PUTTING AN END TO WORSHIP WARS - Elmer Towns

Dallas taught me to preach differently. Dr. Lewis Sperry Chafer, founder said, "You
haven't preached the gospel till you have given people something to believe." I learned Greek
and Hebrew and to exegete the meaning of text in the original language. I learned to "Get my
listeners into the Word, and get the Word into my listeners."
High above the back of the pulpit in seminary chapel, I daily saw the exhortation, "Preach
the Word" (II Tim. 4:2).
During my last two years at Dallas Seminary, I pastored Faith Bible Church and my
preaching vacillated between revivalistic preaching and Bible expositional preaching. When I
wanted to move people, I preached revivalistically. When I wanted to inform them, it was Bible
expositional.
I left Dallas Seminary to become a professor at Midwest Bible College, St. Louis,
Missouri, and I was comfortable with my preaching. I still had a heart passion for evangelistic
preaching, whether revivalistic or just plain soul-winning. At Dallas Seminary I had come to see
the importance of Bible expositional preaching and I was invited to preach in many of the Bible
churches throughout the Midwest. But also, I still had a warm place in my heart for the dignity
or Liturgical Worship as found in my Presbyterian roots.
At Midwest Bible College, many of the students were from Brethren Assemblies,
commonly called Plymouth Brethren Assemblies. I was invited to speak in many of their
assemblies, at least the open assemblies. I brought the warm of evangelistic preaching, tied to
Bible exposition from my Dallas Seminary training. In the Brethren Assemblies I began to taste
the reality of what later I would call "Body Life worship." I realized there was biblical reality as
people related to one another in honest simplicity. The honesty at the Lord's Table, revealed to
me two spiritual realities that I had not experienced up until that moment. First, the power of the
laity in worship and service. Second, that people find the meaning of their life in honest
relationship one to another.
Another experience in St. Louis changed my perspective on worship. During the summer
of 1960, I was hired at $100 a week as Executive Secretary of the Greater St. Louis Sunday
School Association. The organization was making plans to host the National Sunday School
Convention to be held in October of that year in St. Louis. During that summer I visited most of
the churches belonging to the association to rally support for the convention. I visited many
Assembly of God, Church of God, Pentecostal Holiness and Independent Pentecostal churches.
Because of my dispensational background, I had deep questions about the movement; even
questioning whether some even knew the Lord. But among my Pentecostal friends, I found them
to be men of great dignity, warmth of passion for Christ, commitment to holiness, and love of
brotherhood. My assumptions about "wild fire" in their services were proven wrong. Many of
their worship services were like Baptist services, some churches even had liturgy like
Presbyterians or Methodists. From that day forward, I became a friend of Pentecostals and they
became my friends.