Worship On Earth As It Is On Earth: Discovering the Liturgical History of Pentecostal-Charismatic Worship

Abstract

Since the 1990s, the Pentecostal theological guild has emerged with the aim of re-envisioning all the theological subdisciplines through the distinctive Pentecostal experience. Alongside this increase in Pentecostal theological scholarship, there has been a corollary increase in Pentecostal liturgical scholarship. Reflecting the aims and ethos of its broader context in Pentecostal theology, Pentecostal liturgical scholarship has re-envisioned Pentecostal worship by retrieving the distinctive practices and theologies of the first five-ten years of Pentecostalism (ressourcement) and reconceptualizing that history through dialogue with systematic theology and other liturgical traditions (aggiornamento). However, this approach has left a critical lacuna in the scholarship: consideration of the lived reality of Pentecostal worship either in the intervening century since early Pentecostalism or in its current expression. Little of the scholarship has tried to understand the relationship between the pentecostal-charismatic rule of belief (lex credendi) and their rule of prayer (lex orandi) as actually lived by Pentecostals across time. This lacuna constitutes a grave absence of liturgical history for Pentecostalism.In response to this lacuna, the dissertation presents two historical case studies on the worship of pentecostal-charismatic organizations that emerged after the early Pentecostal period. Both organizations—the International House of Prayer in Kansas City (IHOPKC) and 24-7 Prayer—are prominent leaders in the 24/7 worship movement that emerged at the end of the twentieth century. In both case studies, the history starts by describing the theology of worship that each organization has held and how this theology shaped their respective practice of worship. Despite emerging in a similar timeframe and from a similar historical tradition, not only have both organizations appealed to different biblical motifs in understanding Christian worship but they have also approached the task of theologizing about worship in different ways. The dissertation, therefore, proceeds to uncover the deeper theological influences that placed these organizations’ worship upon different trajectories. IHOPKC’s theology of worship was built on an early Pentecostal theological method that has also incorporated later biblical ideas that arose within the 1948 Latter Rain revival. By contrast, 24-7 Prayer’s theology of worship reflected the biblical and methodological consensus that emerged in the wake of the Third Wave movement of the 1980s and its transformation of British Evangelical and Charismatic Christianity. Together, the case studies demonstrate both the diversity of pentecostal-charismatic worship and the explicit and implicit ways in which distinct theological and historical ecosystems have given shape to pentecostal-charismatic worship. The dissertation concludes that such liturgical history as was outlined in the case studies is indispensable for the work of Pentecostal liturgical theology. With particular reference to Pentecostal theologian Simon Chan, the dissertation argues how liturgical history should shape and inform Pentecostal liturgical scholarship. Ultimately, liturgical history describes the actual lived context this scholarship should serve. Thus, to theologize for this ecclesial context should necessitate its consideration as a methodological starting place.