Worship In The Church

Stirred By A Noble Theme — The Book Of Common Prayer

By Steve Phifer

“My heart is stirred by a noble theme as I recite my verses for the king; my tongue is the pen of a skillful writer” (Psalm 45:1).

In January 2002, standing alone in the small chapel of a large church, a worshiper carefully placed his burgundy leather Bible on the Communion table. He opened a matching leather book and began to pray out loud.

“Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ” (Philippians 1:2).

“I rejoiced with those who said to me, ‘Let us go to the house of the Lord’ ” (Psalm 122:1).

“May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer” (Psalm 19:14).

“Send forth your light and your truth, let them guide me; let them bring me to your holy mountain, to the place where you dwell” (Psalm 43:3).

“But the Lord is in his holy temple; let all the earth be silent before him” (Habakkuk 2:20).

He paused, letting the silence search His soul, and then continued.

“Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks” (John 4:23).

“For this is what the high and lofty One says — he who lives forever, whose name is holy: ‘I live in a high and holy place, but also with him who is contrite and lowly in spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite’ ” (Isaiah 57:15).

As the worshiper continued to pray from the little leather book, he repented of his sins and received God’s forgiveness. Picking up his Bible, he prayerfully read from Psalms and the Old and New Testaments. Then, with ancient words from the other little book, he poured out his praise and his adoration to the Lord, rehearsing the revelation of who God is. Next came the Apostles’ Creed and the Lord’s Prayer. He put the little, leather book down. With his prayer list, he interceded for his family, friends, church, and country with extemporaneous prayers as the Spirit led. His prayers began to sound strange to the human ear, but clear to angels as a heavenly prayer language began to flow from his heart. The Lord’s presence filled the little chapel. After a season, he picked up the little book again and concluded his prayer time with carefully crafted prayers for his country, his church, and for a lost world. Finally, he prayed this benediction.

“Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen” (Ephesians 3:20,21).

The little chapel was at Suncoast Cathedral in St. Petersburg, Florida. I was the worshiper and the little leather book was The Book of Common Prayer.¹ After three decades of public ministry I was skilled at public worship, but I struggled secretly and shamefully with private worship. I never understood how to minister to the Lord in the secret place. I lacked what I supplied those I led in public worship — a service. Through the leading of the Holy Spirit and doctoral work, I discovered The Book of Common Prayer.²

Should A Pentecostal Preacher Use A Prayer Book?

Is this second-class spirituality? Did “we” not come out of “them”? Are these not oldest of old wineskins? Will ancient methods be accompanied by the moving of the Spirit when these methods are used today? These are all good questions. They were my questions as I sought to understand where the Spirit was leading me. Before we deal with The Book of Common Prayer, we need to understand written or fixed prayers.

Fixed Prayers Are Biblical

The Bible is replete with fixed prayers, including the Book of Psalms. The Epistles contain several examples of confessions and hymns³ that are believed to have been well-known to the readers. It is likely, in addition to extemporaneous prayers and prayers offered in a heavenly prayer language, that the disciples prayed fixed prayers. In Acts 3, Peter and John were going to the temple at the fixed time for evening prayer. In Acts 13, the Bible says they “ministered to the Lord and fasted.” The word used here is leitourgeo meaning to “to perform a service,”⁴ and in the context, a religious service. The same word is used again in Hebrews 10:11 in reference to the functions of the priests in the temple.⁵ In other words, these New Testament, Spirit-filled, holy-royal priests were ministering to the Lord just as the Old Testament priests had. Surely they used fixed prayers as well as spontaneous prayers and prayer in tongues. Perhaps this was Paul’s idea when he told the Ephesians to pray with “all kinds of prayers” (Ephesians 6:18). It is interesting to note that Jesus, when asked by the disciples for a lesson in how to pray, gave them a prayer.

Fixed Prayers Are Historical

By A.D. 100–150 the Didache,an Early Church document, recommended the Lord’s Prayer be prayed three times each day.⁶ While historical documents do not carry the authority of Scripture, it is clear that the prayer the Lord gave was used as a fixed prayer.

Yes, Can It Be “Pentecostal” To Recite A Prayer?

If Pentecostal means to be led and empowered by the Holy Spirit. Some believe the church of the first few centuries was a Pentecostal church. Current scholarship is revealing the hidden history of signs and wonders, gifts of the Spirit, miracles, and healings in the Early Church. Leaders in the Patristic period — the time of the Church Fathers — have much to say to us today. The Holy Spirit used them to disciple believers in a hostile, pagan, relativistic world. They clarified the canon of Scripture, the doctrines of the Trinity, and the dual nature of Christ. How did these pastors make disciples in a hostile climate? One of their methods was daily prayer, fully apostolic — fixed prayers, extemporaneous prayer, and prayer in the spirit.⁷

Fixed Prayers Are Contemporary.

We have fixed prayers in our services. We argue over preferring the old ones versus the new ones. But no one says they are second-class spirituality, or too “Catholic,” or whether they should be in our liturgy.⁸ Why? Because these fixed prayers are called songs. The only difference between reciting an ancient expression of praise⁹ and singing “How Great Thou Art” is the music. Should music make that much difference?

The Book Of Common Prayer

We also owe much to the Reformation fathers. They were empowered by the Holy Spirit to throw off the corrupt hierarchy of Rome, to pursue the purity of Scripture, and to reestablish apostolic worship. They took many different paths toward these goals. The path that has most affected the Pentecostal movement is the English Reformation. We can thank it, its offshoots, and its rebels for the King James Bible, the Sunday School movement, modern missions, the revivalist movement, the Holiness movement, mass evangelism, and even modern Pentecost. Prior to these developments, Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury (1489–1556), supervised the translation of the first English Bible and compiled The Book of Common Prayer. These two books became the foundation of the English Reformation.¹⁰

Pentecostals In The Flow Of History

Contemporary leaders do well to look to the New Testament church for answers to today’s challenges. In the first centuries of Christianity Spirit-filled leaders grappled with the same problems we deal with today: hostile, relativistic, pagan cultures outside the church; doctrinal error, false preachers, pride, power, and perversity within the church. A thousand years later, leaders of the Protestant Reformation also sought to reestablish New Testament Christianity by seeking the wisdom and methods of the original Pentecostals. One of the 16th-century reformers’ principles was, Semper Reformanda (always reforming). In other words, to keep doctrines and worship pure, the church must live and work in constant reformation, rooting out the influence of man and reaffirming the leadership of the Holy Spirit through the Word of God. Semper Reformanda should be the heart of 20th- and 21st-century Pentecost.

Today we have the fullness of apostolic prayer: written, spontaneous, and in tongues. Like the psalmists, the Old Testament priests, the apostles, the church fathers, and the heroes of the Reformation, “My heart is stirred by a noble theme as I recite my verses for the King.”

Steve Phifer, worship arts pastor, Word of Life International Church, Springfield, Virginia.

Endnotes

1. “Common” here means, “held in common,” not coarse or base. These prayers are for the whole church.
2. There have been several revisions to The Book of Common Prayer over the years. I have chosen to use the 1979.
3. Romans 11:33–36; Philippians 2:6–11; 1 Timothy 3:16; 2 Timothy 2:11–13; Hebrews 10:37,38; Jude 24,25.
4. William Arndt, Walter Bauer, and Frederick W. Danker, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 3rd. ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002).
5. See definition(c) of the official service of priests and Levites under the Law, Hebrews 10:11 (in the Septuagint, e.g., Exodus 29:30; Numbers 16:9). W.E. Vine, Vine’s Expository Dictionary of Biblical Words (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers,1985).
6. The Didache gives the Lord’s Prayer from Matthew, with a brief doxology and the direction to pray it three times a day. Schaff, History of the Christian Church (Biblesoft: Electronic Database, 1999), chapter 8, 188.
7. Ibid., 53. “The Several Parts of Worship. ‘They prayed freely from the heart, as they were moved by the Spirit, according to special needs and circumstances. ... At the same time the frequent use of psalms and short forms of devotion, as the Lord’s Prayer, may be inferred.’ ”
8. “Liturgy” refers to the part of the service the people participate in by saying and doing. Literally it means “the work of the people.”
9. Examples: “Christ has died! Christ has risen! Christ will come again!” “The peace of the Lord be with you. And also with you.” “Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit as it was in the beginning, is now and will be forever.”
10. David Garrett, Thomas Cranmer and the Book of Common Prayer. http://www.stpeter.org/cranmer.html.