Wesleyan Church

Worship and Sacred Actions Throughout the Year in Wesleyan Churches

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A part of the Holiness movement, the Wesleyan Church has never followed the full church calendar. However, aspects of the Christian year have been introduced incrementally in many congregations, enabling them to enjoy some of its benefits without abandoning their non-liturgical worship tradition.

For churches in the Holiness movement, the day of Pentecost has special relevance. Yet year after year, and in church after church, Pentecost Sunday would come and go with little or no notice. In the past, only Christmas and Easter were observed with regularity in most Holiness churches. The rest of the Christian year belonged to the mainline denominations, and in its place was an annual calendar of special days more cultural than biblical, such as Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Independence Day/Dominion Day, Thanksgiving Day, Homecoming, and, of course, Rally Day.

In the Wesleyan Church, that calendar still stands. It probably always will. But an increasing number of congregations are broadening their horizons by incorporating elements of the Christian year. The historical steps toward recovery of the Christian year in this denomination are easily discernible and may provide a model for churches unfamiliar with the Christian year but interested in fostering a more biblical calendar.

Preparing the Way: Commercial Christmas

First, Christmas was a “season” when nothing else from the Christian year was. Long before Advent was recognized or observed, the weeks before Christmas were devoted to carols and Christmas preparations. The reasons for this tradition were distinctly nonliturgical: an abundance of carols, especially when secular songs of the holiday were omnipresent; a social calendar full of Christmas parties and events; and elaborate preparations for the special days (decorating the sanctuary, bagging Christmas “treats” for the children, etc.).

All this required time. The force behind the scenes, of course, was the merchant. Christmas became a liturgical season in most nonliturgical churches because it was first a commercial season.

Discovery of Advent

Advent slipped into Wesleyan calendars without much fanfare in the 1960s and 1970s. The days were already set aside for Christmas preparation, and the “discovery” of the Advent wreath not only made the idea of Advent popular but also made the name more familiar and therefore less threatening. Family wreaths, family calendars, and family Advent calendars were the key to its acceptance; it was to be a family celebration.

About this same time, the popularity of the Chrismon tree hung with symbols of the Christian faith, rather than decorative ornaments, led to programs for the Hanging of the Greens, though that term may not have been used. Because Advent entered Wesleyan church life by this route, it does not have the sober, serious tone associated with it in more liturgical churches.

Preparation for Easter

Observance of Holy Week was a logical next step. Some churches already observed Palm Sunday and were open to a Maundy Thursday Communion service and/or a midday meditation on Good Friday. If preparing our hearts for Christmas was spiritually beneficial, preparing our hearts for Easter now seemed important too.

What, then, of Lent? Full participation in a penitential season is not a reasonable expectation for a traditionally nonliturgical church, but a great stride was taken when a denominational department promoted “Forty Days of Fasting and Prayer,” which has since become a new tradition in many parishes. Local churches in which Lent may never be specifically mentioned still focus on the disciplines of the Christian life, and pastors sensitive to the benefits of observing the Christian year are eager to incorporate Lenten values into their programs, with or without liturgical labels.

Further Increments

More selected holy days were added to the calendar of local churches as the Christian year was introduced incrementally. Pentecost Sunday now enjoys more visibility across the church. Homecoming has become a modified All Saints’ Day in some parishes, in tone if not in terminology, and Reformation Sunday is popular in some areas as well. As the educational level of the Wesleyan ministry continues to rise, a greater use of the Christian year can be expected.

The Wesleyan Church will never be “high church,” nor should it be. It will never adopt the Christian year in its entirety; the fear of regimented spirituality is too strong. Yet the limited calendar now in place in many congregations will “season” the soul of the church, and more Wesleyans will experience the blessings of the Christian year without the fear of “going formal.”

The Arts in Wesleyan Churches

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Winds of worship change are blowing in the Wesleyan Church, but not always in the same direction. Different as they may seem, the trends toward celebrative worship on the one hand and a more liturgical framework on the other are both encouraging signs of life in corporate worship, and both emphasize music and the arts as key elements in renewal.

Music in Worship Renewal

A century ago, Wesleyans were singing “All My Life Long I Had Panted for a Draught,” a new gospel song from the pen of Clara Tear Williams, a Wesleyan song evangelist. Gospel music and the Holiness movement grew up together, and in the hundreds of rural and small-town Wesleyan churches, as well as in scores of summertime camp meetings, it is still standard fare.

In the 1960s and 1970s, the contemporary musical scores of Wesleyans Derrick Johnson and Otis Skillings advanced the revolution on the youth scene that Ralph Carmichael had begun. Much of today’s popular praise-and-worship music is derived from that sound, and much of the church is singing it, especially in younger congregations.

In every age, Charles Wesley’s hymns are at home in churches of the Wesleyan tradition. “O for a Thousand Tongues” opens the Wesleyan hymnal as it opens hymnals worldwide in the Methodist family of churches. A recent gathering of Wesleyan ministers sang only Wesley hymns at a three-day conference, and the response was uniformly positive. The great hymns of the church are alive and well in Wesleyanism—at least in this generation.

The point is, of course, that the music of Wesleyan worship is very eclectic. Hymns of Faith and Life, the denominational hymnal published in 1976 in cooperation with the Free Methodist Church (the third such joint venture this century), may be joined in the pew rack by a gospel songbook, or supplanted entirely by a contemporary hymnal from an independent publisher offering the latest in praise choruses and Scripture songs. For some, the sounds of renewal are a classic hymn, a choral anthem, and the voices of the congregation united in the doxology. For others, a synthesizer has replaced organ and piano, drums and brass accompany congregational singing, and special music relies on taped tracks.

Wesleyans appear to be a people of one heart, but not one ear. (Observation of the broader church scene would seem to indicate that they are not unique in that regard.) The good news is that both wings of the renewal movement are seeing success in restoring worship as a priority of congregational life.

The Arts in Worship Renewal

Wesleyan architecture and sanctuary furnishing have historically reflected (and probably helped to perpetuate) the simple, free worship style of the church. They still do, but it is also true that art and design are playing a greater role in the church than ever before.

New sanctuaries do not automatically mimic the traditional “concert stage” arrangement, although the central pulpit is almost universally employed as representative of the centrality of the Word. There is a significant trend toward hangings—paraments on pulpit and Table, banners for seasons of the Christian year—and a growing awareness of the significance of liturgical colors. Wesleyan clergy do not wear vestments, but choir stoles may be selected with liturgical colors in mind.

In a related trend, more Christian symbols are likely to grace the sanctuary once reserved for Sallman’s head of Christ or Hunt’s depiction of Christ at the door. Not all new sanctuaries are designed for fixed furnishings. Many congregations opt for the flexibility afforded by a multipurpose room, where the art is as movable as the seats. Here, too, are alternative renewal movements at work.

Musically, Wesleyan worship is a medley. Artistically, it’s a mosaic.