Worship Rules of the Road

My friend Big Matt has this funny thing about pentecostal/charismatic worship on his blog. It remided me of my youth. The list is definately exaggerated, but like all things funny, there is some truth to it - especially #12. There is someone or several someones like that in every pentecostal/charismatic church: The person who gets things going. I've seen it be a 10 year old girl. I've seen it be a 70 year old man. But there is always someone to "get the blessing" first. And then Boom! it spreads.

Back in the mid 1970's the church my dad was pastoring in Palo Alto sent him to several really big pentecostal churches that were having huge crowds of people show up. They were kind of famous for standing on their feet for a couple of hours with their hands in the air. Some people in my dad's church had criticised him because these other churches had this kind of spontaneous worship thing going on, and our church didn't. So, my dad visited a bunch of them to learn what they were doing. Anyway, in one of them he saw that near the end of a song, the worship leader would motion to a guy in the back of the church. That guy in the back of the church would start playing chimes, and like clock work people would start doing "spontaneous" worship. And when the chimes stopped the people quited and the next song, or the preaching, or the annoucements would occur. I thought it was a funny story. My dad didn't see anything diabolical or nefarious in it, he just gave it as evidence that most worship is planned, even "spontaneous" worship.

A few years later, I remember, sitting in a revival meeting and seeing something similar. About the third night I saw the preacher kind of glance at his daughter who was sitting near the front, and she started moaning. And as he got more emphatic in his preaching she moaned a little louder. And the congregation got excited with her. Was that planned? I doubt that the preacher and his daughter sat down and planned the glance, the moaning, the crescendo in the preacing, but there it was. And it happened every night of a two week revival meeting. Although, sometimes it was his wife instead of his daughter.

I suppose some of you would be interested in knowing more about my Dad. If so, you should rent the movie "The Apostle", staring Robert Duvall. That preacher is a lot like my dad.