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

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

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

Holy Week and Easter

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

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

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

Pentecost “Holy Ghost Rallies”

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

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

National Holidays and Observances

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

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

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