“Our church’s worship is pretty formal, but I prefer Holy Spirit-led worship.”

Such was a comment I overheard once by a young evangelical describing his church’s worship service, illustrating a very common perception by many evangelicals today—if the Holy Spirit actively works in worship, the results will be something extraordinary, an experience “quenched” by too much form and order.

But this expectation appears in more than just worship. If you were to ask the average Christian today what our expectation should be regarding how the Holy Spirit works, I believe most Christians would answer something like this: If the Holy Spirit is actively working, his work will be evidenced by some sort of extraordinary experience—intense feelings, inner promptings, miraculous gifts, or even visible manifestations.

As that representative list illustrates, this expectation takes a variety of forms, but likely the most prevalent form of this expectation revolves around worship.

Extraordinary Worship

Arguably, the default expectation of contemporary evangelical worshipers is that the Holy Spirit works in worship in such a way so as to create an extraordinary experience, well expressed in the popular worship song by Bryan and Katie Torwalt:

Holy spirit, You are welcome here
Come flood this place and fill the atmosphere
Your glory, God, is what our hearts long for
To be overcome by Your presence, Lord ¹“Holy Spirit,” 2011, https://songselect.ccli.com/Songs/6087919/holy-spirit. This is a CCLI Top 10 song.

Many theologians and authors who have helped to shape contemporary evangelical worship embody a theology of the Holy Spirit’s primary work as that of making God’s presence known. For example, Wayne Grudem argues, “The work of the Holy Spirit is to manifest the active presence of God in the world, and especially the church. . . . It seems that one of his primary purposes in the new covenant age,” Grudem continues, “is to manifest the presence of God, to give indications that make the presence of God known. . . . To be in the Holy Spirit is really to be in an atmosphere of God’s manifested presence.”²Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1995), 634, 641, 648. Zac Hicks agrees: “The Holy Spirit has an agenda in manifesting his presence to us.”³Zac M. Hicks, The Worship Pastor: A Call to Ministry for Worship Leaders and Teams (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2016), 33. Bob Kauflin believes that “there are times, of course, when we become unexpectedly aware of the Lord’s presence in an intense way. A sudden wave of peace comes over us. An irrepressible joy rises up from the depths of our soul.”⁴Bob Kauflin, True Worshipers: Seeking What Matters to God (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2015), 133. “None of us,” Kauflin insists, “should be satisfied with our present experience of the Spirit’s presence and power.”⁵Bob Kauflin, Worship Matters: Leading Others to Encounter the Greatness of God (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 2008), 84–85.

Arguably, the default expectation of contemporary evangelical worshipers is that the Holy Spirit works in worship in such a way so as to create an extraordinary experience.

This expectation is certainly not new; theologians such as John Owen and Jonathan Edwards addressed the religious “enthusiasts” of their day.⁶See Ryan J. Martin, “‘Violent Motions of Carnal Affections’: Jonathan Edwards, John Owen, and Distinguishing the Work of the Spirit from Enthusiasm,” Detroit Baptist Seminary Journal 15 … Continue reading However, the contemporary iteration is rooted in a Pentecostal theology of the Holy Spirit’s work. In their insightful Concise History of Contemporary Worship, Lovin’ on Jesus, Swee Hong Lim and Lester Ruth convincingly demonstrate that Pentecostalism, with its “revisioning of a New Testament emphasis upon the active presence and ministry of the Holy Spirit,” is one of five key sources of contemporary worship.⁷Swee Hong Lim and Lester Ruth, Lovin’ on Jesus: A Concise History of Contemporary Worship (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2017), 17–18. The other four are youth ministry, baby boomers, Jesus People, … Continue reading They suggest that “Pentecostalism’s shaping of contemporary worship has been both through its own internal development and through an influencing of other Protestants in worship piety and practice,” including the following ways its theology has shaped contemporary worship:

1. mainstreaming the desire to be physical and expressive in worship
2. highlighting intensity as a liturgical virtue
3. a certain expectation of experience to the forms of contemporary worship, and
4. a musical sacramentality [that] raises the importance of the worship set as well as the musicians leading this set.⁸Lim and Ruth, Lovin’ on Jesus, 18.

They explain, “Pentecostalism contributed contemporary worship’s sacramentality, that is, both the expectation that God’s presence could be encountered in worship and the normal means by which this encounter would happen,” creating an “expectation for encountering God, active and present through the Holy Spirit.”⁹Lim and Ruth, Lovin’ on Jesus, 18. Daniel Albrecht agrees: “The presence of the Holy Spirit then is fundamental to a Pentecostal perspective of worship. The conviction that the Spirit is present in worship is one of the deepest beliefs in a Pentecostal liturgical vision. The expectancy of the Spirit’s presence is often palpable in the liturgy. . . . Their liturgical rites and sensibilities encourage becoming consciously present to God—even as God’s presence is expected to become very real in worship.”¹⁰Daniel E. Albrecht, “Worshiping and the Spirit: Transmuting Liturgy Pentecostally,” in The Spirit in Worship—Worship in the Spirit, ed. Teresa Berger and Bryan D. Spinks (Collegeville, MN: … Continue reading

Monique M. Ingalls agrees with this assessment after her ten year study (2007 to 2017) of contemporary worship in several different settings.¹¹Monique M. Ingalls, Singing the Congregation: How Contemporary Worship Music Forms Evangelical Community (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018). She notes the connection between centrality of contemporary worship music and the desire of worshipers to experience “a personal encounter with God during congregational singing.”¹²Ingalls, Singing the Congregation, 85.

Indeed, an expected experience of the Holy Spirit’s active presence is often directly tied to music, specifically to the “flow” of the emotional expressiveness of the worship music. Hicks suggests, “Part of leading a worship service’s flow . . . involves keeping the awareness of God’s real, abiding presence before his worshipers. As all of the elements of worship pass by, the one constant—the True Flow—is the presence of the Holy Spirit himself.” This kind of flow, according to Hicks, “lies in understanding and guiding your worship service’s emotional journey.”¹³Hicks, The Worship Pastor, 184. “Grouping songs in such a way that they flow together,” worship leader Carl Tuttle explains, “is essential to a good worship experience.”¹⁴Carl Tuttle, “Song Selection & New Song Introduction,” in Worship Leaders Training Manual (Anaheim, CA: Worship Resource Center/Vineyard Ministries International, 1987), 141. The goal and expectation of any worship service, according to Barry Griffing, “is to bring the congregational worshipers into a corporate awareness of God’s manifest presence.”¹⁵Barry Griffing, “Releasing Charismatic Worship,” in Restoring Praise & Worship to the Church (Shippensburg, PA: Revival Press, 1989), 92. James Steven notes, “By investing heavily in particular signs of the Spirit’s presence, such as ecstatic physical patterns of behavior, church members define the Spirit by the empirical measurement of particular phenomena, which if absent imply that the Spirit has not ‘turned up.’”¹⁶James Steven, “The Spirit in Contemporary Charismatic Worship,” in The Spirit in Worship—Worship in the Spirit, ed. Teresa Berger and Bryan D. Spinks (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2009), … Continue reading

For Pentecostals and other continuationists, this expectation includes miraculous gifts such as tongues and prophecy, but even for other evangelicals who do not hold to a continuationist position on miraculous gifts, the default expectation is that the Holy Spirit will manifest God’s presence in other extraordinary ways such as a heightened experience of emotional euphoria.

Thus, worship in which the Holy Spirit is directly active is often necessarily connected with spontaneity and “freedom” of form. Worship that is structured and regulated is the opposite of “Spirit-led” worship in this view. As Lim and Ruth note, most contemporary worship, impacted as it is by this understanding of the Holy Spirit’s work in worship, considers “extemporaneity as a mark of worship that is true and of the Holy Spirit, that is, worship in Spirit and truth (John 4:24). This view of extemporaneity” they note, “has been held widely within Free Church ways of worship.”¹⁷Lim and Ruth, Lovin’ on Jesus, 38. What Albrecht observes of Pentecostal worship has become the standard expectation for most of evangelicalism:

In the midst of radical receptivity, an encounter with the Holy Spirit may occur. Pentecostals envision such encounters as integral to the worship experience. While an overwhelming or overpowering experience of/in the Spirit is neither rare nor routine for a particular Pentecostal worshiper, the experiential dimension of worship is fundamental. The liturgical vision sees God as present in the service; consequently, Pentecostals reason that a direct experience of God is a normal expectation.¹⁸Albrecht, “Worshiping and the Spirit: Transmuting Liturgy Pentecostally,” 240.

This expectation is clearly embodied in charismatic theology, but even with more moderate charismatics, or non-charismatics who have been what I describe as “Pentecostalized,” there is a certain expectation that in a worship service, the Holy Spirit of God will manifest himself in some observable, tangible way. And if we don’t feel something intense, if we don’t have an authentic experience, then something is wrong.

This theology of worship began in Pentecostalism, but it has now expanded to other groups who would not necessarily affirm Pentecostal theology of spiritual gifts, and has come to characterize contemporary worship.

The important question is how this expectation measures up against the teachings of Holy Scripture.

Author

Scott Aniol

Executive Vice President and Editor-in-Chief G3 Ministries

Scott Aniol, PhD, is Executive Vice President and Editor-in-Chief of G3 Ministries. In addition to his role with G3, Scott is Professor of Pastoral Theology at Grace Bible Theological Seminary in Conway, Arkansas. He lectures around the world in churches, conferences, colleges, and seminaries, and he has authored several books and dozens of articles. You can find more, including publications and speaking itinerary, at www.scottaniol.com. Scott and his wife, Becky, have four children: Caleb, Kate, Christopher, and Caroline. You can listen to his podcast here.