The articles I’ve been doing on the excesses of Bethel, and on the Charismatic Movement more generally, have attracted greater than average interest, as judged by the web stats. I’m not sure if this is because folks attracted by the titles were hoping to find the route to a more intense experience of the Holy Spirit (Charismatics always are), or whether readers are seeing the articles as the evidence that Garvey has finally lost his theological marbles – or whether, perhaps, people are finding resonances with their own with half-formed doubts that the increasingly experiential goals in their churches’ meetings are raising for them.
Whatever it is, the arguments over churches that claim to be “Bible-based” adopting songs from sources that are anything but Bible-based (Bethel, Elevation, Hillsong in particular) have, for me, brought the wider issues into relief. I can sum my conclusion up as follows: churches whose teaching in sermons is carefully drawn from the Bible have abandoned that principle in the rest of their meetings, for patterns based on, and seeking, emotional spiritual experience. To narrow it down more precisely, Evangelical churches have increasingly adopted the Pentecostal theology of worship.
The huge problem with this is that this theology of worship is not only mutually exclusive with a Bible-based theology of worship (of which more below, but which I outlined here), but it is inconsistent with a rigorously sola scriptura theology more widely. Both reason and experience therefore warn that, in any given fellowship, eventually either one theology will entirely displace the other (that is, either Charismatic worship will be abandoned, or biblical teaching will be eroded in favour of supernatural experience), or the church will split.
This issue is excellently explained in an article here from G3, which you may either read or watch on video. In it Scott Aniol clarifies the gut feeling I have been getting, using the phrase “the Pentecostalisation of worship.”
Essentially, Pentecostal theology, as it has developed from nineteenth century American Revivalism, starts on the basis of Psalm 22:3, which says that God is enthroned upon the praises of Israel. That is taken (wrongly) to mean that praise is the means the church has for “encountering God,” so the aim of Christians meeting becomes to foster an intense atmosphere of praise, through prolonged music “of a certain kind” led by “anointed worship leaders,” through emotive exhortation, and through whatever else works (repeated synth-pad chords in the background, lighting, smoke, glory clouds if angels are around to feed the air-conditioning, etc). At some point it is expected that the Holy Spirit will “show up,” or alternatively that the worshippers will have become sufficiently receptive to his presence, and the sense of being in God’s presence will lead to deeper experiences of worship, and to supernatural phenomena of one degree or another.
It seems to me that the toleration of Bethel-type music in this model, and the mysterious attraction of quite heterodox Megachurch worship videos to many Evangelicals, is because they work in fostering this “presence of God,” and who is going to argue with the glory and value of that? As the Charismatic saying goes, “Eat the meat, and spit out the bones.”
The trouble is that, sooner or later, the “bones” begin to be seen as that tedious Bible exposition that puts God “in a box” and, in any case, never produces a deep “worship experience.” “I’ve been taught to hear the voice of God directly whenever I pray – why would I waste time studying the Bible?”
Just one illustrative example of that here. When I was a member of Holy Trinity, Brompton, from 1975-6, (and invited to join their PCC, actually) a look at the sermon list would have shown titles like “John 1:10-18 – The Word made flesh”; “Mark 10:17-27 – the snare of worldly wealth”; or more topical talks like, “How God guides us (3) – Proverbs 3:5-6.” But after we left, and Raymond Turvey retired, John Collins, and then Sandy Millar, were captured first by John Wimber and the Kentucky Fried Prophets, and then in 1990 by the Tonto Blessing brought over from Canada by John Mumford, as I described here. Consequently Charles Marnham’s Alpha Course was rewritten to stress the experience of the Holy Spirit (motivated by the Toronto excesses manifested at HTB, though watered down for general consumption). Alpha seems to be a healthy mixture of biblical doctrine and Holy Spirit experience. But when, the other day, I dipped into the HTB website to view their current sermon titles, it all seems to be series about “How to hear God’s voice,” “Dealing with anxiety” and other non-biblical subjects – and in the videos, the preachers appear to be holding a mic, but not an open Bible.
Did the Holy Spirit push out the written word? No, in my view another spirit pushed out the Holy Spirit, who speaks through the written word. So after my last article I set out to prove from Scripture what the actual biblical theology of worship (and, not quite the same thing, of Christian assemblies) is. I started from the Bible rather than from books on the subject or confessions of faith, but I conclude that the Reformers got things largely right, though a greater emphasis on the temple-theology of the New Testament, and consequently on the priesthood of all believers, would have refined their model. In practice it often did – the 17th century proceedings book of my church shows a model of corporate prayer, testimony, recognition of plural teaching gifts and so on that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a church founded by Paul.
My study runs to 5,000 words, so is too long, really, for this medium. I think it achieves the level of proof I wanted, though. And I’m happy to send it to anyone who requests it in comments or through “contact at jongarvey.co.uk.” But after that exercise I toyed with the idea of using the Bible to disprove the Pentecostal theology of worship. But proving a negative is never a very satisfactory task. Instead, then, I challenge supporters of the Pentecostal model to prove their theology from Scripture, as I have mine. I don’t think it’s possible, but if anyone achieves it, we can compare my proof with theirs, and as with Elijah and the priests of Baal, we can then see which sacrifice attracts fire from heaven.
“How long will you waver between two opinions? If Yahweh is God, follow him, but if Baal is God, follow him” (1 Kings 18:23).
What needs to be established from the Bible is:
- That New Testament assembly is primarily for worship (you’ll need to chase the Greek for that, as no Greek words map precisely to our concept of “worship”).
- That passionate praise is the primary content, and that the aim of this is to encounter God directly.
- That music is the primary medium for praise.
- That the worship-leader is a crucial element in structuring praise and leading people to experience God.
- That praise brings God into the assembly, or brings us into his presence, through “spiritual breakthrough,” resulting in the “worship experience” and supernatural manifestations.
That should be easy enough, with the whole New Testament to draw from. In case you doubt that such scriptural proof is appropriate, I must remind you that when the first Pentecostalists sought the Baptism of the Holy Spirit and supernatural spiritual gifts, it was because they thought they found them in the Bible, but not in church. As Scott Aniol says, the Pentecostals instituted “what they considered more consistent with New Testament teaching.” The Pentecostal Evangelist Don Double said, “If your experience doesn’t match the Bible, I advise you to get a new experience.” Now, he believed the Bible teaches the second experience of Baptism of the Spirit, but if he was wrong (and he was), yet his advice holds: whatever your experience of worship is, however supernatural, if it isn’t the experience taught in the Bible, I advise you to get a new one.
Any takers out there?
