by Rusty Entrekin
Not many people are aware
of it, but the Bible does tell us how to conduct a church
meeting! Not only that, but through lack of understanding,
ignorance, or just plain apathy, far too many churches do not obey these
biblical instructions. They are found in 1 Co 14:26-40.
1 Co 14:26 begins with “What then shall we say, brothers? When you
come together, everyone has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a
revelation, a tongue or an interpretation.”
There is a very important word in this verse that is usually
ignored. It is the word “everyone.” The text does not say,
“When you come together, the minister of music has a song, and the
pastor has a word of instruction.” Instead, it tells us that
“everyone” comes with the potential to contribute something. Since
this is the case, shouldn’t we give everyone the opportunity to do
so? This verse makes it startlingly clear that God does not intend
for pastors to be the only people who are allowed to bring a word of
instruction during church, or ministers of music the only ones who
introduce songs to sing! As the apostle Paul wrote in Col 3:16,
“Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly as you teach and admonish
one another with all wisdom, and as you sing psalms, hymns, and
spiritual songs with gratitude in your hearts to God.” “Speak to
one another,” Paul also wrote in Eph 5:19-20, “with psalms, hymns, and
spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord,
always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of
our Lord Jesus Christ.” In the above verses, notice the emphasis
on teaching “one another”, and singing to “one another.”
Returning to 1 Co 14:26, note that the apostle wrote “When you come
together, each one has a . . . word of instruction . . .” There is
an abundance of wisdom in everything that the Lord has ordained, and
this is no exception. When a church leader seldom allows anyone
other than himself to teach, his church will suffer in several different
ways. Since it is impossible for one man to meet the teaching
needs of everyone in his congregation, many will go spiritually
hungry. And since this church leader will seldom receive teaching
from others, he will go spiritually hungry. Is there a
church leader on earth who is so mature that he cannot benefit from the
teaching of others in church?
"But, brother,” I can imagine someone objecting, “we allow others
with the gift of teaching to teach in Sunday School, not in
church.” That’s good–at least the members of your church have some
outlet for teaching one another – but it’s not good enough. Paul
could not have been talking about Sunday School meetings in this
passage; Sunday School did not even exist in Paul’s time! He was
talking about church meetings. In fact, Paul used the word
“church” seven times in this chapter, and 14:23 makes it very clear that
Paul was writing about when the “whole church comes together”.
In 14:26, Paul gives us
examples of various contributions each believer may make to the
meeting. In the verses that follow, he tells us how to incorporate
them into the meeting. Notice that the apostle does not give us an
“order of worship.” Instead, he gives us principles and guidelines
to follow which infuse freedom, spontaneity, and creativity into church
meetings! Several guidelines can be gleaned from 14:26-36.
Guideline
One
The
first guideline, in the last half of 14:26, is that “All of these
[songs, teachings, etc.] must be done for the strengthening of the
church.” Whatever is spoken in the meeting must edify, or
strengthen, the church. Usually this entails speaking a positive
and uplifting word, but a church may also ultimately be edified by a
challenging word that produces sorrow and repentance.
Guideline
Two
The second
guideline is “If anyone speaks in a tongue, two–or at the most
three–should speak, one at a time, and someone must interpret. If
there is no interpreter, the speaker should keep quiet in the church and
speak to himself and to God” (14:27). Unfortunately, because
tongues is one of the more spectacular gifts, in modern times we have
just as great a tendency to get off balance with it as the Corinthians
did in their day. Paul’s instructions are often ignored in several
different ways, In some churches people speak publicly in tongues
without an interpreter. In others, nearly everyone speaks publicly
in tongues at once. Needless to say, this causes outsiders to
think the church members are mentally unbalanced (1 Co 14:23)!
At the other
extreme, in many churches speaking in tongues is not permitted at all,
despite the fact that Paul makes allowance for it here, and despite the
instruction he gave later in 14:39: “do not forbid speaking in
tongues.” Why would the Lord have given us this gift if he did not
want us to use it? This is not to say that every church will have
the gift of tongues, but all churches should be open to its exercise
according to Scripture.
Guideline Three
A third guideline is
that “Two or three prophets should speak, and the others should weigh
carefully what is said” (14:29). A prophecy, according to W.E.
Vine’s Expository Dictionary, is “the speaking forth of the mind
and counsel of God.” Thus prophecy is not limited to
“foretelling;” it is more completely described as “forth telling.”
Vine describes a prophet as having three primary characteristics: 1) the
Spirit of God rests on him, 2) he converses with God, and 3) he is one
from whom a message from God springs forth or is secretly disclosed.
The above verse should not be considered as a command that two or
three prophets must speak, but rather as a command to allow two or three
prophets to speak. Prophecy should not be forbidden, but we should
“weigh carefully what is said” (14:29). Even when “thus saith the
Lord” is attached to a message, we should not accept it
unquestionably. God expects us to discern His Word from that which
is not His, because false teaching and false prophecy are a real
possibility. As 1 Th 5:19-21 tells us, “Do not put out the
Spirit’s fire; do not treat prophecies with contempt. Test
everything. Hold on to the good.”
Since the offices of teacher and prophet are treated as
separate ministries in Eph 4:11, we should not consider teaching and
prophecy to be the same thing. Teaching is usually based on
learning and preparation; but prophecy is based on revelations of the
Spirit. There is some overlap between the two, however, because 1
Co 14:31 tells us that instruction is one of the goals of
prophecy. In fact, many of the spiritual gifts can overlap.
A song, for instance, could teach doctrine, and an interpretation of a
message in tongues could take the form of a prophecy. Likewise, a
prophecy could take the form of a teaching, A good example of this
is the prophecy given by King Lemuel’s mother to her son in Pr
31:1-31. Verse 1 refers tothe passage as an oracle (lit.,
“burden,” a term often used in the OT to indicate a weighty message
given by God), but it is written simply in the form of a mother teaching
her son.
Peter wrote that “Each one should use whatever gift he has
received to serve others, faithfully administering God’s grace in its
various forms. If anyone speaks, he should do it as one speaking
the very words of God” (1 Pe 4:10-11). Every word that is spoken
in a church meeting should be prompted by the Spirit of God and
delivered in a manner befitting such an utterance. Note also that
we are commanded to use whatever spiritual gift God has given us “to
serve others, faithfully administering God’s grace” (4:10).
Spiritual gifts are not so much gifts to us as they are gifts to the
body of Christ. Because of this, it would be wrong for us not to
serve others with our gifts! The beauty of a scriptural church
meeting is that it gives us more opportunities to do this.
Guideline Four
In 1 Co
14:30 we read the fourth guideline: “and if a revelation comes to
someone who is sitting down, the first speaker should stop.” There
are several observations that we can draw from this verse. The
first is that most church meetings should be more participatory than
they are. Unfortunately, in many of our modern churches, if
someone attempted to follow the spirit of this verse by saying, “I’d
like to add something to that”, he would be promptly escorted out the
door by the deacons. God never meant that there should not be
spontaneity in our meetings. Preparation is good, but no meeting
should ever be planned so that we do not permit the Holy Spirit to
surprise us. We must allow Him room to lead sovereignly.
Spontaneity and the freedom for anyone to speak add an air of excitement
and expectancy to worship. The Lord never intended that church
meetings be a boring experience!
The word that is translated “revelation” (14:30) means “an
unveiling of secrets given by the Spirit.” There are several forms
that a revelation may take. One way is that the Spirit may
give a sudden understanding of a Bible passage or a scriptural principle
to someone in a church meeting, who then shares it to complement a
message that is being spoken.
Following this, Paul makes a corollary statement: “For you can
all prophesy in turn so that everyone may be instructed and encouraged”
(14:31). The principle evident here is that one person’s gift
cannot meet the needs of everyone. If we want everyone to be
instructed and encouraged, then everyone must be allowed to participate
in his proper turn.
If someone speaks out of turn, however, then those who are more
spiritually mature have the responsibility to ask him to be quiet, and
to restore order as quickly and discreetly as possible. Talking
out of turn is speaking when the Holy Spirit has not led, and includes
being disruptive, domineering, disorderly, long winded, or teaching
falsehoods. Related to this, the apostle next teaches us that God
gives no one an uncontrollable urge to speak: “The spirits of the
prophets are subject to the control of the prophets” (14:32). If a
person disturbs an otherwise orderly church meeting, claiming he cannot
help himself, then the urge to do so does not come from God. As
Paul continues in v 33, “For God is not a God of disorder but of peace.”
A home meeting in New Testament times. Since the
meetings were interactive and took place in homes, participants
probably sat in a circle instead of rows.
Guideline
Five
A fifth
guideline for meetings is based on 14:33b-35, “As in all the
congregations of the saints, women should remain silent in the
churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be submissive,
as the Law says. If they want to inquire about something, they
should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman
to speak in the church.” An entire chapter could easily be devoted
to explaining (or explaining away) this fifth guideline (see chapter
entitled “Women Should Remain Silent”)! For now, suffice it to say
that unless open, participatory meetings were the norm, these
instructions for women would have been meaningless. Obviously,
people were asking questions of the various speakers in the meeting.
Guideline
Six
The last
guideline for church gatherings over-arches all else: “But everything
should be done in a fitting and orderly way” (14:40). Spontaneity
in church is no excuse for disorder! However, neither is doing
things in a “fitting and orderly way” an excuse for following a
preprinted church bulletin. On the contrary, such schedules
effectively serve to squelch the Holy Spirit. The tenor of 1 Co 14
suggests that God’s norm for church meetings is that nothing be
pre-planned. “Orderly” (14:40) spontaneity is to be the
standard.
Notice also the complete lack of emphasis on church leaders in
1 Co 14. They simply did not dominate nor moderate the
meeting. Certainly the leaders spoke up if a violation of the
order of 1 Co 14 occurred, but otherwise they just blended into the
woodwork. Did you catch the cavalier way Paul just tossed a “word
of instruction” in with all the other elements of the meeting (1 Co
14:26)? Preaching did not dominate New Testament assemblies.
That “everyone” could potentially teach at any given meeting suggests
that not even the teaching was pre-scheduled. Certainly those
inclined to teach would prepare ahead of time, but that is not the same
as always having someone slated to teach in advance. Such rigidity
simply is not “fitting” (14:40)!
It is obvious from Scripture that church
meetings should be participatory, and that everyone should be allowed to
contribute freely and spontaneously to them. Since this is so
different from the way that churches normally hold meetings today, many
will undoubtedly find 1 Co 14:26-40 tempting to ignore.
But God does not give us that option! Instead, the apostle Paul
tells us that what he is writing is “the Lord’s command.” “Did the
Word of God originate with you? Or are you the only people it has
reached? If anybody thinks he is a prophet or spiritually gifted,
let him acknowledge that what I am writing to you is the Lord’s
command. If he ignores this, he himself will be ignored” (14:36).
Paul anticipates that there would be those who would want to
conduct church meetings in ways other than this. His questions are
designed to point out to them how presumptuous they would be to ignore
his instructions and invent their own customs–as though the Word of God
had originated with them, or they had a corner on it!
We know for a fact, however, that there have been those in the
history of the church who have presumed to substitute their customs for
the Word of God, since the way of meeting we have inherited is so
different from what the Lord commanded. Tertullian, a second
century believer, wrote that “custom without truth is error grown
old.” Why should we continue to ignore the commands of God for the
sake of “error grown old”? If we disregard the apostles’ words,
won’t what Jesus spoke to the Pharisees also ring true of us –“And why
do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition?” (Mt
15:3). Let’s abandon such traditions! Anyone who claims to
be spiritual, and yet ignores this, will be ignored by God or others,
Paul indicates. This is fitting, for if we ignore God, don’t we
deserve to be ignored?
As you implement the apostle Paul’s instructions in your own church,
God will be more pleased with your obedience than with the sweat and
toil used to prepare for a thousand church meetings not conducted
according to His Word. As the prophet Samuel said to King Saul,
“to obey is better than sacrifice” (1 Sa 15:22).
