Once, I was one of the sneakers. Maybe the old folks didn’t know we were there, but we were.
A long time ago, back in the revolutionary 1970s, my co-conspirators and I would sometimes sneak away from the dignified worship services of our own tradition. We weren’t abandoning the faith. But, we had to sneak anyway. I mean, what would people think? We were going to visit—shhh, please don’t say this too loudly—a Charismatic worship service.
Back then, you see, Christian church worship was always three or four hymns or gospel songs with piano and organ. The newest fad was the stirring best-sellers of Bill and Gloria Gaither. We had predictable prayers in predictable places. If it was Sunday, we observed a predictable Lord’s Supper (nobody needed directions). Then, an expository sermon with the most faithful marked by their open notebooks and busy pencils. Everybody knew this was how the Apostle Paul worshipped. Or, how he would’ve worshipped if he could have just found a notebook and pencil. Many suspected Bill Gaither had known Paul personally.
But, we knew Pentecostal worship services were nothing like ours. We knew somewhere out there, in our own towns and cities, there were congregations with guitars and drums. People stood up. They put their hands up in the air. Some of them, or so the rumors whispered, swayed and moved in rhythm with the music. We knew our preachers would be aghast and our parents alarmed. A few would make the full leap and embrace the whole Pentecostal package. But, most of us had no intention of abandoning the good ship Stone-Campbell for the murky waters of the holy rollers.
We quietly snuck out of our services to go to their worship because we found in their joyous music and in their uplifted hands and in their dancing a kind of gathering that pulled us out of our liturgical rut and answered deep longings in our hearts.
Someone observant might have seen the implications of what this meant for the future. To a growing number of young adults raised in our churches, our own worship was not wrong. It was just in a rut. Stuck in the weekly hymn-gospel service many had grown up in, we were longing for something else. Sharp observers might have predicted that in a decade or two many of same things we snuck off to find in Charismatic worship would be the new normal in our own gatherings. Guitars, drums, upbeat praise songs, people standing with hands uplifted—now the typical Sunday fare in church after church.
So, this is 2012. Praise and celebration worship is everywhere. It has helped many churches experience unprecedented growth for two or three decades. It’s what we know. It’s what we like to play. It’s what we’re good at. So, of course, it’s what we keep doing week after week. For most people, it is the only style of worship they have ever known. And so, like everything dazzling and new, while most are still contented, some are feeling trapped in a growing rut.
