Freedom in Worship

In this article, from May, 1974, Ken discusses freedom in Worship. He states that one of the things that draws people to the Charismatic Renewal is the free use of Spiritual Gifts in Worship. He goes on to exhort us to greater freedom. I think that the worship at First Baptist Church of Chula Vista in the mid '70s was marvelous. There was a freedom to share prophecies, a message in tongues, an insight or even to spontaneously start a song. If you haven't experienced such a time, it could sound like some form of chaos. This was not so. Everything was orderly; you just didn't know what to expect. We felt that this was the result of "not putting God in a box." We couldn't really order the service, this was the job of the Holy Spirit. Whatever one's feelings about this freedom of worship and the use of Spiritual Gifts in that worship, there was a sense of the presence of God in our worship.


First Baptist is a lot different now. Perhaps I shouldn't say "now", because I am not there now. I was essentially the pastor from 1980 until 2005. We moved away from that complete spontaneity. We became traditional in some ways, but we never completely lost our sense of worship. Part of this was that God had blessed us with wonderful musicians all through this period. When one "indispensable musician" left, another appeared. We always had good music. The style might change, but the worship was real. We also always had creative people in arts -- and later in Computer arts; we had dance (in the early days before the death of Becky Schoultz); and drama. I loved our worship right up until the day I left. I miss it still.


The picture is of Ken and Clay being prayed for before leaving on the missionary trip discussed in my last post. I can't identify all of the people, but the one on the left is Larry Clark, two unidentified, then Ken, Clay, Wallie Gray and Ed Dubois.