Here comes my Lord, on the cross

Kingsway Assembly of God
Cherry Hill, NJ
August 5, 2007

Kingsway Church is an Assemblies of God congregation, but you might not guess that from the home page of their website or from the Sunday bulletin. Like many churches striving to use contemporary methods to reach people, Kingsway seems to be downplaying its denominational ties a bit.

I wanted to include a Pentecostal church in my first group of visits, and AG churches are the group I think of first in this category. I was already somewhat familiar with AG churches – I was married in one, even though neither Neil nor I were members (the pastor who married us was named Billy Sunday!), and I’ve known quite a few AG folks.

I knew about the Azusa Street Revival and I remembered that the largest church in the world (in terms of membership) is an AG church in Korea, although I was way off in guessing how many members. Before checking on Wikipedia, I thought it might have about 250,000 members -- a quarter of a million is a lot for one church, I reasoned. That’s true, but it’s not as many as 800,000, which seems to be the number of people who attend Yoido Full Gospel Church in Seoul.

Koreans seem to like really big churches – they have some other whoppers, too. Yoido Full Gospel features things I’d like to see, and maybe try out, such as the Osrani Prayer Mountain (tiny cubicles in which people lock themselves to fast and pray).

At any rate, I didn’t expect to see 800,000 worshippers at Kingsway – but from the website, it looked as though I would probably see more than the handful that have been at a few of the other churches I’ve visited.

They have a very nice website, which indicated that there is a Senior Pastor and also an Associate Pastor of Youth and Worship, who is married to the senior pastor’s daughter. Like many conservative churches, Kingsway thinks of the pastor’s wife in ways that more mainline churches do not. For example, the wives of both pastors are named and pictured on the staff page, and they seem to be considered part of the pastoring teams, even though they might not be officially appointed or given salaries and job descriptions. In some places (such as the bulletin) the men are listed separately as the pastors, but in other places (such as on the website) you find language such as “Pastor Ray and his wife Patti began pastoring Kingsway Church in 1999.”

(As always, I'm writing about the way the website looked when I visited in 2007, and these sites have usually been updated since then, so if you click on the link you may not see what I saw then.)

This was interesting to me because Pentecostal churches, though conservative in many respects, have always accepted women ministers, which is generally viewed as a liberal position. I suspect that they tend to have very few solo female pastors, or female senior pastors, though, but more often follow the pattern of women pastoring as subordinates to the real pastors – their husbands.

I learned that Kingsway has a traditional service from 8:15 am to 9:15 am on Sunday mornings, and a contemporary service from 10:30 am to noon. I haven’t yet attended any contemporary services at churches that feature both styles, so I decided to try that one.

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The church is an attractive modern building, with a great parking lot. When I enter the sanctuary the praise band is already going, and people are sitting or standing in the pews, some raising their hands as they sing, some just listening. The band occupies almost the whole of the platform – it features a piano, drums, two guitarists, and two young women singers in front. The woman at the piano appears to be the group leader. The drum set is enclosed on three sides behind plastic walls – it looks as though someone wanted to put the drummer behind bulletproof glass. It must be some sort of acoustic thing, though – the drummer at the first church I attended, Faith Christian Center, was also behind walls of clear plastic.

The church is quite modern – pews in a semicircle around a central stage, no pulpit. The band takes up most of the stage. There are no religious symbols or ornamentation in the stage area, although the ubiquitous two flags (American and Christian) stand on either side. I estimate the church seats at least 350 people, and there is a balcony on three sides that might seat another 100 or more – I can’t really see what’s up there. There are curtains in the middle of the back wall, and probably a baptistery behind them (most Pentecostal churches adhere to believer’s baptism). This church is comfortably full – people keep arriving during the first half hour, and by 11:00 there may be nearly 300 people in the pews. There seems to be a good mix of age groups.

A few people are dressed up, but most are dressed very casually. There is a mix of white, black, and Latino congregants, although most of the congregants are white. I happen to sit behind a group of middle-aged people wearing jackets that read “Christian Motorcycle Association – Riding for the Son.” They sport a variety of tattoos.

There is a bulletin, but it’s not a program for the worship service. It tells me that Pastor Bryon will be preaching the third in a series entitled “Disciple” today, and lists upcoming events, which include children’s play groups, a youth group whitewater rafting trip, a Saturday morning run around Cooper River, ladies’ night out at a local restaurant, a seniors’ cookout at the home of the senior pastor, a car wash and pool party, and 6th grade welcome night. There are lists of people to remember in prayer, including church members serving in the military and in nursing homes. I see that a couple in the church will be dedicating their sons at this week’s service.

The dedication is the first activity after the music ends, around 11:00 am. Churches that do not practice infant baptism often have dedication services instead, which involve parents bringing their children to the front and vowing to raise them as Christians. The family dedicating their children today has two cute, squirmy sons, aged about five and three, I think.

As I had learned from the website, the Associate Pastor of Youth and Worship, Bryon, is leading the service today. The senior pastor and his wife have been on a sabbatical for a few weeks, and will be back in another couple of weeks. Bryon has blonde, spiky hair, and is dressed neatly but casually. I think he might be in his late twenties or early thirties. He gives a little homily about raising children for the Lord, charging the parents to love each other, and discussing the roles of mother and father (protect, cherish, nurture, discipline). Then he asks his wife to come up and pray for the mother of the two boys, and he will pray for the father. He anoints the boys with oil and prays for them. His wife tells us that she will try not to cry, but her voice is teary as soon as she starts to pray. There is a lot of hugging all around at the end of the ceremony.

Then come announcements about youth group activities, in the form of a short video projected on the screen on the back wall. It’s well produced and funny.

There is an offering; they use the velvet-bag-on-a-stick method. Visitors are asked to fill out an information form and put it into the offering bag, but I am not able to fill it out in time to get it into the bag, so I’ll have to hand it to someone later. I notice that the people who take the offering are all men, and that two of them are wearing suits and ties, although the rest are dressed quite casually. Perhaps the two in more formal dress were here for the first, traditional service.

Pastor Bryon stands up to preach, using a small music stand to hold his notes. They are taking the Lord’s Supper today, and the sermon is about that. He organizes the sermon along four points: when we take the Lord’s Supper we look 1) back at the cross; 2) within, examining ourselves; 3) around, discerning the Lord’s body, which is His church; and 4) ahead, to the Second Coming. He speaks clearly and passionately, and people in the congregation seem interested and intent, often nodding as he makes his points. He challenges us to avoid being “casual, Americanized Christians,” but instead to seek to be true disciples. He urges us to avoid thinking, when we partake of the elements, “Here come the crackers and juice.” Instead, we should think, “Here comes my Lord, on a cross.”

During the part of the sermon about looking around and discerning the body of Christ I am particularly struck by his observation that the life of the church is not in the Sunday morning worship service so much as it is in all the other opportunities to work together as disciples. He discusses the importance of being connected to a church body where you are “accountable, plugged in, serving, and known.” This hits close to home, as I have been unconnected to any church body over the last few months.

His references seem oddly dated, in comparison with the surroundings and the youth-oriented tone of the church. He quotes extensively from the New Hampshire Covenant written by J. Newton Brown in the mid 1800s, from Dwight L. Moody, and from the hymn, “The Old Rugged Cross.” The age of the references makes me wonder if he picked up the outline of the sermon from some kind of sermon service (this type of resource is easy to access on the Internet). These do not seem like the kind of references a young man would ordinarily turn to in his study.

As the ushers come forward to begin serving the communion elements, the youth leader takes the stage. He preaches a sort of second sermon, shorter than the first one, about the importance of communion, as the elements are served to the congregation. At one point he holds up a cup and exclaims, “This is my Jesus, this is my savior!”

This church uses those little square crackers that look like oyster crackers. I’ve been in seven services where communion was celebrated within the last fifteen weeks. Of the four times I’ve partaken, the bread was different each time.

You know, I've read critiques of other folks'communion practices from the viewpoint of Christians who believe that their particular beliefs about and practice of communion are not only correct, but the only really spiritual and respectful and holy way to experience communion. An extremely short (and comparatively nice) version goes something like, "If you think communion is just a symbol, you've missed the whole point." Sometimes they go on to make fun of the juice and crackers, and to say that Christians who don't celebrate communion the way their church does it are not having communion at all, just having a snack in church.

I would like to point out that anyone who sneers at folks who consider the elements "just a symbol" does not understand the power of symbols, and is completely underestimating the depth of feeling that people who believe in the memorial view of this sacrament might be experiencing in their practice of communion. I wrote about this earlier, in my post about Community Gospel Chapel, but I emphasize it again now, regarding communion at Kingsway. These Christians whom some seem to despise for incorrect or inadequate theology may be encountering Christ in the breaking of the bread more deeply and more authentically than you.

After communion there is more singing, and the service ends. There is no coffee hour afterwards, so I give my information card to an usher and leave.

Epilogue

On the Wednesday after the service, I receive a letter thanking me for coming. Soon after that I discover that I am on the church’s e-mail newsletter list.

I didn't hear anyone speaking in tongues at Kingsway Church, but I had heard from other people who are familiar with current trends in the Assemblies of God that speaking in tongues is less and less common in Sunday services, and is increasingly happening only in more private, small group meetings, so I wasn't too surprised by this. I have some familiarity with the topic, which I'll cover in the next post.