What Church Should Be Like

To those of you who may be wondering how what I've been sharing on 1 Corinthians 14 can be implemented in today's church, I'm going to sketch out some clear action points, but first I need to tackle a couple of things that are NOT putting this scripture into practice.

Creating little pigeon-hole jobs or "helpful" little tasks to which the broadest swath of the congregation possible may be recruited to is not putting this passage into practice. That everyone should be active in the body in some way is a biblical concept, but where in the scriptures does it say that the pastor is the one who speaks, conceives the vision for the church, directs everyone else's action and everyone else just helps him or her?

Acts of service cast as helping the preacher (or for more sophisticated congregations, helping the ministry) is not only unscriptural, they're pathetic. 

Most of the attempts I'm familiar with by churches to involve people in ministry actually fall into that variety of thing, basically, top down, "make 'em feel a buy in," "keep 'em busy so they don't cause trouble" manipulations. Is that what the body of Christ is supposed to be about? Why not just pat the good folks on the head, melodiously intone, "good dog," and tell them to be happy handing everyone who walks in a flier about the Great Church Yard Sale.

Plugging people into such jobs by means of giftedness testing is not putting this passage into practice either. I can't even find a whiff in the scriptures to support the practice. It's worldly, developed from psychobabble and secular human resource management. It treats the church as just another organization of people, subject to the same psychosocial manipulation such groupings are, rather than treating it as the Spirit-indwelt body of Christ that it is.

Spiritual giftedness has nothing to do with what you like or dislike, what tasks you're good or bad at, or anything about your track record. It's giftedness from the Spirit, not you! If Christians have no inkling of their spiritual giftedness, it's because they haven't asked God to clarify it, or are insisting upon being something God isn't making them. It does help to be baptized in the Holy Spirit, but if one does what one senses to do in his or her closest moments with Christ, that one will discover what gift he or she is to the body with ease.

Try things while yielded in your heart and mind to God-- you'll find your giftings just fine!

Now to those action points I promised...
 

When we come together, i.e. meet as a church, everyone should be able to participate, vocally as well as in cooperative action. Some may have special areas of service; ushering, sound room, nursery, instrumental music, etc., but everyone has the potential and should have the possibility of participating vocally. If our meetings are too large to make that realistic, maybe our meetings are too large. If that is the case, we have to ask ourselves whether it is better to divide and be scriptural in practice, or to cherish egotism and convenience and be too large to act scripturally?

If our meetings are too structured to make this possible, we've bowed down at the idol of order rather than at the feet of Jesus. The people are not served well by asking nothing of them, allowing little for them to experience or offer, or by encouraging superstition by giving them the salve of religion so they move on with their real life without as much guilt. This is the body of Christ, not a supermarket, and we need to start acting like we believe that.

When we come together, anyone, maybe even at anytime, could be inspired by the Holy Spirit to open up his or her mouth and share.

That offering may take the form of a spiritual song (in known or unknown language), it may be something prophetic that instructs, or uncovers, it may be an utterance in a language unknown to the speaker (and anyone else for that matter), or it may be an interpretation of something brought forward in an unknown language. The key point is that in our conduction of our gatherings, we should anticipate that any and every one, not just the preacher, could be used of God to vocally bring forth a message from God for the benefit of all.

People and preachers worry about disorder, and I understand that, but how is enforced silence more spiritual than chaotic participation? Quenching the Spirit, despising prophecy, and limiting anointing are not appropriate responses to the messiness of the Spirit's outpouring on the body. Leaders need hearts more like Moses'! To lead meetings in a biblical fashion will require some extra effort from us preachers: we'll need to test everything, we'll need to correct some things, we'll need simply to overlook others and adjust.

Order does not require that everything be planned neatly and tied up in a bow. That probably won't make good television, but really, since when is television "ministry" about anything other than bringing in some outside donations? It likely won't do much for convenience either, but a believer overly concerned about convenience probably isn't really a believer anyhow. Our approach to our meetings should be to be as accommodating and inviting to the Spirit's inspiration of the body as possible.

Church meetings are for the body's expression, not just the preacher's. They should be conducted so the body gets to experience and express the Holy Spirit, not so they can watch the preacher do so. This may be a radical concept to you, but read the manual, it's absolutely scriptural. The Bible does not tell us to eagerly quench the Spirit out of fear or for the sake of order, but to eagerly desire spiritual gifts, especially prophecy. God hasn't left it up to us to do in church whatever we like, we have instructions from him which tell us what church should be like.

Are you obeying them?

Addendum: Check out Dr. D's post on John Wimber.