The Holy Spirit and the Southern Baptist Convention (XL): “Whenever You Come Together, Each One…” (1 Cor. 14:26-33a)

(Note: I helped someone load a U-Haul for several hours during the late morning through lunch period.  Thus, I am later than usual getting to this post and so tired that I can barely make my brain and fingers move.  Consequently, if anything even remotely logical and helpful comes out of what follows, it is totally of the Lord!)

“Whenever you come together, each one has a psalm, a teaching, a revelation, a tongue or an intrepretation” (1 Cor. 14:26).  Of course, the wording “come together” sounds like what we could call a “church service” today.  And, it is that very fact that seems to make so many Southern Baptist and other non-Charismatic evangelicals today highly uneasy, as I discussed in my last post.

Let’s break this verse down further and see if we are still so “freaked out” by what Paul includes here.  “Whenever you come together” does make it sound like something like these elements could expect to be present in any meeting of the church as a body (see ch. 12).  However, the wording “each one” cannot mean that each member of a decent-sized is going to participate in each service, given that Paul quickly adds that only two or three tongues-speakers and two or three prophets should speak in a service–and the tongues-speakers only if an interpreter is present (14:27-29).

Now, it seems likely that “a revelation” is that which is spoken by a prophet, so there are to be only two or three of those per meeting.  But, what seems odd at first glance here is that there is no limit mentioned to the number of those bringing forth “a psalm” or “a teaching.”  The only immediate guideline stated that applies for either aspect is” “All things must be done for edification” (14:26).

What are we to make of this?  Well, it certainly can’t be that prophecy is less edifiying than “a psalm” or “a teaching.”  After all, in 14:3, Paul went out of the way to say: “But the person who prophesies speaks to people for edification, encouragement and consolation.” 

So, what is going on?  In this context, my considered guess is that the church in Corinth had proportionately more prophets and tongues-speakers than the other gifts or worship functions listed.  As a result, there was a strong tendency for those two gifts to monopolize the time when the body met together.  Thus, it would be have been necessary for Paul to put a limit of “two or three” on the number of prophets or tongues-speakers who participated.

As an applicational aside, in looking at 14:26, I seriously wonder if most non-Charismatic churches have not swung completely to the opposite extreme in our congregational meetings.  We are so afraid of some gifts popping up their heads in our services that we have a number of songs (music ministry) and, so to speak, ”at most one” teaching or “prophecy” (if you at least partly equate modern preaching with prophecy). 

Now, it is true that a great deal of the sense of strangeness we feel in regard to 14:26 is simply because we do not sense any “order of worship” there.  Let’s face it: for most (at least non-Charismatic) Christians today, the idea of a worship service without a bulletin containing a well-planned layout of what is going to be done from beginning to end is almost nonsensical.  And, if nothing else, that does appear to take seriously the principle on which Paul closes this chapter: “Everything must be done decently and in order” (14:40).

Of course, that cannot be exactly what Paul meant in 1 Cortinthians 14, if for no other reason than they did not have such printed church bulletins and the like.  In fact, it can be argued that, if the order of service really was that big a deal in the earliest churches, we probably would have some fairly clear New Testament passages that would at least point us in certain directions.  However, we do not… so, it appears that such close attention to very detailed order in worship services is quite probably the invention of a later, more formal period of church history.

As we conclude this first stanza of probing this unsettling latter part of 1 Corinthians 14, what are we to take from Paul’s words for our church services today?  Allow me to suggest several thoughts that have emerged as I have reflected: 1) It appears from 14:26 that a number of persons participated in their services as individually gifted members of the body (i.e., not just as a mass ministry, such as a choir today); 2) The primary question of whether a certain person/gift should function in such a congregational setting had to do with “edification” (14:26), not entertainment; and, looking ahead to some of what I will get into next time, 3) It was possible for there to be “too much of a good thing” in regard to the ministry of some gifts (14:27-29); 4) Even more tragically, it was also quite possible for arrogance or lack of decorum or self-control to turn the worship of a highly-gifted local church into a setting of disorder and strife (14:30-33a).

What do you think?

Coming Saturday: “Saturdays are for Newspaper Articles”