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Re: Are we using all the Biblical Gifts?

Acts-perienced Poster Posts: 11849 **5/6/20 4:44 pm**

The early Protestant Reformers adjusted Roman Catholic liturgy to include a prominent place for 'preaching' and congregational singing. But that liturgy is not taught in scripture.

During the Azusa Street Revival, one person would speak in tongues and another one interpret, someone would prophesy. Someone else would give a testimony. They apparently had an open format, with people taking turns speaking while Seymour prayed with his head in a box.

Pentecostals went back from the revival and worked that into their somewhat traditional Protestant worship services. They were working on some other traditions added to Lutheran, Presbyteiran and Anglican traditions, since an area near the front had come to be called an 'altar' and there were 'altar calls' and such. Music was livelier. Meetings were more emotional, drawing from traditions Appalachaian Holiness style meetings and African American service. But was Azusa moving in some ways toward Biblical church meetings in ways that much of Pentecostalism backed away from.

I Corinthians 14 is the longest chapter in the Bible that tells us what to do in church. There isn't that much in the New Testament. Jesus instituted the Lord's Supper during Passover. The early church continued in the apostles doctrine, prayer, fellowship, breaking bread from house to house.

If we look at Hebrews 10:24-25, believers should considered how to provoke one another to love and to good works, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, but exhorting one another.

I Corinthians 14 implies that the church would have meetings in which the readers were to use spiritual gifts in a way that edifies the congregation. It talks about the reader praying, prophesying, and speaking in tongues. Paul was correcting some kind of problem with speaking in tongues-- maybe praying at the same time or taking turns speaking in tongues, all without an interpretation, but in the midst of it, Paul gave some 'commandments of the Lord' for church meetings.

He taught them when they came together, every one of you has a psalm, teaching, tongue, revelation, interpretation. Let all things be done unto edifying.

So taking this with Hebrews 10:24-25, we are to have meetings where we edify each other. We provoke one another to love and to good words, and we exhort one another. We can sing solos, offer teachings, share revelations, and interpretations (presumably of tongues or of revelations.) There are specific instructions on how to speak in tongues and that a tongue must be interpreted in the church, and regarding prophesying that requires a prophet to be quiet if another receives a revelation because ye may all prophesy one by one.

I would imagine there are churches that do not have a particular gift-- prophecy, interpretation, discernment of spirits. But there are also congregations where the rules do not allow people in the church to exercise their spiritual gifts. Someone gifted to teach or exhort, or even prophesy, may feel like he has to get ordained as a pastor to get 'his own church' (yikes!) just to fulfill that pressing need to use his gift. Or they just sit there waiting for an opportunity that never happens.
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