A History of Contemporary Praise & Worship

Understanding the Ideas That Reshaped the Protestant Church

Ruth, Lester, Swee Hong, Lim

• Publisher: Baker Academic
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781493432547
• Topic: Teologia e religione
• Subtopic: Pratiche e rituali cristiani

Christianity Today 2023 Book Award Finalist (History & Biography) New forms of worship have transformed the face of the American church over the past fifty years. Drawing on a wide range of primary sources, including interviews with dozens of important stakeholders and key players, this volume by two worship experts offers the first comprehensive history of Contemporary Praise & Worship. The authors provide insight into where this phenomenon began and how it reshaped the Protestant church. They also emphasize the span of denominational, regional, and ethnic expressions of contemporary worship.

Part 1
The History of Praise & Worship

One
The Headwater of Praise & Worship, 1946–65

A new experience in God was introduced by the Spirit as He restored that wholesale, whole-hearted worship to the Lord. This wholesale praise brought a new experience in God. The sacrifice of praise lifted the church to new heights in faith.

—Reg Layzell, pastor of Glad Tidings Temple, Vancouver1

Imagine Sunday morning, the day of worship, in countless churches across North America. Now visualize the following modern scene or some variation of it: a band on a platform; music derived from some style of popular music; vocalists and instrumentalists front and center; informality; hands raised in the air; an extended time of congregational singing; reliance upon electronic technology featuring screens, projectors, and large soundboards; updated English and other nods toward establishing accessibility and relevance for worshipers; and the pastor nowhere to be seen until the time for the sermon.

Finding a church whose worship fits this generic pattern was an easy task by the beginning of the twenty-first century. That situation has not changed today. One does not have to look hard to see how widespread some variation of this kind of worship has become. All these elements, in whole or in part, have combined into a new way of worship that had become ubiquitous in North America and, in fact, around the world by 2000 and has remained so in the time since.

However, if you were to go back to the 1970s, you would discover that this sort of service was not nearly as easy to find. If you did stumble across one, it would have had a different look and feel if for no other reasons than that the technology and the song repertoire were different. But this way of worship was present in the 1970s. Indeed, if you were to visit the late 1940s, you could still come across Christians here and there worshiping in the earliest versions of this way of worship. It might take a few moments of patient discernment, but you would be able to see many later elements in a nascent form. If you were to listen closely, you would hear the various adherents articulate their theological rationales for why it is important to worship in this way.

As a matter of fact, these theologies have been the most stable aspects of the liturgical phenomenon we have been tracing, even as the outward details of worship services have evolved. (Note to reader: whenever we use the term “liturgical” in this book, we simply mean something worship-related.2) These theologies have provided the most continuity for more than seventy years, even if their importance has been sometimes overlooked in prior accounts of this phenomenon’s history.

Of course, we are talking about the way of worship that many (especially if they are not White or are not part of a mainline denomination) have called “Praise & Worship” and others (especially White members of mainline congregations) have called “Contemporary Worship.” The two different names—and the different spheres in which they are used—tell us something about the complexity of the history of this way of worship. This is not a story of a single line of development or even a single point of origin. Neither is it a story of a single strand of theology that led to the creation of this way of worship and gave it the momentum for ever-increasing adoption, even though theological commitments have been a driving force for all its various proponents. Our desire is to tell the complex history of where this way of worship originated and how two different theological visions have propelled it into widespread acceptance. We begin with Praise & Worship.

Headwater: Where Desperation and Bible Met

Notwithstanding the overall complexity of the history, for one line of development—the “river” of Praise & Worship—there was a clear theological headwater: a rainy Wednesday in early January 1946. The place was Abbotsford, British Columbia, Canada, a small town about forty miles east of Vancouver and four miles north of the United States/Canada border. It was a time and place of spiritual desperation for Reg Layzell, a guest speaker in a Pentecostal church in that town. It would become the time and place for the revealing of a Scripture verse that has proved to be the major source for Praise & Worship.

Layzell (b. 1904), who was from the province of Ontario, had recently retired as general manager of the Canadian division of a company that sold machines to print names and addresses on mailing labels, envelopes, and form labels.3 Toward the end of 1945 he received a letter from the British Columbia superintendent of the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada, who had heard of Layzell’s ministry as a Christian businessman in Ontario. The letter invited Layzell to come to British Columbia and hold meetings in several churches. Layzell decided to do so for three months. The first stop was Abbotsford.

By Layzell’s own account, his ministry began dreadfully. Since the host pastor was critically ill, Layzell had responsibility for the entire service, both singing and preaching. Neither went well. Sunday was a flat disaster, as was Tuesday night, the second night of his worship leadership. By Wednesday4 morning Layzell was desperate. Fasting, he arrived at the church early that morning and began to pray. Feeling sorry for himself, he begged God for some kind of blessing since he was obligated to continue the meetings for the whole week. Around noon a Scripture verse came to mind as he was praying: “But thou art holy, O thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel” (KJV). He did not remember the exact verse reference (Ps. 22:3) at first, but accepted the verse as a gift from God nonetheless.

That Layzell was drawn to this verse is not entirely surprising, given that he was Pentecostal. By the 1940s Pentecostalism was a half-century-old liturgical tradition in which praising had long had an important role. Emerging in the early twentieth century, Pentecostalism had stressed a dramatic infilling of the Holy Spirit that was evidenced outwardly, especially by speaking in tongues (glossolalia or languages supernaturally bestowed). The Pentecostal movement gained its name from the story of the first Pentecost in Acts 2, during which Christian disciples spoke in tongues. Whether in tongues or not, praising God seems to have been a recurring feature of Pentecostal worship. Thus, not surprisingly, there are historical hints that Psalm 22:3 had previously circulated among some Pentecostals. For example, Aimee Semple McPherson, a famous Los Angeles–based preacher at the beginning of the twentieth century, once referenced it when describing the pleasure of being in a service with extensive praising and thus experiencing the presence of God.5 Moreover, Jack Hayford (b. 1934), a Pentecostal preacher in the second half of the century, noted how when he was growing up he heard leaders exhort people to praise by saying “the Lord inhabits the praises of His people.”6 (Hayford grew up in the denomination that McPherson had started: the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel, often simply known as the Foursquare Church.) It was not until much later that Hayford realized it was actually a Bible verse. Layzell, however, apparently would be the first to make the verse into a cornerstone for a liturgical theology, as we shall see.

On that January day in 1946, Layzell initially focused on the first part of the verse and began to ransack his heart, repenting of every sin that he could remember committing, but “still the heavens were brass.”7 Layzell felt his attention drawn to the second half of the verse: “O thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel.” If God does indeed inhabit the praises of his people, Layzell realized, then he ought to fill the church building with the praises of God. He began in the small study room where he had been praying, lifting his hands and praising God aloud. He then ventured into the rest of the church, realizing that he had never quite done anything like this before. He was used to praising God in a prayer room but never in the “open church.”8 He spent the remainder of the day saturating the space with praise, from pulpit to piano (“The pianist is rather dead,” Layzell thought), up and down each aisle and pew, and into each room in the whole facility, including washrooms.9

Layzell had received the statement of Psalm 22:3 (God inhabits the praises of Israel) as a divine promise (“As you praise me, I will be present with you”), and he was determined to rely on this promise.10 He continued praising God through the afternoon and through the dinner hour. As people began to gather for that evening’s service, he dropped to his knees on the platform and continued praising and worshiping God. He did not stop until it was time for the service to begin.

What happened as the service began at 7:30 confirmed in Layzell’s mind that he had understood this scriptural promise correctly. The congregation had barely gotten into the first song, “There’s Power in the Blood,” before one woman threw up her hands in praise, experienced what Pentecostals call being “baptized in the Holy Spirit,” and began to speak in tongues. The first woman was soon joined by another and another. Shortly the entire room was engaged in worship at a higher level. Layzell was delighted since it was the first time he could remember ever seeing someone baptized in the Holy Spirit during this initial part of the service, the “song service.”11

It was a revolutionary moment for Layzell. He believed God had given him the key to maintaining revival in the church through the continuous presence of God. This realization focused the remainder of his trip to British Columbia and, ultimately, moved Layzell to enter full-time pastoral ministry. Offering praise, irrespective of on...