Pentecostalism’s View of the Holy Spirit’s Work in Worship
This expectation is certainly not new; theologians such as John Owen and Jonathan Edwards
addressed the religious “enthusiasts” of their day.1 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.2 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.
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.”3 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.”4
This 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.”5 “Grouping songs
in such a way that they flow together,” worship leader Carl Tuttle explains, “is essential to a
good worship experience.”6: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.”7 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.’”8
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.”9 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.10
Holy Spirit, come flood this place and fill the atmosphere
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, Lord1
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 Gruden 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.”2:Zac Hicks agrees: “The Holy Spirit has an
agenda in manifesting his presence to us.”3 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.”4 “None of
us,” Kauflin insists, “should be satisfied with our present experience of the Spirit’s presence and
power.”5
Notes
1. Bryan Torwalt and Katie Torwalt, “Holy Spirit,” 2011, accessed October 31, 2018,
https://songselect.ccli.com/Songs/6087919/holy-spirit. This is a CCLI Top 10 song. [
]
2. Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1995), 634, 641, 648. [
]
3. Zac M. Hicks, The Worship Pastor: A Call to Ministry for Worship Leaders and Teams
(Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2016), 33. [ ]
4. Bob Kauflin, True Worshipers: Seeking What Matters to God (Wheaton, IL: Crossway
Books, 2015), 133. [ ]
5. Bob Kauflin, Worship Matters: Leading Others to Encounter the Greatness of God
(Wheaton: Crossway Books, 2008), 84–85. [ ]
