Nazarenes, Pentecostals Bridge Differences at Pasadena Service : Prayer: Disagreement about validity of speaking in tongues is a sore point. First Church of the Nazarene’s invitation to a Pentecostalist is called ‘a bit daring.’

His sermon was a model of diplomacy, but the mere presence of Pentecostal pastor Jack Hayford in the pulpit of one of the nation’s largest Nazarene churches was bound to raise eyebrows.

The invitation to Hayford by the Pasadena First Church of the Nazarene was “unusual, and a bit daring,” given the denomination’s longstanding opposition to some Pentecostal practices, said the Rev. Ponder Gilliland, retired president of Southern Nazarene University in Bethany, Okla.

But last week, that disapproval was not in evidence as 1,600 worshipers gave a warm welcome to Hayford, pastor of the 8,000-member Church on the Way in Van Nuys and a widely respected religious leader.

“We love you very much,” said Senior Pastor Stephen Green, hugging Hayford.

During his sermon, Hayford steered clear of the controversial subject of speaking in tongues, which Pentecostals embrace as “prayer language” but Nazarenes disavow.

Although both the Church of the Nazarene and the broader Pentecostal movement were born in Los Angeles around the turn of the century and have similar theological roots, the Nazarenes have staunchly opposed any incursion into their ranks by the distinctive Pentecostal and charismatic practice of speaking in tongues.

The New Testament describes speaking in tongues--making sounds whose meaning is unknown to the speaker--as one of the supernatural “gifts of the Holy Spirit.”

Critics say it is just a babbling imitation of a practice that was authentic only in biblical times.

Recently, however, signs have surfaced that there is a Pentecostalist-style “underground” among the Nazarenes, despite the denomination’s opposition.

In January, the pastor of the First Nazarene Church of Bozeman, Mont., submitted his resignation as a Nazarene clergyman after a losing battle to persuade church authorities to legitimize speaking in tongues. He argued that the Bible and Protestant tradition do not prohibit the practice.

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Last year, entire Nazarene congregations in Fairbanks, Alaska, and Lexington, Ky., were forced out of the denomination because their leaders refused to stop speaking in tongues, said the Rev. Al Woods, pastor of what was renamed the Door of Hope Church in Fairbanks.

Against that background, “It will be interesting to see whether a mega-church and its pastor will come under any rebuke,” Woods said in a telephone interview, referring to the 3,300-member Pasadena congregation’s hosting of Hayford.

E.R. Camfield of San Gabriel, who writes a gadfly-style newsletter for about 8,000 fellow Nazarenes, called Hayford’s appearance a historic turning point for the million-member denomination based in Kansas City, Mo.

In a 1976 statement still cited today, the Nazarene general superintendents strongly opposed speaking in tongues by Nazarenes and advised churches not “to schedule in our churches speakers or singers who are known to be active in the so-called charismatic movement.”

However, the Rev. Jack Stone, general secretary of the denomination, said that the statement “does not preclude having an occasional (Pentecostal) guest speaker as long as he doesn’t inveigh against our doctrine.”

The practice comes from the biblical Book of Acts, which says that on the Day of Pentecost after Christ’s death, the Holy Spirit descended upon the apostles, causing them to speak in strange tongues as they were launched on the work of founding Christianity.

All of Christianity commemorates Pentecost as the birth of the early church, but Pentecostalists also recall it as scriptural evidence for the legitimacy of the modern-day revival of speaking in tongues.

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The Catholic Church and most mainline Protestant church bodies today have accepted the presence of Pentecostal believers, usually called charismatics, in their ranks--although only after a period of controversy surrounding their emergence during the 1960s and early 1970s.

“There is also an underground movement of Nazarene pastors who believe in the gift of tongues, but they keep quiet about it,” claimed Camfield, who attends the Pasadena church.

Although Nazarene pastor Green and scattered other worshipers at the Wednesday night service raised their arms in prayer while singing, that once-telltale sign of a Pentecostal believer has spread to many other Christians.

“I am not a Pentecostal, but I’m not anti-Pentecostal either,” Green said in an interview. “I think maybe the day of grumbling and nit-picking is a thing of the past. . . . We want to be Nazarene, but we see ourselves as part of the larger whole.”

Green said that Hayford, a pastor in the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel, founded in 1927 by Los Angeles evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson, “speaks beyond Pentecostalism; he witnesses to the kingdom of God.”

Indeed, Hayford co-sponsored a series of interdenominational prayer gatherings of Los Angeles-area pastors and was the architect of the Luis Palau Evangelical Crusade in the San Fernando Valley last year.

With a diplomatic, conversational style of preaching, Hayford is a frequent speaker at national evangelical gatherings involving both Pentecostal and non-Pentecostal Christians. He said he has spoken once before to a Nazarene group, but that was an underground charismatic congregation.

Indicating that he was mindful of the tact needed in his Pasadena appearance, Hayford quipped last week that “a whole bunch of people are praying and fasting at Church on the Way for their pastor, saying, ‘Lord, help him be good.’ ”

Hayford’s congregation need not have worried.

He referred twice during his hour-long talk to the New Testament description of the apostles’ Pentecost experience, but made no mention of speaking in tongues.

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Hayford said that in his church and the Nazarene congregation he sees “a passion to be filled with the Spirit (which is) called baptism of the Spirit in our terms and sanctification in your terms.”

The concept of sanctification, though variously defined, implies that when believers are filled with the Holy Spirit, they will find sin less alluring and lead sanctified lives, many of them forgoing movies and other activities deemed morally questionable.

“Whatever you have been taught, as I have been, about the difference in our traditions,” Hayford said, “the more I look at people . . . the more I see they’re all just the same--a passion for holiness before the Lord.”