelings, and aspirations of African-American people. It is Jesus whose face and image one sees in the rat-bitten, mutilated faces of children, and his suffering one sees in the scars from dull and dirty needles in the body of a drug addict in a stinking, dirty alley. That is the Jesus who is not only the liberator and emancipator, but he is the bishop of the souls of African-American folk. It was this Jesus that African-Americans’ forefathers and foremothers knew and sang about: “O fix me, Jesus, fix me.”

It has been an understanding of, and an acquaintance with, this Jesus that has led African-American preachers to create new Christological categories and to declare him to be “A Stone rolling through Babylon,” “Water in dry places,” “Bread in a starving land,” “The Rose of Sharon,” and “The Bright and Morning Star.” When one hears preaching in a church where these Christological categories cannot be used, one can be certain he or she is not worshiping in an African-American church.

Toward a Biblical Psychology of Worship

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The renewal of worship in our era is largely concerned with the restoration of a God-centered focus in Christian celebration. By its very nature, however, the psychology of worship tends to reverse this focus, redirecting our concern to the worshiper and his or her needs. A biblical psychology of worship places the individual within the context of corporate celebration and covenantal responsibility. Worship celebrates the victory of Christ over authorities that place people in bondage. In this setting, the gospel of Christ brings healing and liberation.

A common approach to the psychology of worship attacks the issue from the standpoint of the benefits to the individual worshiper. These benefits may include the awareness of intimacy with God, the affirmation and healing that come through the experience of grace, the sense of identity and fulfillment which is communicated to the worshiper, or some other value which he or she perceives as a benefit resulting from the act of worship. Pathology in worship is described in terms of the failure of the worshiper to receive these benefits. If he or she remains in a state of alienation or boredom, unable to respond at any level of depth to what is being presented, and locked into destructive behavior patterns which prevent a genuine meeting with God or with other worshipers, then the experience of worship has not been successful.

While this worshiper-centered approach to the psychological aspects of worship yields much that is valuable in terms of understanding the emotional needs and behavioral characteristics of worshipers, it is, in our view, ultimately counterproductive in contributing to the renewal of Christian worship. Genuine Christian worship is not worshiper-centered but God-centered. Worship that is based on the biblical perspective must by definition be directed away from the worshiper and towards the proper object of worship, the God who has involved himself in the history of a people and who comes to them as Creator, Savior, and Lord.

The foundation of biblical worship is the covenant graciously granted by the Lord to his servants, and worship in the biblical sense is the tribute the servants offer to the great King. When the psychology of worship is focused on whether or not the worshiper’s needs are being met, the whole purpose of worship is reversed. The King becomes the servant, and the worshiper takes the place of the sovereign, expecting to receive the tribute of the servant-God and frustrated when it is not forthcoming. Such a reversal has much in common with the pagan cults of the ancient Near East—a sharp contrast to biblical faith. In polytheistic religions, the worshiper’s constant aim is to propitiate a capricious and reluctant deity, wresting from him or her the benefits associated with the seasonal fertility cycle or some other response to human need. Biblical worship, in contrast, is a response to the holiness and majesty of God and to his initiative in creating a people to declare the excellence of his redeeming work (1 Pet. 2:9–10).

Since psychology, by definition, focuses on the human psyche or “soul” with its perceptions and needs, can a psychology of worship be constructed in which the focus should be not on the worshiper but upon the Lord who is the true object of worship?

Redefining Psychology in Biblical Terms

The term psyche is a Greek term found often in the New Testament (the Old Testament Hebrew equivalent is nefesh). It refers to an individual life, or what we today call a person. Biblically, the “soul” represents the totality of a person’s being—not only his or her emotional, mental, and spiritual side but also one’s physical well-being, family and property, and place and reputation in the community (see, for example, the exhaustive treatment of the Hebraic concept of the soul in Johannes Pedersen, Israel: Its Life and Culture, vol. 1[London: Oxford University Press, 1946]). Both the inward and outward aspects of an individual’s life are bound up with the soul. Hence psychology understood biblically, involves more than “personality” as we conceive of it; it has to do with a person’s external behavior, one’s speech and actions, and how the person is perceived within the context of the community of which he or she is a part.

It is noteworthy, in this connection, that the biblical narrative seldom probes into the inward “feelings” of the people involved; where we today would describe an incident in terms of how the participants felt about what was happening, the Scripture tends simply to record what they said and did. In 2 Kings 4 we find the account of a boy, taken ill, whom Elisha restores to life; whereas we would say the boy felt pain in his head and his father became alarmed, the text simply says that the boy said to his father, “My head! My head!” and the father said to the servant, “Carry him to his mother” (2 Kings 4:19). A classic example of this biblical reticence about inward emotions is the narrative of Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac (Gen. 22:1–14), in which the feelings of father and son are never expressed but can only be inferred from such things as Isaac’s question about the lamb for the offering or the silence as “the two of them walked on together.” The Gospels record the passion of Christ with a similar restraint, rarely giving us a glimpse into his personal anguish in such expressions as “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death” (Mark 14:34). In the context of the sweep of salvation history and the working out of God’s plan of redemption, personal emotional “needs” appear to be largely irrelevant. In the Jewish culture of biblical times, they were certainly downplayed.

The biblical worshiper may testify to his or her longing or frustration, in such expressions as “My soul yearns, even faints for the courts of the Lord” (Ps. 84:2) or “My soul is downcast within me” (Ps. 42:6), but such outbursts are not the anguished cry of one for whom God has ceased to be a reality. Indeed, they are a pledge of loyalty on the part of a servant who, although surrounded by enemies, is determined to hold on to the one sure thing in his life: the Lord’s faithfulness to his covenant. The worshiper’s enemies are not inner hurts and dysfunctional personality patterns have warped his or her response to the worship of God, but other people, people unfaithful to the Lord, who are pressuring the worshiper in some way. Even Jeremiah’s complaint, “You deceived me, and I was deceived” (Jer. 20:7) is a response to the indifference of other people to the message that is “like a fire” in the prophet’s inner being (Jer. 20:9).

Set against Scripture, therefore, the psychology of worship must not remain focused subjectively on the worshiper and his or her needs. More is at stake here than our internal struggles. There is, or should be, objectivity to what occurs in Christian worship. Biblically informed worship is, in the first instance, an act through which God is establishing his dominion through the praises of his people (Ps. 22:3). Enthroning God means dethroning ourselves, like the worshiping elders in the Revelation of John, who lay their own crowns before the throne of God (Rev. 4:10). The growth of the kingdom of God, in our personal lives or in our social context, can occur only when God is on the throne, receiving the honor that is due him as sovereign Lord; otherwise, what is taking shape is a rival kingdom.

Worship is an act of spiritual warfare, the proclamation of Christ’s victory on the cross over spiritual forces that would hold the people of God in bondage to instruments of self-justification (Col. 2:14–15). Warfare requires the enlistment of soldiers, albeit wounded ones. Since the soul encompasses the whole person, not just the emotions, the psychology of Christian worship sees people in the totality of their being, with many strengths as well as weaknesses, with many gifts as well as defects. These gifts and strong points may still be used in the battle, even where hurts and faults persist.

Ultimately, the psychology of worship has to do not primarily with the worshiper’s interaction with himself but with his or her interaction with God. The psychology of worship thus involves how God benefits from worship as well as how the worshiper receives benefits and fulfillment of needs. In terms of biblical psychology, worship is the enlargement of the “soul” or life of God as his being reaches out to touch and envelop the “selves” of his worshipers. What else can be the meaning of the psalmist’s invitation, “O magnify [giddel, “make great”] the Lord with me, and let us exalt his name together” (Ps. 34:3, nasb)? In worship we “bless [bƒrekah] the Lord” (Pss. 103:1; 104:1, nasb), contributing to the welfare of his being. Granted, such expressions are poetic rather than ontological; nevertheless, in biblical worship we see the great King receiving the tribute of his covenant partners and benefiting therefrom.

Recovering the Primal Worship Experience

The primal experience of worship is the sense of awe in the presence of the holy, the one who is infinitely greater than ourselves and beyond all comprehension (see Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy, [New York: Oxford University Press, 1946]). The encounter with the holy comes as something which grips the worshiper at the intuitive level, filling him or her with a sense of awe and mystery before the massive presence of the sacred. (The Hebrew word kavod, translated “glory” or “honor,” carries the basic meaning of “mass” or “weight.”) There is a wonder, dread, or trepidation in the presence of a reality that cannot be comprehended within the framework of finite existence; an awareness of creaturehood and immeasurable smallness in the face of the Creator who is all. A biblical record of such an encounter with the Holy is recorded in Isaiah 6; Jacob’s experience at Bethel (Gen. 28:10–22) and the appearance of the Lord on Mount Sinai (Exod. 19:16–25) are other important instances, together with the transfiguration of Christ (Mark 9:2–8 and parallels). In such an encounter we have no choice but to worship in the biblical sense of “bending the knee” (both the Hebrew and Greek words translated “worship” have this meaning), doing obeisance before the overwhelming majesty of the Creator, revealed as an absolute value.

The pathology of many contemporary worshipers is related to the loss of capacity for this intuitive response. The humanistic, technological thrust of western culture “flattens out” our worldview so that it has no depth, while the relativistic philosophy of our era destroys any sense of absolute values. This lack of depth and absolutes is the cultural source of alienation and dysfunctional behavior patterns since without a philosophical and spiritual anchor the human personality is cast adrift. Having lost all cosmic referents, a person has no choice but to become self-centered; the search for depth often becomes only a search within oneself—or into some allegedly transcendent realm which in reality is only a projection of the conscious or unconscious self, as in the “new age” philosophy. When self-centeredness becomes a cultural norm, and indeed a religious value (as has been well documented by writers like Paul Vitz, in Psychology as Religion: The Cult of Self-Worship [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1977]), it is easy to understand how the unrestrained self continually inflicts hurt upon others and receives damaging blows in return.

In such a state, the decision to turn to God for help may be futile, since (in evangelicalism especially) so much emphasis is placed on conversion as an act of individual choice, made in order to secure certain benefits for the self. What the alienated person needs—and all members of our culture partake of this alienation—is to be taken captive (to use the apostle Paul’s metaphor, Eph. 4:7), caught up in the grip of the sacred. Worship that focuses on meeting human needs will never break the destructive cycle of self-centeredness. Only worship that lifts up a transcendent God, calling people to commit themselves in his service and to abandon themselves in fascination with his glory, will break this cycle and bring healing.

Corporate Worship and Personal Identity

The prevailing psychology of worship focuses upon the aspects of worship that concern the individual. The main concern is the response of the individual worshiper to the worship experience itself. One issue addressed by the psychology of worship is the worshiper’s sense of identity. Loss of identity is less of a problem in traditional cultures, where strong family or tribal bonds exist. A person always knows who he or she is, along with the proper role to assume in a given situation. In a technological and mobile culture, in contrast, the forces of social change contribute to the breakdown of these steady relationships and to a sense of alienation. The personal response is often to search for identity within the self, to “be all you can be” or to “have it your way.” Another avenue of response may be seen in the contemporary stress on ethnicity—the search for identity in ethnic “roots.” The psychology of worship focuses upon the pathology created when the individual worshiper is struggling with the loss or fragmentation of identity. In some persons, the struggle may be so intense that worship is weakened or blocked altogether. Also, there can be a loss of identification with the other participants.

Loss of personal identity becomes an issue in worship as long as worship is viewed as an individual act. Worship in the biblical tradition, however, is never an individual act; it is always corporate worship, the celebration of the gathered assembly of the covenant community. The worship of Israel, the celebration of Yahweh’s mighty acts, was organized around annual festivals at the sanctuary “where the tribes go up” (Ps. 122:4) as a group. When an individual speaks in worship (as in the Psalms), he does so as the representative of a group, those faithful to the Lord; the individual’s offering of praise to the Lord and his testimony to answered prayer is set within the framework of the assembly (e.g., Ps. 22:25). The prophets of Israel were, even in times of rampant apostasy, representatives of a community of faithful worshipers of the Lord, epitomized by the “seven thousand in Israel—all whose knees have not bowed down to Baal” (1 Kings 19:18) of Elijah’s era. The prophets took their stand not upon some esoteric revelation from the Lord but upon the traditions of the covenant, declaring the judgments against apostasy and immorality inherent within the covenant structure (see “The Concept of Covenant in Biblical Worship” in volume 1). The ability to declare these judgments with force was their prophetic gift or “inspiration.”

The corporate nature of the church, the “body of Christ,” is a corollary of the biblical stress on covenant and is evident in Paul’s teaching concerning the Lord’s Supper, the basic act of Christian worship. The bread we break, he reminds the Corinthians, is a koinonia (“participation, sharing) in the body of Christ (1 Cor. 10:16–17); Christians are not to receive the Lord’s Supper as an individual exercise but are to recognize the body (1 Cor. 11:29) or worshiping community in this act.

Viewed in this perspective, concern with one’s individual identity is a side issue. Introspective focus upon one’s inner struggles is a diversion from the worshiper’s true calling. Christian worship offers a genuine and satisfying sense of identity, but one that comes from a commitment to the corporate identity of the people of God, a people called into being for the purpose of clarifying not who they are as individuals, but who he is and what he has done: “that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.” In pledging themselves to the covenant, worshipers assume membership in a new family or “nation” from which their identity is derived: “Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God” (1 Pet. 2:9–10). In short, healing comes through the commitment of the self to a cause greater than the self. Deliverance from sickness and agitation within the soul begins to come when the worshiper confesses that struggle itself as sin and, laying it aside, takes up the proclamation of God’s greater glory in corporate celebration.

Worship and the Organizing Principle of Self

The question of the emotional needs of worshipers can be approached from the angle of the fragmentation of personality. This is perhaps another way of looking at the issue of identity. The anonymity of contemporary society makes it possible for people to act in one area of life in a manner inconsistent with the set of values they employ in another area. For example, a person who is a professing Christian may vote for a candidate for public office who opposes biblical principles or who may conduct himself in the home in a way he would never behave in church, at work, or in another public setting. People may go through life without being confronted with their own inconsistencies; because a person is really one psyche, however, internal dissonance may build up and may result in great emotional pain.

The search for an organizing principle of self that will silence the dissonance can be an agonizing one, especially if this search is undertaken with the premise that values are relative and that the answer must come from within each individual. “Self-esteem” has been viewed as such an organizing principle, enjoying wide popularity in our technological culture precisely because it avoids the introduction of absolutes. Even Christian thinking has co-opted the concept of self-esteem; we are told we have to love ourselves because Jesus said “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12:31). The issue of self-esteem is grist for the mill of the psychology of worship; lack of self-love has been seen as an impediment to worship, and the renewal of worship has been viewed in terms of how worshipers may be restored in self-esteem and released to express their “gifts.”

Clearly, biblically informed worship cannot pander to the worshiper’s perceived lack of self-esteem, for reasons that have been discussed above. Jesus’ iteration of the “great commandment” was not a recommendation of self-love; he (and Moses before him) assumed an adequate degree of “self-love,” in the sense of concern for one’s personal needs (cf. Eph. 5:29) and simply used it as an example of how to treat one’s fellow human beings. In actuality, the “neighbor” of whom Moses and Jesus were speaking is really one’s fellow member of the covenant with the Lord—a covenant which the New Testament views as expanding to embrace people of all ethnic and socioeconomic groups, people “from every tribe and language and people and nation” (Rev. 5:9). The organizing principle of “self” is the pledge of loyalty to God, a commitment that brings other loyalties—including loyalty to self—into proper perspective.

Worship and Personal Discipline

Christian worship is not the self-expression of an aggregate of individual worshipers, but the act of a redeemed people expressing honor to whom honor is due (cf. Rom. 13:7). Worship involves the subordination of individual concern to the larger concern that the name of the Lord should be lifted up. It is choreographed behavior that takes the spotlight off the worshiper and puts it on the Creator—yet, paradoxically, in so doing allows for the abundant release of individual gifts as worshipers move into the flow of praise in prophetic, musical, and artistic activity.

Participation in worship in the biblical tradition is an act of self-control; it involves the personal discipline of laying aside private concerns for the sake of the corporate witness to our sovereign Lord. Self-control, understood biblically, is submission to the will of God. As an act of self-control, worship is a vehicle for personal healing with self-control as the “bottom line” which anchors every fruit of the Spirit—joy, peace, and love itself (Gal. 5:22–23). Lack of self-control cuts us off from access to spiritual and psychological healing. To a Samaritan woman who evidently had some problems in this area, Jesus spoke of worship “in spirit and truth” (John 4:23), that is, spirited worship in the visible manifestation of self-abandonment before the Lord, and truthful worship in conformity to scriptural patterns. To worship the Lord as an act of obedience, regardless of personal “feelings” of the moment, is a therapeutic, restorative act because it is an act of sacrifice—what Scripture calls the “sacrifice of praise” (Heb. 13:15).

A biblical psychology of worship recognizes the need to maintain worship in the Spirit, to understand worship from God’s viewpoint—the tribute due him as the great King—and to view the worshiper’s role as the controlled abandonment of self-concern. It would be sad indeed if in worship, as in all aspects of the Christian life, having begun in the Spirit we should seek to complete it in the flesh (cf. Gal. 3:3). In the context of Paul’s warning, “the flesh” means the effort to justify oneself through the performance of the Mosaic law. Thus, “the flesh” is emblematic of all attempts to prove oneself, instead of to prove or demonstrate “what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will” (Rom. 12:2). As members of the body of Christ, the corporate assembly of the Lord’s worshiping people, we are not to indulge ourselves in the quest for self-pity or self-esteem; rather we are to “put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to satisfy its desires” (Rom. 13:14, RSV).

Worship and the “Performance Principle”

In the final analysis, that which lies at the root of most pathologies of personality in our culture is the replacement of unconditional familial love by the “performance principle”—the constant need to prove ourselves, to justify our right to exist. Millions live in this bondage, many perhaps outwardly self-assured, successful, and complacent but inwardly insecure and uncertain of their acceptance by others. The “self-esteem” movement largely ignores this cultural exchange. Our lives are constantly being measured by imposed or internalized standards: the values of peer groups, the pressures of economic expectations, the conventions of our various ethnic or ideological communities. To compound the problem, none of these perceived sources of value has any final arbiter who can certify that we have passed the test and validated ourselves; there is no mechanism by which we may receive the official stamp of approval. Having no definite finish line to cross, we can never know if we have won the race.

The “performance principle” of our industrial and technological age is simply the modern secular version of “the law of sin and death” (Rom. 8:2) from which Christ came to release us. However “holy, righteous and good” (Rom. 7:12), the Judeo-Christian law nevertheless pandered to “the flesh” in this respect: it set up an unattainable standard of behavior and so challenged the worshiper to commend himself or herself in relationship to its achievement. Under such a system, worship became simply one of many acts intended to make a statement about the worshiper: his or her faithfulness, righteousness, or spirituality. Within such a system there is no release from the inherent curse of judgment.

Against the background of the “performance principle,” the gospel proclaims: So also, when we were children, we were in slavery under the basic principles of the world. But when the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under law, that we might receive the full rights of sons. Because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, “Abba, Father” (Gal. 4:3–6).

In other words, redemption is effected through a change of family loyalty and status: from being slaves of the “performance principle” to being children of the Father, children who no longer need to perform in order to be accepted, but who are accepted in virtue of the relationship. The outcome is becoming a member of Christ the Son; to be “in Christ” is to be part of a new creation (2 Cor. 5:17). Christ in his death has borne the curse of judgment (Gal. 3:14–15); by union with him in his death (Rom. 6:3–5; Col. 2:12) we have “crossed over from death to life” (John 5:24; cf. 1 John 3:14).

This is the significance of the new (or renewed) covenant in Christ. The basic condition of the covenant—absolute loyalty to God—remains in force; but Jesus, our high priest, and intercessor, satisfies this condition in our behalf (Heb. 7–8), setting us free from the curse. Thus Paul could proclaim the gospel of Christus Victor:

When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature [Greek sarx, “flesh” or self-justifying behavior], God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross. And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross (Col. 2:13–15).

Christian worship is the celebration of Christus Victor, interpreted here as God’s act of redemption liberating us from the bondage of unrelenting self-justification. Christian worship is also our response to God’s act, as we bow the knee to renew our confession of covenant loyalty: “Jesus is Lord” (1 Cor. 12:3; cf. Phil. 2:10–11). In the setting of worship, our personal struggles are dwarfed by the victory of Christ over the forces of sin, death, and all that would enslave us to the constant need to prove ourselves, with all its accompanying pathology. In the setting of worship, barriers to communion with our Creator are broken down as God comes to dwell among his people, to wipe away every tear, and to make all things new (Rev. 21:3–5).

Wounds That Hinder Worship

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The person who brings a wounded spirit into the setting of worship often finds it difficult to enter into the experience of worship. Paradoxically, it is the very act of worship that offers healing for those wounds, even though the pain may hinder the hurting Christian’s full participation in it.

Worship comes alive when it becomes relational when through it we encounter both the God with whom we are acquainted and our fellow believers with whom we are united as a body. The corporate encounters with God enrich our personal experiences with him, while our private ones invest the corporate with new life. This level of worship is not an unreachable ideal, but a vital reality to many believers. Unfortunately, there are many others for whom worship is an intellectual and behavioral routine that never rises to the level of relationship.

It is possible for sincere Christians to be limited in their worship experiences because they have, over a period of time, built emotional barriers around themselves to protect wounds they have sustained in the course of personal relationships. A person who has been hurt by a relationship will find ways to protect himself or herself from further hurt. Sometimes these protections are consciously chosen and are appropriate to the situation. But much self-protection is unconscious and serves to restrict and defeat rather than to free.

It is generally true that the height and thickness of the protective fence (i.e., the strength of the defense and its power to control relationship experience) are related to the period of life in which the wounding occurred and the severity of the damage inflicted upon the person’s sense of safety and trust. Wounds that hinder worship can occur in adulthood, but usually, the original and most damaging wounds are those of childhood.

Because we are made in the image of God, we are designed as children to be parented as God himself would parent us, as we see him relating to his children, Adam and Eve. No human parent can perfectly follow the model of the Father God, and every parent makes mistakes. In the life of any child, a combination of traumatic events and unhealthy and ungodly relationship dynamics can leave scars that accompany that person into adulthood.

Some of the more obvious antecedents of wounds that carry over into later life are familiar: divorce, physical or sexual abuse, alcoholism, drug addiction, abandonment, and neglect. But other, less obvious dysfunctional patterns result in woundedness as well: perfectionism, emotional neglect, conditional love based on performance, marital strife and disunity, emotional abuse, and harsh, inconsistent, or arbitrary discipline.

Early childhood relationships, particularly those with parents, are deeply formative and exert an influence in adulthood long after specific memories have faded or disappeared. Patterns of relating are established early, through modeling and experience, long before we have the ability to be aware of what we are learning. We form expectations of ourselves and others that particularly affect intimacy and authority relationships. These powerful beliefs from childhood can persist in direct opposition to the conscious thought-flow of the adult.

In a sense, the person who has been wounded has two minds: the adult or conceptual/rational mind and the childhood or experiential/emotional mind. For example, the adult mind may firmly believe that God is loving and good, but the child mind has been trained to expect judgment and rejection. The adult may fully understand the concept of grace and agree that worship is a response of joy and thanks, but to the child who has never experienced unmerited favor and radical forgiveness, the emotions of joy and thanksgiving are foreign.

If we approach Christianity exclusively through the intellect, as a compartmentalized belief system alone, we do not encounter our relational wounds and self-protections during worship. A purely cognitive faith presents no challenge to our struggles with anger, fear, and distrust. But Christianity, including worship, is grounded in relationship. If we allow it to touch us, it will touch us fully at all levels, including our pain.

Expressions of Woundedness

A. W. Tozer reminds us in The Pursuit of God that “God is a Person, and in the deep of His mighty nature He thinks, wills, enjoys, feels, loves, desires, and suffers as any other person may. In making Himself known to us He stays by the familiar pattern of personality. He communicates with us through the avenues of our minds, our wills, and our emotions” ([Harrisburg, Pa.: Christian Publications, Inc., 1948], 13).

No intimate relationship can be said to be healthy unless it is so in three aspects of personality: mind, will, and emotion. Since the personalities of wounded people are shaped by their reactions to painful experiences, the results can be expressed as difficulty in any or all of these areas.

Emotional Experience. The fruits or evidence of the presence of the Spirit—love, joy, peace, and so on—involve processes of the mind as well as behaviors chosen by the will. But to be fully experienced as relationship, they must also involve the emotions. Believers whose emotions are numbed by pain and buried under patterns of self-protection miss the emotional component of love, joy, peace, grace, and forgiveness, and therefore miss the vitality and satisfaction of intimacy, both in relationship with God and in the experience of worship.

Some of these Christians look with secret amazement at deep, spiritual experiences in the lives of others. They are envious when people talk of being refreshed, nurtured, strengthened, and cleansed through worship. They are mystified or skeptical about worship being a love encounter—an experience of loving and being loved. Their longing for love, joy, and peace is intense, but their experience could be described as dry, empty, cold, frustrating, or boring.

Unlike the believer who flows through cycles of intimacy and distance in the course of developing a relationship with the Lord, this person knows intimacy only as a concept. No matter how hard he or she tries through discipline, study, service, participation, and any other means available, the emotional/experiential aspect of the worship relationship remains remote and unsatisfying.

There are those who experience primarily painful or negative emotions during worship. Sadness, fear, anger, frustration, and irritability seem to be stimulated by the attempt to draw near to God and to fellow believers. The evidence of woundedness is not that negative emotions occur, but that they occur with great intensity and that they persist without relief or are relieved only by periods of emptiness.

Thoughts and Attitudes. People wounded in childhood tend to live with an underlying, uneasy feeling that something is wrong and that someone is to blame. They often flip-flop between blaming themselves as bad or wrong and blaming someone else. As a result, they are critical and faultfinding, either toward themselves or others.

This pattern can be expressed as a habitually critical attitude; the feeling is one of chronic irritation. The focus of attention during worship becomes preoccupation with the shortcomings of fellow worshipers, frustration with those in authority, and dissatisfaction with the way things are being done. It can also occur in the form of persistent thoughts of guilt and unworthiness, a concentration on one’s own failings and inadequacy, and a perception that God and fellow believers are disapproving and critical. The healing, restoring experience of being unconditionally accepted by God and by the members of his body is lost in a sea of self-doubt and anxiety.

The Will and Behavior. When old wounds affect behavior, it is often in the form of chronic struggles with discipline. In spite of volumes of accurate information, heartfelt surges of desire, and many pledges and recommitments, these persons cannot seem to make their wills cooperate. Efforts to bring behavior into line with Scripture, whether stopping the negative or beginning the positive, go through cycles that end in failure and frustration. The experience of worship suffers as self-image is battered and discouragement sets in.

Reactions to Old Wounds. Some believers, unaware that their struggles with worship are a result of woundedness, become discouraged after years of effort and disappointment. They cannot find satisfaction in a relationship with God no matter how hard they try, and they conclude that either God is not real or that he has rejected them. Ultimately, they withdraw completely from the church and the painful reminder of failure and loss. Quietly, with no fanfare, they may simply drift away. Or, in a burst of pain, they target someone or something to blame.

Other unfulfilled believers stay faithful in attendance but keep themselves safe from intimacy by remaining uninvolved and refusing to invest in the life of the community. Intimacy with fellow believers is as threatening to them as intimacy with God. They do not want to risk rejection and disappointment, even though they long to be deeply connected, loved, and accepted. Physically present, they remain in the spectator role, often going unnoticed by those who are actively involved.

Church-hopping can be a manifestation of protective withdrawal. When the challenges of relationship become too intense, wounded people may pull out and move on, searching for a different format, a different philosophy of worship, different leadership, or some other external condition to change their disappointing inner experience. Sometimes a change is helpful and productive, but if personal healing is needed, repeated changes will not solve the problem.

Probably the most tempting and frequent form of withdrawal is retreat behind a mask. Somehow church life, with its high standards and expectations, seems to promote this wearing of facades as a defense against the frightening reality of woundedness. People in leadership roles are particularly vulnerable. As their natural gifts propel them into positions of responsibility, they become increasingly reluctant to reveal their weaknesses. No one reaches in to find out who they really are or holds them accountable for genuine growth and personal healing. Burnout and dramatic plunges into sin are sometimes the result. But an outwardly successful life of service that drags on and on, masking an inner life of spiritual emptiness, can be just as devastating.

Attack. Every worshiping body has had the experience of members who are continually on the attack. Nothing seems to please them, and someone else is always to blame. Often church leaders will handle these attacks by responding to the content, changing or defending policies, procedures, people, or whatever is being targeted. Sometimes, if they become frustrated because the critical person is impossible to satisfy, they will discount him or her and push the individual away. Unfortunately, the pattern of attack is not often understood, either by the church or the individual, as a self-protective defense resulting from old wounds. Because the real problem is not being addressed, no resolution occurs.

Control. When one’s inner life (thoughts, emotions, behaviors) is out of control, it is easy to try to get a handle on things, by attempting to control others. People who have been hurt live, either consciously or unconsciously, with the expectation and dread of being hurt again. They cannot rest or relax in their relationships. They are compelled by anxiety to manage or control other people. Different personalities will choose to control with different styles: aggressive and direct, compliant and indirect, through guilt, by obligation, with kindness, by withdrawal, or through attack.

The variations are endless but have a universal result. Closeness and safety achieved by manipulation and control remain unsatisfying. Fear runs beneath the surface saying, “But what would happen if I stopped, if I let go? They would probably hurt me or leave me, and I cannot take that risk.” When this fear and the patterns of control dominate a person’s relationship with God, the peace of Christ is not a personal reality and worship is hindered.

How Change Takes Place

We have described defensive reactions, attitudes, and behaviors as the protective fence surrounding wounding experiences. This fence serves to hide from others the existence of the painful reality inside. The difficulty is that the fence often hides that reality from the individual as well. The implications and significance of one’s own personal history are unrecognized, and sometimes even the memories of the hurtful experiences are hidden.

As long as the individual and those around him or her are interacting only with the fence (i.e., the self-protective patterns of withdrawal, blame, attack, or control) little progress will be made toward deepening the relationship dimension of worship. The beginning of significant, satisfying change is recognition of the real problem. The wounded person must be willing to look at the fence and take responsibility for what is there.

Self-discovery. Healing of old wounds begins by discovering that there is a link between the experiences and relationships of the past and those of the present. A common self-protective attitude in this regard is, “The past is the past; it cannot be changed, so there is no point in dwelling on it.” This statement is both true and untrue. The past itself cannot be changed, but the lingering reactions (attitudes, expectations, feelings, and behavioral patterns) can if they are looked at and understood in their original context.

The goal of self-discovery is not to dwell on the past or to assign blame. It is rather to erect instead a foundation from which real change can take place. Unhealthy relationship patterns that do not make sense in an adult framework may become clear when seen from the perspective of a child subjected to an unhealthy environment. It helps to discover how the child felt, what he or she perceived, what he or she learned, and how he or she responded.

Decisions or vows are made deep in a child’s heart and remain hidden from the mind of the adult. “I will never get close enough for someone to hurt me like that again.” “People will always leave me, so it won’t hurt as much if I leave them first.” “No one will ever love me.” “You can’t trust anyone.” “There must be something wrong with me.” These beliefs will drive a person’s life until they are confronted as distortions and replaced with a new reality.

In the process of doing that, feelings associated with those early experiences will come to the surface. They are not the feelings of an adult, mediated by the rational mind; they are literally the feelings of the child, living within as if frozen in time. Simply expressing these feelings is not sufficient to bring about healing, but it seems to be an essential ingredient.

Safe Relationships. Self-examination at this level is rewarding, but difficult and painful as well. The decision to begin this journey is deeply personal and occurs in that private place of relationship to oneself. But walking the journey through must take place within safe, committed relationships.

An important part of the healing process is to open up and share deeply with a few people. That sometimes begins in counseling, when a person tells a painful story for the first time. But it can also take place or continue in committed friendships. Christian friendships can be the vehicle by which a wounded person risks being fully known and finally experiences unconditional acceptance. Grace becomes more than a theology—it becomes a healing interaction.

A church that takes itself seriously as a healing community will encourage the formation of committed, supportive relationships in which this kind of sharing can take place. Hurting people find it difficult to ask for help. But it becomes even more difficult, even prohibitive if structures are not in a place that encourages them to ask. Small groups, topical support groups, and discipling relationships can help, as can clergy and leadership who are alert to the need and the opportunities to bring people together.

Wounded people have often had hurtful experiences in churches, either because they initiate them or because they react more strongly to situations than do those people who are not in pain. It may be necessary for them to find a church community or format that does not remind them of either their wounding family or a previously wounding church. Finding a church in which to feel safe is good, but that is only the beginning. That safe environment must then be used to do the difficult work of healing, or the disappointment and hurt will only recur in the new context as well.

Forgiveness and Restoration. When a person moves toward acceptance and resolution of the past, it becomes necessary to sort out the issue of responsibility. Hurt children often assume the blame and guilt that belong to others and then grow up either blind to or confused about the implications of their own attitudes and actions. Christians committed to healing know that they are supposed to forgive those who have wronged them and seek forgiveness for their own wrongs. But they cannot do that in a meaningful way until they are clear about who bears responsibility for what.

Separating one’s own wrongs from the wrongs of others is difficult work but can be greatly aided by the guidance of Scripture and the illumining witness of the Spirit. When people finally see clearly the wrong that was done to them, the world often leaves them with nothing but permission to be angry. It is the church that can take them deeper into healing with the call to forgive, in and through the Spirit of Christ, who was the ultimate victim.

And when people who have been victims finally see that they have at times followed the pattern they were given and have also wronged others, when they are able to cease to blame and to accept responsibility for their actions, then the church must offer confession, forgiveness, and restoration in and through the Spirit of Christ, the ultimate grace-giver.

Behavior Change. Working with the relationships of the past is important, but it is meaningful only as a foundation for change in the relationships of the present. Healing the past frees a person to engage more effectively in the process of change, including some hard work in the here and now.

The goal of behavior change is to replace problem attitudes and actions with healthier ones: to break old habits, to think differently about self and others, to adopt new beliefs, to learn to trust. But for change to take place, these general goals must be broken down into step-by-step, specific, short-term goals that are connected directly to current relationships and situations. Change cannot occur in the abstract.

Understand the old behavior. Familiarity with the old ways of relating is an unpleasant but necessary first step toward change. Some research may be required. “What exactly happened in that messy interaction with the choir director? What role did I play that caused or contributed to the problem? Is this a pattern in me that has led to problems before?”

Unhealthy patterns of relating that begin in childhood become habitual, a series of actions and reactions that occur automatically, like falling dominoes. Habitual behavior has to be approached systematically, broken down into its component parts so that the progression can be understood. The crucial question is where and how the habit track can be interrupted to insert a new behavior that will lead to a different outcome.

Discover the new behavior. Healthy behavior patterns are a mystery to people who did not see them modeled as a child. They may know in general what healthy is, but they usually do not know how to make it happen. It takes time to discover and experiment with alternatives in real-life situations.

In both of these steps—understanding the old behavior and discovering the new—safe, committed relationships are valuable. Feedback about old behavior from caring and sensitive people helps the person develop an understanding of what needs to be changed. It is important to be able to go to someone and ask, “Have you ever seen me do this or react in that way? How did you feel when I did that? Help me understand how I come across and the effect I have on other people.”

Learning takes place best through modeling, that is, by observing and imitating new, more desirable behavior. Close, sharing relationships provide excellent opportunities to discover new ways of interaction. The goal is not to try to become another person, but to find out how a healthier person thinks, feels, and acts in specific situations. This sort of discovery helps to develop a mental model or vision of the new behavior. Without a vision, a concrete sense of the direction of change, the process will bog down in confusion and frustration.

Trial and Error. Learning to change relationship patterns is not very different from learning any new skill. Anyone who has ever learned to ski knows the feeling of being overwhelmed with stimuli. Information and instructions are flying in every direction, but somehow nothing works right. If you could not see people all around you successfully skiing, you would be certain it is impossible to whiz gracefully down a mountain with two sticks strapped to your feet.

New behavior starts out messy and confusing, with many false starts and falls. Trial and error, perseverance, practice, encouragement, and support are the essential ingredients of learning. The difference between relationship change and skiing is that in relationships the stakes are higher and the feelings deeper. The old patterns of relating, though unhealthy and self-defeating, are familiar, and to that extent comfortable. In the process of change, a person feels awkward and very vulnerable. Time and a lot of support are needed to enable the person to continue braving those forays into the new behavior. Ultimately, after many dashes back and forth between old and new patterns, healthier ways of relating begin to feel more familiar and natural.

Effects of Healing on Worship

The relationships involved with worship change as healing progresses. Trust in God and fellow believers deepens, and a sense of closeness and belonging begins to grow. The level of energy for living and serving increases, but within an environment of inner calm. Familiar words of worship come alive and take on personal meaning. But the most poignant and powerful result is an overwhelming sense of gratitude to a healing God.

The Father has run with tears of love to the end of the lane to throw his arms around the estranged and broken child. He has removed the old, smelly garments of shame and alienation and has demonstrated unconditional acceptance and restoration in full. The overwhelmed child can only respond with gratitude as the loving Father continues to feed and nourish him or her with a spiritual blessing from the riches of his table.

The Son, Jesus, who as a man knew what it was to be abused, and who as the Savior made healing and restoration possible, comes to life as a friend. The Spirit takes shape as the ultimate counselor within, witnessing faithfully to the healing truth about Christ and his gifts: forgiveness, grace, hope, and love.

Nothing changes worship from black and white to living color, from routine to reality, and from the head to the heart, like gratitude. The worshiper whose heart is grateful sinks to his knees and pours forth praise and worship and then is grateful all over again for the privilege of doing so. The one who has experienced healing reaches out his or her hands to worship with others who also have been healed, and the unity that flows among them heals that much more in an ever-widening circle of fellowship and love.

The challenges and risks of a path of healing cannot be denied. But for the believer, the rewards are beyond the level of human personality: mind, will, and emotion. When we sow to healing, which is by the Spirit, we reap the Spirit, and our rewards are eternal.

A Charismatic Theology of Worship

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A charismatic theology emphasizes a vital relationship with the Holy Spirit and the recovery of spiritual gifts, which are both experienced in worship.

Be filled with the Spirit. Speak to one another with psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. (Eph. 5:18–20)

The charismatic movement is known primarily for its emphasis on the Holy Spirit and the restoration of the gifts (charisma) of the Spirit (that is, healing, prophecy, miracles, tongues, and so on.). However, one of the most important contributions of this movement to the church at large may be in the area of worship.

Although there may be debate as to exactly what it means to be a charismatic, there is very little debate about the primary evidence of being one: vigorous heartfelt worship. Paul indicates in Ephesians 5 that being filled with the Holy Spirit will be followed with psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs on our lips and melodious thanksgiving in our hearts. Since the role of the Holy Spirit is to glorify the Son (John 16:14), it is logical that a vital relationship with the Holy Spirit will result in a deepened desire to bring honor to Jesus through worship.

For many, the scene that comes to mind when “charismatic” is mentioned is that of an enthusiastic Christian with a transfigured face and lifted hands. Charismatics have given the church Scripture songs and choruses, guitars and drums, clapping and dancing, worship teams and banners, song sheets and overheads, worship seminars and conferences, as well as enthusiastic faith and infectious joy.

Why this stereotype has emerged is difficult to explain theologically, for there is considerable theological diversity among charismatics. Because the movement has sprung up in many different denominations, it has been affected by various historic traditions. A Catholic charismatic, for instance, would probably not share the same theology as a Baptist charismatic in every point. Both would say, however, that what they have in common is an experience of being filled with the Holy Spirit that has energized their walk with God and their worship of him.

This experience is similar to that of the disciples who met Jesus on the road to Emmaus. Even though they had previously learned much about him and had heard that he was alive, their eyes were opened and they really “saw” him. Their theology changed very little, but what they believed became living and real to them!

To understand better this phenomenon of charismatic worship, we will consider five principles of this style of worship and their theological foundations. First, the intervening presence of the Holy Spirit activates the priestly functions of worshipers. Second, worship involves the whole person—spirit, soul, and body. Third, the act of worship is a progression into the manifest presence of God. Fourth, worship creates an atmosphere where God’s power is revealed. And fifth, worship is more than singing—it is serving.

The Activation of the Priesthood

You … are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. (1 Pet. 2:5)

The energizing of the Holy Spirit could be described biblically as the anointing of a priest for priestly functions. According to 1 Peter 2:9, God’s people are meant to be a royal priesthood declaring praises of the one who called us out of darkness into his marvelous light. In verse 5 of the same chapter, Peter explains that as we are being built together, we are becoming a holy priesthood to offer acceptable sacrifices. We are a priesthood made for praise (v. 9); we are becoming such a priesthood (v. 5). In other words, we are becoming what God has made us to be: a worshiping community. Those who are priests by position are becoming priests who really act like priests. Old Covenant priests were born to be priests, but they did not carry out their priestly duties until they were anointed as priests (Exod. 29; Num. 8). Likewise, all Christians are part of a royal family of priests as a result of new birth. When we are filled with the Spirit, our priestly functions are activated and we find ourselves offering New Covenant sacrifices which include vocal praise (Heb. 13:15).

The understanding of the church as a priesthood is certainly not unique to the charismatic movement. That was an emphasis fundamental to the Reformation. But these present-day Spirit-filled worshipers are bringing a new understanding of what it means to be a priest. What is traditionally understood when we say that we are priests is that we no longer need another mediator besides Christ. As true as that is and as revolutionary as that may have sounded in Martin Luther’s day, it is only a partial understanding of what it means to be a priest. Priests not only draw near to God, they minister to God. Priests offer sacrifices.

Jack Hayford, speaking of the priestly function of believers, says: “Five hundred years ago the issue was a relationship—restoring personal access to God. Today, it is worship—revealing the potential of our praises before God” (Jack Hayford, Worship His Majesty [Waco, Tex.: Word Books, 1987], 88).

So for the charismatic, the Holy Spirit is the activator who takes us out of neutral and prompts the various expressions of worship. Worship, then, can be understood as the grateful sacrifices offered by activated priests discovering their ministry unto God.

Spirit, Soul and Body

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul … and with all your strength. (Mark 12:30)

One implication of this “activation” is that worship involves action. Charismatic worship is demonstrative. It is something you do. It is not passive. Charismatic worship includes hearty singing, lifting of hands, bowing, clapping, dancing, and shouting.

For the Spirit-filled worshiper, the Great Commandment—to love God with all of our spirit, soul, and body—is the reason behind all the activity. Worship is love for God expressed. Therefore, if we love God with all of our being—spirit, soul, and body—it follows that we will worship him with our whole being—spirit, soul, and body. Most traditions acknowledge the mental and spiritual aspects of worship. The charismatic makes sure we don’t forget the physical and emotional elements of worship.

The charismatic Bible teacher and missionary Derek Prince, commenting on Romans 12:1, asks why God specified that the presenting of our bodies to God is worship. Why didn’t he say to present our hearts or minds? Prince answers that for the Hebrews, the body was the container of the soul and spirit. The physical expression of worship, then, is not inferior to the spiritual expression of worship. It is the vehicle of spiritual worship. The physical act of lifting hands, for instance, is a token of the spiritual disposition of adoration and surrender. Dancing is the demonstration of great joy and gladness.

Closely related to the physical aspect of worship is the role of emotions in worship. Being filled with the Spirit is more than a new understanding for the charismatic—it is an experience. Likewise, charismatic worship is not primarily an ordered mental process, but rather a spontaneous, spiritual encounter where emotions are not out of place. Charismatics are not ashamed of the emotional component of worship.

Placing greater value on the physical and emotional dimensions in worship greatly affects the musical style of charismatic worship. Most noticeable is the greater emphasis on rhythm in worship music. More than melody or harmony, rhythm corresponds to the physical side of human personality. A charismatic worship band is generally built around a rhythm section (piano or guitars, bass, and drums) rather than around an organ. The organ doesn’t easily accompany hand-clapping praise music.

The physical and emotional dimensions of charismatic worship heighten the spiritual dimension of worship. A practice unique to the charismatic movement is singing in the Spirit. Based on 1 Corinthians 14:15, this practice involves singing spontaneous words and melodies around a fixed chord or slowly moving chord progression. Sometimes referred to as free worship or open worship, this song form has affected regular congregational singing among charismatics. Replacing the longstanding style of four-part vocal harmony, a free-form approach to harmony and vocal lines has emerged among charismatics. This spontaneous quality of worship, along with a renewed desire for personal experience in worship, has created a burgeoning new library of contemporary, testimonial, and simple-to-learn choruses. Thus, the vigorous nature of charismatic worship is rooted in Jesus’ command to love God with one’s whole being.

Entering His Presence

Worship the Lord with gladness; come before him with joyful songs … Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise. (Psalm 100:2, 4)

Another key to understanding charismatic worship is the presence of God. It doesn’t take many visits to charismatic worship services to hear about “entering the presence of God.” That phrase, those of us who have been taught that God is everywhere at all times, initially does not make sense. We cite Psalm 139:7: “Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?” or Matthew 28:20: “Surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” These Scriptures indicate that God is equally present everywhere and always.

A charismatic understanding of God’s presence distinguishes between his omnipresence (he is everywhere at all times) and his manifest presence (God is especially present at certain times and places). When David said that he could go nowhere to escape God’s presence, he was referring to God’s omnipresence. When he pleaded with God to not withdraw his presence (Ps. 51:11), he was talking about God’s manifest presence. Jacob encountered the manifest presence at Bethel: “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I was not aware of it” (Gen. 28:16).

Taking this idea a step further, a charismatic believes that the acts of giving thanks and singing are gateways into God’s manifest presence (Ps. 100:2, 4). Some authors distinguish between various dimensions of his manifest presence—outer court, holy place, and holiest of all (See Terry Law, The Power of Praise and Worship [Tulsa: Victory House, 1985], 245).

Thus music is not incidental but fundamental to encountering God in a charismatic worship service. As a result, the worship leader (no longer just a “song leader”) becomes a vital part of the church. His or her ability to lead worship affects the congregation’s experience of God’s manifest presence. New skills are sometimes required to know how to choose songs and connect them so as to create a progression into God’s presence.

Praise and Power

As they began to sing and praise, the Lord set ambushes against the men of Ammon and Moab and Mount Seir who were invading Judah, and they were defeated. (2 Chron. 20:22)

Closely related to the experience of entering God’s presence with singing is the correlation between singing and experiencing God’s power. Psalm 22:3 forms the basis of a commonly held conviction among charismatics that God sits enthroned on the praise of his people. Or, to extend the thought, our praise creates a throne from which God exercises his power and might. Using the typology of the priesthood, this demonstration of power is comparable to the fire with which God answered acceptable Old Covenant sacrifices (Lev. 9:24; Gen. 15:17; 2 Chron. 7:1; see also Heb. 12:28–29).

Faith for miracles, healing, and deliverance from evil spirits seems to come more easily following vigorous worship. American evangelist T. L. Osborne regularly played the popular charismatic worship tape “All Hail King Jesus” for thirty minutes through loudspeakers before his crusades in Africa and testified that miracles happened even before the preaching because of the atmosphere of power the worship music created. Jack Hayford, pastor, and songwriter from California prescribed regular singing to a woman in his church who was unable to have children. Based on Isaiah 54:1, the counsel was put into action and a year later the woman was a mother of a baby girl. Elisha called for a harpist before he prophesied (2 Kings 3:15). King Saul was relieved of the oppression of evil spirits when David played on his harp (1 Sam. 16:23). In the New Testament, Paul and Silas sang and prayed in prison when God answered with an earthquake (Acts 16:25–26).

Faith and worship are integrally connected. Abraham “was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God” (Rom. 4:20–21). The relationship between faith and worship was articulated by an early church saying: Lex orandi lex credenti—we believe as we have worshiped. A Nigerian pastor commented on American Christianity with this comparison: “In America, you believe; in Nigeria, we worship.”

Beyond the Song

Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise—the fruit of lips that confess his name. And do not forget to do good and to share with others, for with such sacrifices God is pleased (Heb. 13:15–16, italics added for emphasis).

Finally, to complete our view of charismatic worship, we must move beyond the worship event to the life of worship. Charismatic worship is more than music and singing. It is vigorously living lives of sacrifice to God and service to others. Paul defined worship as presenting ourselves as living sacrifices (Rom. 12:1). The author of Hebrews commended God’s people to vocal praise as well as good works (Heb. 13:15–16). Acceptable worship requires both.

This larger view of worship explains why the charismatic movement is noted for active involvement in ministries to the poor, the abused, the addicted, the brokenhearted, as well as in international missions. These ministries are in themselves acts of worship. Wholehearted worship in the Christian assembly, wherein we give gifts of praise to God, is a rehearsal for the life of worship which follows, wherein we give of ourselves to the needs of the world around us. If we are enthusiastic with the song, we most likely will be enthusiastic in our service.