Part Two
“The Power of True Worship”
The crucial factor in the functional success of the Worship Arts ministries at First Assembly was the profound agreement Pastor McManus and I enjoyed on the three-fold mission of the church:
- To Minister to the Lord with worship,
- To Minister to the Church with fellowship and discipleship, and
- To Minister to the world with evangelism.
We put worship as first of the three ministries because God always deserves first place in all things and because He is the power source for the other two points of mission. We need His power and presence if we want to minister to the church and to the world. Pastor and I had never met, but the Lord had led us to the same place in our understanding of pastoral ministry. We had read the same books, most important of which was the Bible. Armed with agreement in these essentials, we marched together in perfect step so easily.
From Music Ministry to Worship Arts Ministry
Possessed now with the vision and skills for worship ministry beyond music alone, I wanted to sound a call to all the artists at First Assembly. After moving to Winston-Salem another unforgettable moment came when I was driving downtown. A banner floated overhead advertising a street festival—CAROLINA STREET SCENE—that was it!—We would be—CAROLINA CHRISTIAN ARTS!
We organized Carolina Christian Arts into four divisions: Music, Literature, Visual, and Drama. Years later we developed a logo and with the New Building, a beautiful stained-glass window that illustrated the 3-fold Mission. It was the focal point of the sanctuary.
The stained-glass window was rescued from the destruction and moved to the new facility.
There was a place for singers and instrumentalists on the platform and a place for all the artists of the church at First Assembly. It was wonderful to see how this dynamic expansion of artistic ministry beyond only music ministry engaged the hearts of God’s anointed ones and reached the heart of a city. These are results of the power of True Worship. Worship in Spirit and Truth is the power source of all other ministries.
From Three Sunday Services to Five
Soon we had to add another morning service. I will never forget the one-on-one meeting with Pastor McManus on how we should do this. Our method was to ask the most important questions one can ask of any event in a worship service: Is it Truth? Is it Spirit? If it is not one or the other or both, that event can be set aside for now handled some other way. We did away with most announcements, almost all promotions, and with instrumental offertories. The Special Music would be the offertory. The Choir and Orchestra presentations would flow from the worship set. Soon, we had a structure for a dynamic, Pentecostal worship service that was not about momentum—the purpose of this thing is to get the next thing—but was about moving with the Spirit even if that meant “being still.” Our time allotment for each morning service was about an hour and 15 minutes.
It worked! People were coming to the Lord in droves. I will never forget the feeling of a crowded lobby with one crowd trying to exit the last service and another one trying to enter the next one while the altar music was still going on. Somehow, we were able to “ascend the Hill of the Lord” and also to “stand in the Holy Place”[1] in True Pentecostal power 3 times every Sunday morning.
Soon, we added a 4:00 pm evening service. It would be a duplicate of the 6:00 pm service plus an openness to the leadership of the Holy Spirit. All 5 of these services featured the choir and orchestra, an all-volunteer choir and orchestra I might add! This was added to the demands of 3 major productions each year and TV ministry every week. As this 5-Sunday service schedule went on for more than 2 years, it was a challenge. To me it felt like the week was only 4 days long. There was Sunday, and then a day. And then it was Wednesday and then a day, and then it was Sunday again. We all knew it was from the Lord, so we did it. I made a rule against making jokes about Sunday being a day of rest.
Pastor McManus used to say this: “Souls are in the balance.” And they were. The proof we needed was right there in those altars each Sunday. I asked Pastor to have some signs made that said, “Souls are in the balance,” his wonderful motto, to be placed over the two doors leading out of the robing room which doubled as my office. When we moved into the New Building, we put those same two signs over doors leading out of our beautiful rehearsal room onto our new, fabulous platform. Why? Because souls were still in the balance! Here is a photo of that anointed ensemble on stage in what we came to call, “The Old Building.”
The Celebration Chorus and Orchestra
These were remarkable people as well as remarkable vocalists and instrumentalists. Pastor Becky had developed the choir, but it was this former school band director’s job to create this orchestra. I had discovered the secret of this merger of choir and orchestra: restoring the unity of vocal and instrumental music as it is seen in the scriptures. Music education separates: “Band people, over here. Orchestra people over there. Choir, in the back.” Of necessity, that’s how we are trained and how our rehearsal rooms and degree programs are set up. Therefore, we tend to construct our music ministries that way. The Bible points us to another way, to a more spiritual ensemble. Check out 2 Chronicles 5:13-14.[2] This should be a spiritual and musical ensemble of ONE. Some sing. Some play, but we were ONE ministry. We wanted that powerful presence of the Lord!
This biblical merger of all the instruments and voices became my model. I felt it was my job to unite as one ministry with one, singular name, “The Celebration Chorus and Orchestra.” They were referred to as a single unit always using singular verbs: “The Chorus and Orchestra is…” If we did an instrumental offertory, the choir would also present an A Capella piece. We wanted to see the Glory fall! We rehearsed separately, but our presentations were always together.
How did that work? Our first orchestra rehearsal, in October of 1984, was about as low a starting point as you might imagine. But using good musicians attracts good musicians and by the time we did our Singing Christmas Tree in December, it was with a full volunteer ensemble, with well-trained singers and players. Eventually, after those years of 3-5 services each Sunday, the choir and orchestra had grown to this:
The Celebration Chorus and Orchestra 1988-1993
The Power of a Pentecostal Worship Structure
Many years later, when I was working on my doctorate in worship studies at the Robert E. Webber Institute for Worship Studies, a conversation with Bob opened a whole new door to me—the structure of a worship service. My biblical study of worship began in Wichita and came to fruition at Winston-Salem. The first thing I asked the Lord was, “Lord, show me the unchanging things.” Anyone could see that culture was bound to change, much like American cars in the 1950’s, each year a new look, a new model. This should not be the sum total of worship music, especially since we have the eternal, unchanging Word of God. What should the service structure be?
From a historical perspective, Dr. Webber taught a 4-part structure:
Gathering, Word, Table, Sending.[3]
Dr. Webber’s analysis of historic worship service structure led me to analyze the service structure in which I had been raised. Here is the result:
Three-fold Worship Structure
Congregational Worship
The Preaching of the Word
Invitation and a Congregational Season of Prayer
This was my understanding of Pentecostal Worship and it meshed beautifully with Pastor McManus’ ministry goals and the Priority of Worship. For First Assembly, what was the result? Growth. Excitement, and changed lives by the hundreds.
Before we broke ground on the New Building, the Lord was already building His real church in Winston-Salem in our hearts. It was more than lines on paper.
In each service, we met together and got down to business with worship in Spirit and in Truth, the anointed preaching of the Word, and with the Altar Service—the church at prayer. For an understanding of the differences between an altar call and an altar service, I suggest my article, “Leading Altar Music.” [4]
The Worship Set
Worship songs should make sense, one at a time for sure, but certainly in sets. [5] A good model for constructing sets was the sermon structure: 3-parts, Beginning, Middle, and Conclusion, all connected by a theme. This worked for 15-minute-sets like we had in the 5- services-a-Sunday season and for longer sets. When we were building the church, we had hymnals in the pews and we used them. A great hymn at the beginning can announce the theme or function as a transition song between praise and worship, or at the end a great hymn can bring the set to a logical conclusion allowing the generations of worshipers to unity. When we moved into the New Building, we brought the hymnals. We had more time, so we led with 2 hymns, related by theme and key. By announcing both page numbers, we could go to the second one without stopping. We were also using photographic slides since this was before the days of digital projection. The main thing was the logical flow of theme and of the keys. [6] This always worked before and after the move.
In the New Building, we included a prayer-for-needs time led by a well-trained prayer team with anointing oil during worship. At the transition point between the praise songs and the worship songs, Pastor would come to the pulpit to call the people to prayer. When praying started, he returned to his station and I returned to the pulpit watching carefully. As long as people were sharing their needs, we toned down the volume and even went instrumental. The whole church was praying for each other’s needs! When this had passed, we brought the volume up and went back to the worship set for the concluding songs.
There were three types of conclusions:
- Triumphant, with a majestic song of faith,
- Quiet, with a softer song of faith and perhaps a time of waiting on God, or
- What I thought of as a slice-of-life song that was not really a conclusion but signaled that the service would move on from there.
Sacred Space—”Manifest Your Glory in this Place”
Some people scoff at the idea of sacred space but I see it all through the Bible so I believe in it with all my heart. An amazing thing happened on the afternoon of the groundbreaking. I was waiting at the traffic light on University just north of the campus praying for the church we were going to build. Sitting in my car my prayer became a song:
Manifest Your Glory in this place.
Manifest Your Glory in this place.
For we have need of You, Oh God,
And thus, we seek Your face.
Manifest Your Glory in this place.
I taught it to our people at the ground-breaking and it became the prayer anthem of the building campaign. I believe it expressed the heart-prayer of the people for that building. Later I wrote verses for it.
Verse 1
We have seen Your glory in the flaming sunrise,
In the universe Your handiwork displayed.
But we long to see Your glory rise among us.
We long to see the beauty of Your face.
Verse 2
We have read of Your great glory in the former days,
From Shekinah cloud to Pentecostal fire.
But we need a fresh, new vision of Your majesty.
Come visit us, O Lord, in mighty power!
When it was just lines on paper, the New Building attached itself to that hillside, setting that bit of earth apart to be Sacred Space. It was a place for the spiritual building God was erecting in our hearts and would house the manifest presence of God, a place of Divine visitation. Songs, many right out of the Bible, were sung and played with great power and focus and they regularly ushered us into the true Sacred Space, the Manifest Presence of God. The writer to the Hebrews explains to how a place on earth becomes a Sacred Place.
Moses’ Tabernacle in the Wilderness and Solomon’s Temple even King David’s Tabernacle on Mt. Zion, were all Sacred Spaces where Heaven visited earth. Except for their spiritual legacy, they are nowhere to be found today. (7)
Here is the link to Part Three: Gratitude and Grief Part Three – Steve Phifer
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[1] Psalm 24:3 NKJV Who may ascend into the hill of the Lord? Or who may stand in His holy place? Waiting on the Lord is an essential of Pentecostal worship.
[2] [2] 2 Chronicles 5:13-14 NKJV…indeed it came to pass, when the trumpeters and singers were as one, to make one sound to be heard in praising and thanking the Lord, and when they lifted up their voice with the trumpets and cymbals and instruments of music, and praised the Lord, saying: “For He is good, For His mercy endures forever,” that the house, the house of the Lord, was filled with a cloud, so that the priests could not continue ministering because of the cloud; for the glory of the Lord filled the house of God.
[3] https://worshipleader.com/leadership/the-4-movements-of-a-worship-service/ You will find many variations on these four parts of the service.
[4] https://stevephifer.com/leading-altar-music/ Too many Pentecostal pastor have done away with the Altar Service because of abuses they have witnessed of the “Altar Call.” This is a mistake and stands in opposition to the New Testament. Has the Ecclesia, the Called Out Ones, not been called to prayer?
[5] 1 Co 14:40 NKJV Let all things be done decently and in order.
[6] God created music to flow from key to key in certain directions and it is best to stay in that flow. It works.
[7] Hebrews 8:5 NIV They serve at a sanctuary that is a copy and shadow of what is in heaven. This is why Moses was warned when he was about to build the tabernacle: “See to it that you make everything according to the pattern shown you on the mountain.”
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