Introduction

For a long time in Sydney Australia, the authoritative books available to Pentecostal worship leaders on contemporary worship were “popularist” texts lining Christian bookshops. Framing the Pentecostal movement’s cultural production in Pierre Bourdieu’s terms of artistic position-taking in a field of power, Pentecostal worship leaders chose to align with the market while Catholic and Anglican liturgists generally aligned with the academy (Bourdieu and Johnson 1993). During the so-called ‘worship wars’ (Watkins Autumn 2004; Dawn 1995), these streams became distanced not only theologically, but by the very mediums musicians chose to disseminate their music. Differences in doctrine seemed insignificant compared to choices of instrumentation, methods of developing social capital, distribution channels, programming of services (liturgy) and facilitating of liturgical change. Thus, while Anglican and Catholic churches continued to issue Prayerbooks from denominational offices endorsed by panels of “expert” academic liturgists, in contrast, Hillsong Church’s songwriters sought to distribute their music to listeners through CDs. Pentecostal worship leaders present new songs into their weekend services, with congregational response indicating the tools that are most liturgically useful to the church for that moment in time (Riches and Wagner 2012). Yet, the musicological (and perhaps theological) qualities of these pieces often defied academic explanation. As a whole the repertoire did, however, facilitate what Turner (1995) labels as communitas, becoming iconic symbols of the Holy Spirit’s tangible presence in the Pentecostal ecclesial community. Thus, an “imagined community” of third wave or Neo-Pentecostals was formed in watching annual worship DVDs in much the same way Lyn Clark notes a global Christian community formed through production of the printed text (Anderson 1983; Clark 2007).

As these songs began to flow into other denominational songlists, Hillsong Music Australia’s constituency grew. The church expanded through multiple buildings, with no continent left untouched by its worship music. However, as Turner warns,

Maximization of communitas provokes maximization of structure, which in its turn produces revolutionary strivings for renewed communitas. The history of any great society provides evidence at the political level for this oscillation (Turner in Bradshaw and Melloh 2007, 84).

This has proven true in Hillsong Church’s case, which following structural expansion, continues to strive for music that creates and maintains the same impact as its initial music releases - this leads to the 2013 Hillsong Conference theme ‘This is Revival’, which could be conceived as a continued push for renewed communitas. Not only does this Australian church recognize that it has seen amazing signs of the Spirit’s work, but as an organization its stance is forward-looking, seeking fresh revival, in the hopes of continuing to revitalize the church at large. Perhaps it is this desire internalized that draws the movement towards a socially validating world of academia. It was certainly a desire for fuller and deeper understanding of the Spirit that led me, a worship pastor, to enrol in a PhD at Fuller Theological Seminary, Los Angeles.

While Pentecostals search for renewal experiences, Christian worship is quickly becoming a buzz topic in leading universities around the world. The first Congregational Music Conference hosted by Ripon College, Oxford in 2012 sold out almost instantly, with a waiting list for attendance. The second, most recent conference in August 2013 was representative of interest from global institutions both Christian and secular. Recently, Stanford University publicized a scholar’s impending book release on Christian music in the form of a blogpost.[1] Previously, this would have been unthinkable – secular music scholars have been unwilling to be associated with more commercialized forms of Christian music, believing them less musically sophisticated. A change in interest towards this topic can be attributed to the affective turn within sociology, and rising anthropology of Christianity group in the United States. Pentecostal worship provides endless case studies for both disciplines, although relatively few good studies are published. Evangelical and Catholic musicians are now adopting Pentecostal distribution mechanisms and channels. Within seminaries, however, worship is often given little importance, and is treated as a sub-discipline taught by adjuncts. And, Pentecostal worship studies lies between the secularized discipline of ritual studies e.g. Daniel Albrecht’s Rites in the Spirit (Albrecht 1999), and its more Christian variant, liturgical studies, e.g. James K. A. Smith’s works which emphasizes traditional Christian liturgy (Smith 2013). Only a few liturgical scholars have experience in Pentecostalism, perhaps because the Pentecostal movement avoids the word ‘liturgy’ altogether. This paper serves as a reflection upon my experience of living between these two worlds, as a Pentecostal worship leader, on the one hand, and a Ph.D. student using ritual methods, on the other - an insider and outside of both worlds. Its goal is to highlight some of the issues Pentecostal students encounter studying Pentecostalism within non-Pentecostal institutions, and to suggest some ways forward.

Methodology: Choosing a site and Fieldwork

This paper is a reflection on my own experiences as a ritual ethnographer (ethnomusicology) – it is thus autoethnography. There is now increasing awareness of the myth of objectivity in ethnographic research, so autoethnography focuses on the experience of the researcher – “the researcher becomes the research subject” (Denzin & Lincoln 2003, p.51). In this case, my reflections have their origins in a liturgical ethnographic research undertaken as one of three methodology classes during my PhD program, during which I was given the opportunity to apply the tools of ethnographic ritual research to two Australian immigrant congregations in the United States. I chose a significant site, Newport Church, Orange County which I believed was in an interesting growth phase. Their main service was located in the Lido Theatre, Newport; about forty minutes drive south of our apartment. This church is relationally linked to the Australian Pentecostal network in many ways. Senior Pastors Jonathan and Dianne Wilson (Dianne is Australian, Jonathan is a British-born but naturalized Australian) served under Frank Houston in the City Christian Life Centre. Later when Hillsong acquired this congregation as their City campus, Jonathan served as a Senior Associate Pastor and elder at Hillsong Church, and Dianne was involved in the social justice department, Hillsong Emerge. Although based for many years in this congregation, the couple chose not to take the Hillsong brand when planting their church in California seven years ago. Despite this distinction of identity, Newport Church features regularly on the instagram and twitter pages of Hillsong’s key pastors including Brian and Bobbie, and Hillsong’s star performers such as Matt Crocker visit the church often – it is also reputed home church of Christine Caine, famous Australian preacher and campaign leader of the “A21” anti-Human Trafficking organization. Interestingly, Newport church opted not to gain credentials locally through the American Assemblies of God (AOG), but instead continued within the Australian Christian Churches (ACC), effectively locating Newport Church as an Australian church operating on American soil.[2]

The second site I chose to investigate was the New York plant of Hillsong Church. Hillsong NYC is an Australian church with its business arm and key administration office based in Sydney under the leadership of Senior Pastors Brian and Bobbie Houston. However, as the congregation grows it is suspected that lead pastors of Hillsong NYC (married couples Carl and Laura Lentz, and Joel and Esther Houston) will be more intricately involved in decision making for Hillsong Church. This marks the emergence of a ‘Hillsong Global’ leadership team, and group of leaders from different locations in constant dialogue and close partnership - a significant shift of Australian Pentecostal missions into truly transnational congregations.

Many Australian readers would be familiar with the history and expansion of Hillsong Church, and so I will not attempt to recount this information here but refer readers instead to other articles in which Hillsong’s theological views, musical product, business practice, marketing and missional strategies have been reviewed (Riches 2010; Riches and Wagner 2012; Maddox 2013; Evans 2006; Hartje-Doll 2013; McIntyre 2007). In order to research these two Australian congregations, I attended Newport Church in total seven times over eighteen months, for a woman’s conference ‘Imagine’, for a worship concert and three times on regular Sundays, where possible attending multiple services. And, during the quarter’s classes I was given a plane ticket to New York, so was able to attend a service at Hillsong’s campus in Manhattan, New York. What follows is my reflection upon the challenge of being a Pentecostal musician (and a former member of Hillsong church) and a scholar attempting to study the “liturgical ritual” of these two churches.

The Movement’s Position-Taking Defines Everything

In Ethnomusicology it is usual that musicians investigate other music, even performing with the groups they are researching (Barz and Cooley 1997; Chiener Autumn, 2002). However, within liturgical studies it is less common to be a researcher participant. In the initial stages of my research I realized that being an Australian Pentecostal worship leader studying Pentecostalism from an evangelical American institution was a particular position-taking, and required constant negotiation – in this case, with both the sites under research, and my ritual studies Professor Todd Johnson. I was already located in the field of artistic production, particularly when it came to what I felt I should or should not say within the study as a Pentecostal student. But my challenges were a microcosm of the greater difference between Australian Pentecostal and American evangelical scholarship; and, more relevantly, secular Australian academics, who dominate the terms of discussion about Australian Pentecostalism. As a case in point, during my research an article by Marian Maddox from Macquarie University was promoted via Pentecostal scholar Shane Clifton’s blog[3]. In the online discussions that ensued, although many Pentecostal friends agreed with points of the study, they stated that they felt unfairly critiqued by her portrayal of Hillsong Church’s limiting and conservative roles for women, promotion of prosperity gospel and blatant consumerism (Maddox 2013). This added to their perception of a relentless negative portrayal of Australian Pentecostalism in the Australian media, particularly by Sydney’s newspaper and television journalists. And in their defence, a large body of critical journalistic work has issued forth regarding the operating budgets of the church and right to Australian tax breaks (Denton 30 July 2007 ; Levin 2007b; Power Dec 2004; Jones Monday, 1 August, 2005; Levin 2007a; Biddle May 2007; Bearup 25/01/03), as well as ongoing surprise about the size of the church, and concern regarding its inevitable growing influence with political parties (ABC Network 21 June 2006; Stackpool; Connell November 2005; Bagnall 2000; Farias 10/10/05; Zinchini October 2007 ; Bryson Sunday 24 April 2005; Collins 2006). Hillsong musicians that fail morally now do so with a public audience (Benge 1998). Thus, while some notable liturgists such as Michael Hawn and Gerard Moore have overviewed Hillsong’s liturgical and musical content (Hawn Spring 2006; Moore 2006) liturgical conversation is often derailed by other issues. Australian musicologists such as Mark Evans who are sympathetic to its musicality tend to align theologically with Sydney evangelical positions, decrying celebrification of worship musicans and outlining missing theological themes e.g. God’s judgement or wrath (Evans 2006). Thus, any scholarship of Hillsong music is forced into the parameters of existing discourse on Australian Pentecostalism.

While insiders intuitively understand the intricacies of participation within these communities, and learn to ignore wider messages recounted by the public, only outside perspectives are available in the literature. Thus, insiders complain about the misinterpreting of commercialized resource on offer and misunderstanding of its use in the devotional life of church members. Hillsong leaders I spoke to, although positive towards the idea of my study of Australian churches and affirming there was value in writing an ethnography at this critical point in time (as the movement changes towards truly transnational global ministry teams), were sceptical of the scholarly community they imagined I was reporting to, and the types of representation available to them within academic research. Speaking with a visiting Hillsong leader about the upcoming Hillsong Conference in Los Angeles, I suggested inviting seminary students and faculty, and she quipped back “Come on! We all know that they don’t like us!” This strange feeling of being both insider and an outsider as an Australian Pentecostal studying at an evangelical seminary caused ethical and theological concerns, some outlined here. These questions form an ongoing personal search for a way to serve the church in ways congruent with a PhD education, within the limitations of an academic and musical performance career.

1) Personal Identity: who is an insider/outsider performing scholar?

Attending an evangelical seminary while studying these Pentecostal congregations caused ethical dilemmas that impacted my sense of personal identity, leaving me to ask the existential question, “who am I?” While initially I was excited to attend a church in Los Angeles more representative of my religious home (as a Hillsong Church member for many years), over time this became more difficult. Many of my friendships were rekindled from time at Hillsong Sydney’s City or Hills campuses, where I had an existing social location, holding varied leadership roles within the creative department (songwriter, vocalist, choir director, administrator). In contrast, the “researcher” role is unknown within the Pentecostal world. Most pastors in the Pentecostal movement eschew theological and liturgical experts over leaders serving practically within church congregations. In my time attending Newport Church, while American church members responded positively to my self-description as a PhD Seminary student, many Australians even avoided me at times due to confusion over my role. Yet, given it was a forty-minute drive from Newport without traffic, it was not feasible to join their worship team. Neither would it be appropriate for me to attend Newport Church services regularly while my husband served as a paid staff member in the AOG. My attendance was not regular enough for me to be considered a member, nor would it ever be so. And, disparity between Australian and American movements became obvious at Newport Church, which was well organized and highly structured, and sought to evangelize using methods their American counterparts no longer use or have never used. The question remained – who or what was I? Was I an old friend people were catching up with, or a researcher interviewing them? Where was I located theologically or doctrinally? I felt dislocated by being a transient in a familiar space. I desired to connect with Senior Pastors Di and Jonathon, with whom I had a distant relationship in Sydney - but as a researcher I realized I may not ultimately report what they hoped to hear about their church, and this left me vulnerable. It brought up questions regarding the role of a Pentecostal researcher in Pentecostal churches. Looking at my Catholic, Anglican and Baptist counterparts in seminaries, there is a (mainly) collegial relationship between bishops and seminaries that facilitates a place for liturgical research. But within the pragmatic and popularist Pentecostal movement, I wonder about the usefulness of research for this community. And as outside institutions are not usually recognized, I am still unsure what a PhD student (even a seminarian) can currently contribute to Pentecostal churches. In the end, I settled on a role of advocacy – describing the movement as a sympathetic outsider to America’s evangelical and Australia’s secular scholars.

2) What is the place of liturgical research within the Pentecostal church?

A key question raised while undertaking this research was the stance of a Pentecostal seminary student undertaking liturgical research. John Witvliet grapples with this, outlining three possible approaches. The first is a naïve "value-free approach", where a scholar believes their values are irrelevant to the work they are doing. The second is "value-aware" research, in which one’s own frame is acknowledged, and while impact is inevitable, the researcher seeks to ensure they are cognizant of, and responsive to their own frame. The third is a "value-committed" approach, which Witvliet suggests is the best for liturgical evaluation. He indicates that the role of liturgical studies is to present prescriptive, rather than descriptive analysis, and states,

…Liturgists who aspire to a pastoral function in an ecclesial community intend not only to describe existing ritual practice but also to envision a liturgical ideal, to diagnose ritual pathology, to discern exemplary ritual improvements and to prescribe appropriate ritual adaptation (Bradshaw and Melloh 2007, 24).

This brings particular issues to bear not only for this study, but also for Pentecostals seeking to investigate liturgy. Ideally the ideas of a Pentecostal liturgist would be, as in other movements, considered (on their merit) as prophetic or constructive participation in denominational (if not congregational) reform; compared to the only option to a Pentecostal – to be a critical independent researchers using the market to distribute their ideas. The potential to set up research as a feedback loop that follows lines of inquiry raised by the Pentecostal constituency and that answers actual questions they are interested in is yet unrealized, however could potentially direct the increasing studies in this area rather than forcing students to pursue conversation topics dictated by the non-Pentecostal academic community.

There are particular liturgical recommendations I can make following this experience, on two counts. Firstly, expanding the vocabulary of Australian pastors beyond the language of ‘praise’ and into ‘lament’ is of concern to both Australian (Melton 2008; Hutchinson 2009) and international scholars (Maré 2008). The practical realities of this were highlighted during a service in which a former congregant’s death was announced. Pastor Jonathan Wilson, visibly moved, conducted the announcement with great pastoral sensitivity. However, the music following was (in my opinion) inadequate for the task of bringing healing to the congregation’s pain or leading them through the grief and shock of this announcement. Instead, they turned to praise, a bold declaration of God’s sovereignty over the situation. In leaving the full range of human emotion unaddresed, songwriters and publishers send congregation members an unintentional message that only some emotional content is acceptable before God. Declaring God’s sovereignty over pain and suffering is only one biblical response found in the text. Songs can also be vehicles for comfort, healing, assurance, and even angry lament as modelled in many of the psalms. Recommendations for greater liturgical breadth should be presented to Pentecostal church publishing houses for creative solutions.

In addition, I found an unsettling divergence between the official and unofficial place of women in the leadership team at both plants – in one location the service conveyed intentional inclusion (and yet also distance, as women leaders were channelled into the women’s ministry yet this was not countered with a similar intensity towards men’s ministry) while in the other no female voice was amplified during an entire service. Admittedly, I realize that young mothers spend a considerable amount of time in the cry room with infants and, particularly in church plants there are few minders to allow them to utilize their gifts, however some kind of feedback questioning the unintentional communication visitors do receive of exclusion in service programming is important in understanding the lived experience of those attending Australian Pentecostal churches.

These are but two relatively minor examples, but my point is that the Academy has something to contribute to Pentecostal ritual, yet within a “religious marketplace” mentality, the opportunity to present these insights as a scholar in liturgical studies is limited, and can be threatening to the pastoral leadership. There is a great need for work to be done in promoting the benefits of scholarship amongst Australian Pentecostal pastors, highlighting the potential roles for and possibilities of Pentecostal research.

3) Reflections on Navigating Congregational Corporate Narratives and Branding

In addition to the issues above, Pentecostalism’s strong emphasis upon branding and self-presentation impacted my liturgical research into these Pentecostal congregations. Hillsong Church (and, following this study I can also add Newport Church) use a branding communication technique that leverages emotional attachment through their music product and events (McIntyre 2007; Riches and Wagner 2012), to create a holistic “religious lifestyle brand” (Clark 2007). This is not unique to Australian Pentecostal churches, as Robin Clark identifies other religious communities that use the global market to facilitate their corporate identity using material objects to promote their faith, e.g. Muslim boy bands in Malaysia and Kabbalah bracelets in Los Angeles (Clark 2007). However, this created particular problems in the process of researching worship using ritual and liturgical methods.

Often members were unaware of their church’s denominational affiliation but were highly aware of their congregation’s narrative. As individual members relayed a corporate history, the implementation of branding techniques and public relations policy became increasingly clear. I found that this impacted research significantly. When being interviewed, individual members sought to present an oral narrative that matched the content spoken by leadership within the meetings (perceived as the ‘correct’ public knowledge), even when it was at odds with their own lived reality or the evidence I presented in the data. As I talked informally with leaders working in both churches I was studying, as well as other American and Australian Pentecostal pastors, it became clear that many of the Australians believed there were certain things that were possible to admit to members, that were inappropriate to say about the church body in public. This seemed to connect into the corporate branding strategies for these churches. There was an overwhelming belief that an evangelical audience (even a Swedish Lutheran liturgy Professor) was an ‘outsider’ audience, and no distinction was made between this versus a secular, popular audience. Thus, in addition to questions of who could speak, were questions of what could be said.

Both congregations I studied in Los Angeles seemed to find it difficult to voice stories of tragedy and/or loss (the extreme example above being Pastor Jonathan Wilson’s valiant struggle with an oral obituary at Newport Church). Not only this, they struggled reconciling stories of members who had left or even areas of administration they perceived their new church plants fell short of the ideal. In both cases, there were stories relayed to me that were deemed “off record”. These mostly concerned instances that diverted from rhetoric purported from the stage.

Herbert Anderson and Edward Foley present an excellent resource for Pentecostal researchers navigating divergent liturgical narratives in their text Mighty Stories, Dangerous Rituals. The authors comment;

Stories are privileged and imaginative acts of self-interpretation. We tell stories of a life in order to establish meaning and to integrate our remembered past with what we perceive to be happening in the present and what we anticipate for the future (Anderson and Foley 2002, Loc 187).

Anderson and Foley suggest liturgists consider the biblical genres of myth and parable to help negotiate the stories gathered in ethnographic research. The current emphasis upon branding could be said to trend towards the mythic or ideal, rather than the parabolic, or real. While Pentecostal pastors often promote myth (narratives of stability and future hope), media reports often emphasise parable (narratives of contradiction and present realities). An academic, however, must negotiate both types of narrative in order to represent the community as its members experience it. I found Anderson and Foley’s work helpful in advocating a reflexive scholarship that does not transgress explanations of the ideal or the corporate brand emphasized by church leaders, but moves them beyond their “horizon” or limits to see the real or actual. The Pentecostal mandate to ‘honor’ and seek the best for the church as the bride of Christ (drawn from Eph 5:24-25) can play into a censorship of Pentecostal scholarship. Within a Pentecostal context, the recounting of parabolic stories may cause offence and pain. If a researcher omits a parabolic tale noted within media reports, deeming it unrelated to their research, this can be perceived as a lack of rigor. However on the other had, to only recount parabolic narratives but refuse to take into account the more mythic, positive, and stabilizing stories recounted by worshippers in these churches is to do the community a disservice. These are ethical quandaries faced by Australian Pentecostals hoping to remain within the Pentecostal church and continue in relationship with church leaders whilst working in academia.

4) Reflections upon Presented Selves and Power

It is not just the narratives that must be examined in liturgical research; there are power dynamics that also need to be reviewed. Power dynamics in Pentecostal churches are easily identified by outsiders due to hierarchical organizational structure and visible leverage held upon members in regards to tithing and the purchase of material identity markers (measured in CD sales). However, Nathan D. Mitchell draws upon Michel Foucault to note that within a liturgical setting, "… power is contingent, local, imprecise, relational and organizational" (Bradshaw and Melloh 2007, 126). He states,

Foucault broke with the long-standing Western tradition that sees power as substantive, centralized, sovereign or hypostasized (e.g. in the person of a monarch). Instead, power is distributed all over the social body; it is a matter of techniques and discursive practices that comprise the micropolitics of everyday life (Bradshaw and Melloh 2007, 126).

Foucault notes two ways every day people build power, firstly self-disclosure (exomologesis) and secondly renunciation of the self (exagoresis). Both are pertinent to the study of Pentecostal worship, as musicians and songwriters are conscious of the image that they portray to the world, and use the techniques of disclosing and renouncing their actions as signs of authenticity.

These acts can be seen as political, and considered an “alternative politics”, as Amos Yong terms it, that operates in Pentecostal congregations worldwide (Yong 2010). Knowledge of the internal dynamics of Pentecostal worship teams heightens confusion for ‘insider’ researchers wading through the information presented, and struggling to identify true motivation within the plethora of communication issuing forth from key musicians and music industry liasons. For example, key worship leaders regularly denounce having a role in institutional marketing, however I believe they often do have a strong influence, despite their attempts to distance themselves from these decisions. Joel Houston’s sermon at Hillsong NYC included an illustration of the iconic tourist logo “I Heart NYC” at Hillsong Manhattan; a discussion of love and desire which led into his song “Love is War” released on Hillsong United’s Zion album (Houston 2013)., confirming my own intuitive knowledge that songwriters are not only cognisant of local branding modes, but increasingly leverage their knowledge to their advantage in all forms of Pentecostal cultural production. However it is difficult to see beyond personal disclosures and renunciations to the communitas the Pentecostal community actually seeks. In fact, highlighting these “micropolitics” can disguise the actual activity, that of creating an alternative community within a given social setting – in this case Newport Beach’s yuppies and New York’s Manhattan executive and creative class. Oversight of the community building undervalues both the contribution of Pentecostal liturgical elements (such as songs) and also fails to capture the true Zeitgeist or spirit of the generation.

5) Mediating between the Embodied/Physical and Transcendent/Spiritual

The language provided by the academy for articulating issues important to congregation members in their own analysis of contemporary worship is limited. This relates not only to data gathered but also to the method in which this is done. While embodied and emotional aspects of the worship are of key importance to congregation members, there are limited methods to gather this data. Although ritual and liturgical authors acknowledge the importance of these aspects (Bradshaw and Melloh 2007, 112), they are often valued under more ‘concrete’ data provided in language (particularly lyrical) and musical content. When researchers do seek out other information, Pentecostal congregations often resist meaning-making imposed upon them by external parties. A worship leader from Hillsong Music’s newest release Young & Free (Y&F), Laura Toganivalu (nee Houston) recently tweeted “sometimes … triangles are just triangles”[4]. As the predominant lighting and staging themes for the last years have revolved around triangular staging features, it is clear that such statements are indicative of a desire for the songwriting and performing community to push back against those who “overthink” their craft. This also means however that more spiritual aspects of worship are also often kept within the community and left unmentioned in ethnographic accounts. Although researchers note that "ritual's role is to teach the body how to develop spiritual virtues by material means" (Bradshaw and Melloh 2007, 112), when it comes to Pentecostal music, the spiritual is yet to be truly explored in Pentecostal ways within the literature to date, and the vocabulary to describe (particularly Australian) Pentecostal spirituality is limited.

Conclusions

Perhaps this article is a call for reflection and action for all those interested in not just in researching but in understanding and deepening the Pentecostal worship experience. Contemporary worship courses are increasingly in demand in universities internationally, and Pentecostal churches are capable of becoming leading providers in this area. However, for the Australian Pentecostal students that pursue education on evangelical, Catholic and secular campuses, a particular negotiation is required in order to keep their uniquely Pentecostal perspective. The society for Ethnomusicology has recently sought to mediate the issues of faith-based research in music due to an influx of Christian (largely Pentecostal) musicians and scholars. I believe musicological and liturgical research is valuable to the Pentecostal movement on many levels, not least of which is creating an historical record of the spirituality and cultural production of this burgeoning movement. However, introducing Pentecostal students to the literature of liturgical and ritual studies initiates scholars into global conversations that have the potential to marginalize them from two directions – both within these disciplines and their own movements. This article has not been a comprehensive review of all that was learned, but aims to illuminate the need for development in regards to interface between Pentecostal churches and the academy, in order for Pentecostals to have a voice recounting their own history. My hope would be that church members who pursue academic training would be seen as a benefit rather than threat to Pentecostal churches. If nothing else I have identified a future goal of finding a ‘way’ of research that enables me to move within the spaces of Pentecostal worship performance and scholarship in more authentic ways.

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