Charismatic gifts and charismatic worship?
AARON STEAD & TIM BLABER
Eucharisma 1, (Spring 2024) 10-15.
The first song recorded in the English language was the result of an illiterate and tuneless cow-herder prophetically dreaming, or so recounts the Venerable Bede.1 Caedmon’s hymn was penned in the latter half of the seventh century. It is arguable that the tradition of music in the English tongue flows from the charismatic experience of an unassuming cattle-hand.
From the very start of English song there has been an intermingling of the spiritual and the musical. Yet as with all relationships, the course of true love never did run smooth. As we examine this relationship today, one begins to wonder whether there has been something of a subtle and quiet divorce of charismatic practice from ‘charismatic’ worship.
Engage in a thought experiment for a moment. Imagine one Sunday the doors of your church were bolted shut. So, you dispersed the faithful amongst the other local churches. Some attended the high Anglican church, others visited the Catholic church, a few the Methodists, some a Baptist chapel, one or two to the Vineyard, and so on and so forth. Then in the ensuing weeks you asked each member about their experiences; and specifically, whether the church they attended was ‘charismatic’. What would their answers be?
The answers in and of themselves, are of little interest. What is intriguing is on what basis the answers would be given. Now, some may have witnessed a tongue being interpreted or a clear prophetic word. But let us assume none of your dispersed congregation did clearly witness any of the spiritual gifts listed in 1 Corinthians 11:8-11 (words of knowledge or wisdom, healing, prophecy, miracles, tongues, interpretation of tongues). On what basis would their answers be predicated?
After all, it is possible for a church to have a continuationist theology of spiritual gifts and not witness a prophetic word on any given Sunday. Especially as churches grow, there is often a winnowing of those with access to the microphone as the pastoral risks of a wayward contribution heighten. There are large significant churches in the UK, who are publicly charismatic and propagate charismatic theology widely; yet their primary gatherings have limited to no room, for ordinary members of the church to offer up a spontaneous charismatic contribution. There may be time for people to inwardly meet with the Holy Spirit during a “response time”, the opportunity to receive prayer, or discussion of the Spirit’s work. Yet the avenues for ordinary members to serve the church through charismatic gifts at the primary church gathering is minimal.
Fundamentally, the point is this: it is possible for a church to publicly hold strongly to a charismatic position of spiritual gifts; whilst simultaneously witnessing little to no expression of that position on any given Sunday.
So, to return to the thought experiment, whilst not having witnessed any charismatic gifts on display, your dispersed church members would likely still have strong views on whether the church they attended was ‘charismatic.’ So, on what basis would your congregants arrive at their assessment? In all likelihood it will be based upon the music played. After all, to many, the idea of organ accompanied charismatic worship may seem oxymoronic. Whereas a soft rock band replete with guitars, drums, keys and synthesiser, seems far more befitting a church with a charismatic theological position.
So why is it that in the English-speaking West a certain musical style seems near synonymous with being ‘charismatic’? Why is musical preference a proxy for spiritual gifts? Especially since a word of knowledge is not a song of knowledge and a miraculous healing is not wrought through musical therapy but by the moving of the hand of God.
A Beautiful Union: Singing Prophetically
Admittedly, there is a relationship between song and the exercise of the charismatic gifts. Such a marriage is long established, not just in the days of Caedmon, but within the biblical canon itself.
The early church instinctively understood the existence of this relationship between song and the work of the spirit. Paul, addressing the church in Ephesus associates being ‘filled with the spirit’ with ‘addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord’ (Eph. 5.18-19). Or, again, Paul when discussing the disorderly exercise of spiritual gifts in Corinth (1 Cor. 14.26) remarks on the abundance of tongues, interpretations, and revelations; intriguingly he places such contributions alongside hymns.
This intermingling of song and the prophetic is also present in the Old Testament.
In David’s court, he organises his musicians and sets apart the sons of ‘Asaph, and of Heman, and of Jeduthun, who prophesied with lyres, with harps, and with cymbals’ (1 Chr. 25). Here the link is even more acute as the instruments themselves play an integral part of the prophetic process. Heman, specifically, is referred to as the’“King’s seer.’ These three, and those in their charge were ‘trained in singing to the Lord’” and were musically ‘skilful.’
Many have attempted to dissect this relationship between what David’s musicians are doing and the spiritual realm. Often these interpretations serve to divorce these men’s musical endeavours from any prophetic significance.
Matthew Henry for instance,2 deemed these men to be doing nothing more than singing and that the biblical author is using prophesying as a synonym for singing or playing. Yet this does a disservice to the chronicler’s divinely inspired choice of words. If the author sought to say ‘singing,’ he easily could have; but he didn’t.
Others have noted that these three men have Psalms ascribed to their pen. If we are to equate prophecy with authoring scripture then these men were prophets. This justifies the Chronicler’s word choice. But if this were the case, then why is Heman elevated to the status of the ‘King’s seer’ whilst only penning a single psalm compared to Asaph’s eleven or Jeduthan’s three?
Clearly there is something in what they are doing which is of a spiritual nature and this is observed by those who witnessed them; otherwise it would not be deemed prophetic by David or the Chronicler. Yet what they are doing does not seem to be prophetic in the same sense as the utterances of Isaiah, Ezekiel, and their ilk. After all, 1 Chronicles 25.2 states ‘Asaph, who prophesied under the direction of the king [David].’ This would go against the flow of more prominent Old Testament prophetic utterances, that originate from God speaking at his own discretion rather than at man’s direction.
Therefore, it seems that the Chronicler here is equating the singing of songs, something a man can direct, with prophetic utterance. Yet, these songs were in some way prophetic or else Heman would not have received his designation as the king’s seer, nor would the Chronicler continually couch their activities in prophetic rather than musical language.
This sort of ambiguity is present elsewhere as we find in 1 Samuel 10.5 a procession of prophets prophesying accompanied by ‘harp, tambourine, flute, and lyre.’ As Saul joins them in song, he too begins to prophesy.
There is clearly, in certain circumstances, a link between prophetic ministry and musical endeavours. Which whilst oblique, on further contemplation it is profoundly unsurprising. Prophecy is primarily concerned with the revelation of God: his nature, his plans, and his purposes. True Spirit-led Christo-centric sung worship is an awed, exuberant, and joyful response to the revelation we have received. In fact, when the words sung succinctly extol the Divine nature, it can be as if what is sung exceeds mere response and becomes in and of itself a revelatory declaration of God to those gathered.
Such musical responses are the pattern of the biblical canon. Song, or at least poetic verse, accompanies and reflects back revelation of the divine. For example: Mary’s Magnificat, Moses’ song of deliverance, Deborah’s song, Hannah’s song, Habakkuk’s song, and many others. Therefore, it would only be fitting that God’s revelation should be frequently accompanied by or stir a fresh musical reply. And that these sung declarations would in some way interact with the revelation of God.
A Reinvigorated Marriage? Music in the British New Church
Something of this union between the charismatic and sung worship was reemphasised in Britain through the birth of the New Church Movement in the sixties, seventies, and eighties. This movement sought the renewal or revitalisation of the church through the rediscovery of spiritual gifts, miraculous signs, and ‘true’ worship.
These new churches were often formed outside of traditional denominational structures in the belief that the new wine that the Spirit was pouring out needed to be poured into new wineskins. This movement spawned networks of churches such as Newfrontiers, Ichthus, Salt and Light, and Pioneer. Typically, these groups began as single house churches, that grew into multiple house churches, and then into a network of building-owning churches as they outgrew the homes of their members.
Their emphasis was often on the Holy Spirit and the charismatic gifts: gifts whose expression was largely absent in the wider mainline British church. Coupled to this was a genuine desire to worship ‘in spirit and in truth’ (John 4.24). that gravitated away from rote liturgical forms of scripted prayer, dispassionately sung hymns, and recitation of creedal statements. Instead, a more spontaneous form of worship emerged that sought to focus on grace and engage both the emotional and the rational faculties of the worshipper.
Part of this re-evaluation of worship practices was initially shaped by the house church origins of these new entities. This limited the ability to engage in ornate organ or choral music. Accordingly, songs were often limited to simple piano accompaniment or a solitary acoustic guitar. Melody became of vital importance due to the need for the assembled voices to carry the tune rather than musical instruments.
The precise form of each house church’s service would have been different. But in a number of house churches an individual would begin singing a pertinent song, with other members joining in. This was aided by many of the early house church attendees being established Christians with a shared corpus of hymns they inherited from their time in the historic denominations.
This led to a far more spontaneous and freer environment in which songs were often interspersed with charismatic contributions. Especially as there was no strict liturgical structure that needed to be adhered to. Whilst the two elements of song and spiritual gifts were both present, they were not confused or conflated. After all, initially at least, a large proportion of songs sung were hymns common to the Baptist, Anglican, and Brethren origins of the church members. To be ‘charismatic’ was to believe in and engage with the spiritual gifts. Charismatic worship, if such a term existed then, was sung worship where spiritual gifts were on display during the meeting.
In response to this wave of spiritual experiences, a new breed of songwriters began to appear. For example, Graham Kendrick came from the Ichthus movement, as Nathan Fellingham and Stuart Townend emerged from Newfrontiers. They would teach their new songs within their local churches and their songs would spread to other new churches experiencing similar charismatic phenomena. These songs gave new avenues to voice and declare the nature, grace, and favour of God; in response to the fresh experience of the Spirit within the New Church.
Yet these new songs often reflected the simple roots of the churches that spawned them. Simple melodies and accompaniment; a renewed emphasis on scripture and especially the Psalms; all coupled with an attentiveness to the theological content of the songs. These songs often focused on grace, love, salvation, and the holiness and grandeur of God.
This simplicity and spontaneity stood in contrast with what preceded it. In much the same way that the proactive use of spiritual gifts stood in stark contrast to the underutilisation of such gifts in previous generations.
A Subtle Divorce? The New Church today
Yet we may find a less rosy marriage if we were to observe the descendant congregations of the New Church movement; both those within the formal groupings initially spawned and those outside such structures who share similar ecclesiological, evangelical, and charismatic convictions.
The preponderance of songs sung in these churches were once born from the experiences of local churches interacting with the Holy Spirit. Yet today, new songs introduced into churches are typically the products of Elevation Worship, Bethel, or Hillsong. Written in a context far away in foreign climes, rather than reflective of any local or regional experience of God. The songs of these groups are not intrinsically problematic, but rather the over-reliance on such a limited collection of songwriting-houses robs the local church of a local expression of what God is doing in its midst.
That is not to say that all songs sung should be written within a geographical catchment area. But rather that an over-reliance on any single source can have the potential to inhibit the ability of a congregation to give a musical reply to the revelation of God in a particular congregation. This is comparable to the experience of early members of the New Church movement, who perhaps felt unable to reply to God’s revelation whilst being limited to the hymnody of their forebears. Put most simply, the spiritual journey of a church in Redding, California, as expressed in their latest album, is unlikely to be identical to the journey of a church in Reading, Berkshire.
Some of the reasons for the popularity of the main progenitors of contemporary ‘charismatic’ worship music is their high production values, intricate musical elements, and ability to follow wider trends in popular music. Again, this is not intrinsically an issue. Yet, there is a temptation to try and imitate or mimic such songs. For example, singing songs in the key the song was produced in rather than one that aids the congregation or the worship band in singing them. Or opting for songs based on their musicality over and above their lyrical content. Serious attention can be diverted from how best to worship God and towards ensuring that the drum roll or guitar riff sounds emblematic of the version streamed online. When this occurs, we venture into the dangerous territory of Christian karaoke, rather than a heart-felt worshipful response to the nature and works of the divine.
Again, we should stress that this is not a criticism of the output of the large song-writing houses, but rather of how their music can be over-relied upon and misapplied within a church service.
Yet these issues can have a dampening effect on worship as it loses its numinosity, the awed sense of the divine presence. Times of sung worship can be impressive musically, especially if aided by lights and a large sound system. But they risk losing the “true” worship element initially sought by the pioneers of the New Church movement. Worship ceases to be about a reply to the revelation of God, including his revelation through spiritual gifts. This can hollow out sung worship, where it has reverted back into the rote recitation of songs, so chastised by the founders of the New Church movements.
Worse still, this import dependence can lead to a negative feedback loop. Attempts to re-invigorate worship revolve around importing and mastering the latest song, in the hopes that this new song will reignite passionate worship, even though the last new song failed to do so. So, worship becomes even limper, as not only are congregants singing songs which fail to resonate, but songs that they do not know.
The issue is that the music has become divorced from the spiritual life of the congregation. The songs sung have ceased to be a heartfelt response to the revelation, both biblical and charismatic, of the divine. That is not because the songs are bad, but instead because our priorities have shifted. Musical mastery is prioritised over the reflection of God’s glory.
However, due to the songs originating from charismatic churches, and their lyrical content referencing a God who acts today and a Spirit that engages, such music becomes a passable expression for being ‘charismatic.’ After all, it is predominantly theologically charismatic churches that sing them.
Yet to be charismatic is more than to sing a particular set of songs. It is to engage willingly with the living God. It is to be sensitive to the Spirit’s voice. Worship is a heartfelt response to the revelation of God. To separate worship from this, is to hollow it out. It is to settle for Christian karaoke.
Charismatic worship, if such a term is valid, is not defined by the songs that are sung; but by how the congregation engages with and responds to the very real Spirit of God. To settle for anything less than that, is a divorce in all but name.
Aaron Stead
Aaron Stead is an MTh student at Union School of Theology.
Tim Blaber
Tim Blaber is Pastor at Hope Church Winchester and Director of Training for Commission.