For God is not a God of disorder but of peace – as in all the congregations of the Lord’s people... But everything should be done in a fitting and orderly way.
1 Corinthians 14:33, 40 NIVUK
‘Order! Order!’
That was the battle cry of a rather diminutive but well-known speaker of the House of Commons in London.
Unfortunately the man who used to bellow those words across the chamber at recalcitrant Members of Parliament was also known as being a bit of a workplace bully.
But his predicament is repeated time and again in the church. There must be order in the church. There must be organisation. There must be peace. But some wholly immature people use this as a stick to beat other Christians over the head with so that worship in their church conforms to their particular taste and that is wrong.
But it is also wrong to have chaotic worship where the church building after the service resembles a bloodless battlefield; where worship is punctuated with so many loud cries that the music can barely be heard; where sermons are either drowned out by yelling and screaming or replaced by meaningless babble.
We can’t have the extremes I once saw in my own church, where a pastor once had every part of the service timed to the minute, and woe betide you if you went over.
We likewise can’t have the excesses I've seen where, in one church, a worship song that lasted three minutes in the radio version and seven to ten minutes in the live version was stretched to forty-five minutes and punctuated with loud cries; or the other service I saw that consisted of two men speaking in meaningless babble and laughing like hyenas at a joke no-one else understood.
There must be order and structure and peace in church. But, you’ll be relieved to hear, it doesn’t have to be a ‘hymn sandwich’.
We see four rules here.
Firstly, we see the rule of intelligibility. In other words, everyone in the church – believer or not – must understand what is going on. So if you want to speak in tongues in public worship – and by public worship Paul implies in front of other people (which will include the people standing or sitting beside you in church) – Paul states that tongues should not be used unless there is an interpreter present. If there is no interpreter, there can be no tongues.
Simple.
This simple principle should be applied to everything we communicate in church. The Gospel is simple. It’s designed to be simple. That way simple people like us can understand it and believe it. So don't complicate it. Don’t add useless rules, regulations and rituals to it. Don’t block other people’s way into the Kingdom of Heaven like the Teachers of the Law did (Matthew 23:13).
Keep. It. Simple.
Secondly, the rule of politeness. Take your turn. One at a time. Don’t push. Don’t shove.
Don’t argue.
This is where there is nothing wrong with having a planned order of service. After all, we plan our days. We plan our holidays. We plan our events. We do our best to make them work.
So why shouldn't we do our best for God too?
But, of course, we must leave room for the Spirit to move within that.
The third principle is that of proportionality. Don’t overload the church. Two, or at most three, of each type of spoken input.
I was once in a church that had three-hour-long services every Sunday with seven different preachers. Think on that for a second. Seven. Seven twenty to twenty-five minute sermons. Most poorly prepared. At least one was a moral diatribe on what should or should not be done – regardless of the verses we were meant to be preaching on.
It drove me to exhaustion every Sunday.
I remember when we had two nice, gentle Korean girls join our team. They sat through this service with hardly any understanding of Romanian. You can imagine what that was like.
Seven preachers.
I asked them afterwards, ‘Did you understand any of that?’
‘No.’ They replied, with faces that looked like they’d ran a marathon.
‘Don't worry ‘ I told them. ‘You didn’t miss much...’
A little Brethren church I used to attend got it dead right. One preacher for communion. A word for or from the young people. A main sermon. Someone at the end speaking for a few minutes to sum up and close in prayer.
That’s enough.
The fourth rule is that of accountability:
Two or three prophets should speak, and the others should weigh carefully what is said.
1 Corinthians 14:29 NIVUK
We are to follow the approach of the Bereans:
Now the Berean Jews were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.
Acts 17:11 NIVUK
We should not just accept any old nonsense coming down the pike. We should weigh it up carefully. We should listen with our Bibles and our minds open. And if we see that what is said lines up with the Word of God, then we should obey it.
We should also be very wary of those who make predictions about the future. Many have done so in God’s name. It does tremendous harm to the cause of the Gospel when what they predict does not come true:
I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their fellow Israelites, and I will put my words in his mouth. He will tell them everything I command him. I myself will call to acc
does not listen to my words that the prophet speaks in my name. But a prophet who presumes to speak in my name anything I have not commanded, or a prophet who speaks in the name of other gods, is to be put to death.’ You may say to yourselves, ‘How can we know when a message has not been spoken by the Lord?’ If what a prophet proclaims in the name of the Lord does not take place or come true, that is a message the Lord has not spoken. That prophet has spoken presumptuously, so do not be alarmed.
Deuteronomy 18:18-22
Don’t have anything to do with those who make predictions about things that cannot be predicted, such as the Second Coming (Matthew 24:36). Compare every so-called ‘word from the Lord’ to the Word of the Lord and take care to call those into account who make presumptions predictions from the pulpit.
Paul goes on to say something ill-intentioned people badly misinterpret:
Women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the law says. If they want to enquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church.
1 Corinthians 14:34-35 NIVUK
This is not, as some might assume at first glance, an attempt to silence and subjugate women. Paul is not a chauvinist. Not one bit. In numerous letters, Paul specifically honours the contributions made by women – which is unusual for a Middle Eastern man.
No, this is, instead a result of the Greco-Roman v Jewish culture clash in the church.
Jewish women worshipped separately from the men. They had their own court in the Temple specifically for this purpose.
In Greco-Roman society, they did not: they worshipped together.
Greco-Roman were, in general, better educated, more literate and were more ‘liberated’ than their Jewish sisters. But Jewish women were far more used to some of the more Jewish elements of worship.
When the church gathered as one – women and men together – Greco-Roman women would be keen to understand the preaching, teaching, prophesies and suchlike in Christian worship.
So they would ask questions:
‘What’s going on here?’
‘Why is he doing that?’
‘What does this mean?’
Now, even if that’s whispered, you can imagine that an hour or two of that happening constantly and it’s going to become pretty irritating.
So Paul tells these well-intentioned Corinthian women to keep their questions for home, where there husband will be able to answer them.
Paul isn’t being repressive or chauvinistic. He is seeking to resolve a particular issue for a particular place at a particular time.
His solution might not suit us, but he intends it for good, so the church service can take place in peace.
Because ultimately what happens in the church is not for our good or anyone else’s good, but for the good of the church as a whole as the local expression of the Body of Christ.
Now, I have seen churches that take this to extremes. I once visited a charming little Evangelical Church in Czech South Bohemia. The people were friendly.
But the worship! I have never experienced anything like it. We were singing – or, in my case, trying but failing to sing – Czech hymns that were centuries old and had long notes on the sounds between two consonants. My mouth and throat had a hard enough time with that.
And they were doing it at a sound level barely above a whisper. Honestly. For the entire service. And preaching at the same volume, or lack of it. You daren’t rustle a sweet paper for fear of drowning out the pastor!
And then my friend Job got up to preach. Job is a black South African and one of the most expressive, and funny, people I have ever met.
He was preaching on Nehemiah. All throughout the sermon, he thumped the pulpit and bellowed with an Afrikaans-tinged tone, ‘We must rebuild the walls!’ All the while, his somewhat more timid Czech interpreter whispered, ‘We must rebuild the walls.’
Honestly, it was one of the must amusing things I've ever seen in a church.
Paul is not telling us to take things this far. But there must be order. The church should reflect the very nature of God, and God is a God of order and peace.
That doesn’t mean that we have to timetable everything to the last second. That’s taking it too far. But likewise, we cannot have a chaotic, disorganised service.
There must be balance. That is what Paul says. That is what we must do.
Do I hear an ‘Amen!’?
Questions
How do you think Paul’s desire for order helps bring under control some of the excesses we see in churches?
How do you think it encourages participation from members of the church?
Do you believe it’s good for the church to obey these rules and principles? Why?
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