Spirit-led Meetings: How To Get Folks To Participate

This is Part 2 of my comments in regard to this article by David Walters. (Read Part 1).

How Can We Get People To Participate In Church Meetings?

How is it then, brethren? Whenever you come together, each of you has a psalm, has a teaching, has a tongue, has a revelation, has an interpretation. Let all things be done for edification. 1 Cor. 14:26 (NASB)

David Walters does a good job of describing how different contributions from people can flow together into a beautiful collection of related topics and messages when the Spirit is allowed to lead each person.

"Everything should flow like a piece of music. A symphony, a melody theme, flows through with variations, but at the end everyone recognizes the melody, the theme, the message. It's come through the songs that are brought by the Spirit, the visions shared, the prophecies, and tongues given, the message preached. They all connect."

I believe many Christians are interested in experiencing this type of meeting, but most don't know how to get there. How do you change a group of believers, who are used to having one leader or a worship team bring all the worship contributions, into a group where many are willing to bring their own worship contributions?

Here are some of my thoughts:

• The Leaders Must Learn First. If people are going to learn a new way of doing worship meetings, someone is going to have to show them what it looks like. Initially that "someone" is going to be the leaders. It can be the pastor or the elders or the worship team, or in a home group it can be the group leader or the hosts, but someone has to take the initiative to model it.
  
  This leads to the question: "How do the leaders learn the new way so they can model it?"
  
  There must be a "safe place" for leaders to try out the new model of meeting. It may be a home group, or an elders meeting, or a worship team rehearsal. At some point, someone has to be willing to say, "Let's try having a worship time where each of us brings a contribution." See what happens. Evaluate what worked well and what didn't work so well. It has to be in a setting where no one is embarrassed and no harm is done if the meeting turns out to be a complete flop.
  
  As your leaders get comfortable with the new model, you can start bringing it into larger meetings. You must demonstrate that people who don't have a microphone in front of them are allowed to speak in the meeting! When the bass player in the worship team says her own prayer of gratitude, when an elder in row 5 reads a Bible verse, when a youth leader in the back row shares a prophetic picture he received that morning during his devotions, suddenly people will begin to grasp what this new model of a worship meeting really looks like. It will move from being a theoretical concept to being a tangible reality.
  
• Expect Change To Come In Steps, Not All At Once.
  Very few things in the Christian life are learned instantaneously -- most are learned step-by-step. Same is true when teaching a church how to participate in worship meetings. Expect this transition to be a journey.
  
  If the believers in your church are not used to speaking out in a meeting, it will take time for them to get used to the new reality. For some it will take a lot of practice until they are comfortable reading a verse in a large group. People with a prophetic gift may be used to sharing prophecies one-on-one with people, but sharing a prophecy with the whole church takes a lot more courage and confidence.
  
  So allow time for folks' courage and confidence to grow. After each meeting, personally encourage the people who made contributions. Tell them that you liked how their verse fit with the song you had just sung. Let them understand how their seemingly simple prayer encouraged you. People have to know that even if they misread the verse or stutter or have a mental blank in the middle of a prayer, nothing is going to happen that will cause them embarrassment. Your leaders must create an atmosphere of safety so people can be willing to take such a risk.
  
  The other week my wife and I sat next to a couple from an Anglican background who recently started attending our church. They are quite terrified at the thought of making up their own prayers and saying them out loud. It is completely foreign to their experience and expectations. It will take them time to get comfortable with the idea, but I hope that someday when one of them publicly says "Thank you God for ____ (anything!)" there will be a few "amens" to encourage them. That will be their first personal contribution to a worship meeting in their lives, and I can tell you that it's exciting to witness!
  
• People Don't Need Certain Spiritual Gifts to Contribute to the Worship.
  Some of the contributions described in 1 Cor. 14:26 are gifts of the Spirit, such as prophecy, tongues, and interpretation of tongues. The danger is when people look at themselves, see that they don't have those certain gifts, and then dismiss their ability to contribute anything of significance to the worship.
  
  Leaders must clearly teach that everyone can contribute something of value to the worship. Almost everyone has the ability to read a Psalm, or at least a verse of a Psalm, that would build up the church. There is no spiritual gift of "psalming" or of public praying. We just have to get up the courage to share our contributions in a group.
  
• Encourage People To Come Prepared.
  This dovetails with my last post, but people must come prepared both to worship God and to hear from God.
  
  Encourage everyone to watch for a verse to share next Sunday while they do their personal Bible reading throughout the week. Encourage prophetically-gifted people to spend time praying and listening to God throughout the week, asking if He would have anything for them to bring next Sunday. It greatly improves the likelihood that they will have something to contribute.

God is gracious and he will bless even our feeble, initial, imperfect attempts at making our church meetings more closely follow the Biblical example.

Spirit-led Meetings: Spontaneity vs Preparation

A friend recently forwarded this article to me written by David Walters, an itinerant minister in the U.S. It got me thinking about our ongoing experience at The King's Family Church and pushed me back into the Scriptures to review what exactly New Testament church meetings are supposed to look like. It's been a helpful exercise, and will probably generate a few postings from me on this subject. Here's Part 1 of my response to David's article.


Spontaneity vs Preparation
David Walters seems to suggest that a Spirit-led meeting is one where the components are completely unplanned and entirely spontaneous.

From David's article:

"So when we come together corporately, our gatherings, or meetings, should also be unpredictable, like the wind. 'How is it then? Whenever you come together each of you have a psalm, have a teaching, have a tongue, have a revelation, have an interpretation.'
1.Cor.14:26.

If you don't want messes, keep organized, keep everyone in order, then you will have sterile meetings. "

I agree with David in that spontaneity is a part of being Spirit-led, but I disagree with him that the Spirit is all about spontaneity. Planning ahead is also an aspect of Godly wisdom (as in Jesus' parable in Luke 14:28 about building a tower), so why would we presume that the Spirit cannot start leading us until after the meeting has begun?

There is nothing in 1 Cor. 14:26 that implies spontaneity. That verse is about everyone contributing to the meeting. Spontaneity can apply to the prophetic gift, as in 1 Cor. 14:30:

And if a revelation comes to someone who is sitting down, the first speaker should stop.

So spontaneity is clearly a component of a Spirit-led meeting, but it is not a requirement for every aspect of the meeting.

I also disagree with David's assertion that because the Spirit is like the wind, Christians should be unpredictable. I see unpredictability as a sign of immaturity in a believer. The most mature believers I've encountered are very stable and predictable, no matter what the situation. They are sensitive and responsive to the Holy Spirit, but they are not unpredictable.

Christians should rather be like a sailor who is constantly watching the wind, adjusting the sails to allow the force of the wind to have maximum effect. It doesn't mean letting go of the rudder and spinning in circles. In fact, one of the gifts of the Spirit is administration (1 Cor. 12:28), which literally means someone who can steer a boat. Therefore, a church that is fully moving in the gifts of the Spirit should be responding to the latest blowing of the Spirit while still keeping things in order and on course during the meeting.

Despite David's poke at inflexible worship teams and preachers, the fact is it's very difficult to sing a song when you don't know the words, or play a melody that you aren't familiar with. It's also difficult to teach effectively when you haven't studied or made notes. Bringing our worship to God requires both preparation on our part and sensitivity to the Spirit. It's not one or the other. Certainly worship in the OT temple was not a spontaneous event. An animal had to be chosen and led to the temple before any sacrifice could occur. Preparation on the part of the worshipper was mandatory.

It's interesting that the Bible says remarkably little about the format of church meetings. That tells me we should expect a lot of variety between churches, as different believers try different methods that suit their situations. At The King's Family Church, we essentially plan the meeting to include times of spontaneity. The worship team plans and practices their chosen songs beforehand, but between songs they invite people to share their contributions. Some folks read a Bible verse, others say a short prayer of thanksgiving, a few bring prophetic words, and occasionally we even get a tongue and an interpretation. The speaker plans a sermon beforehand, and usually some of the contributions will fit with that topic. We keep trying to grow in this, and every year we get a little further ahead.

For instance, our worship teams are becoming more comfortable switching the order of their songs in response to the contributions that have just been made. As the worship teams get more and more songs that they can play by memory, they'll be able to add a song that they haven't practiced that week. Some day we'll be there, but not quite yet.

We've also made progress on what I would call "free singing." We have some worship leaders who can start singing their own words to a song. The musicians keep playing and the leader sings a new melody and new words in line with what we just sang together. No one from the congregation has tried that yet -- it will take some time for the worship leaders to model it before others have the confidence to step out in that way. It actually took us a long time to be able to do free singing at all. I remember the first occasion was a bit rough, because the musicians didn't really know what to do. Because each musician was playing his own unique chord progressions (which didn't sound good), they stopped playing altogether and the vocalist was left to sing by herself, which she wasn't comfortable doing. It was a noble attempt, and we encouraged the team afterwards, but it left some room for improvement! We now have musicians who know how to carry on certain chord progressions after a song is over, and we have some vocalists who know how to make up new melodies within those chord progressions. It's working very well now, and it significantly enhances our worship.

I guess all these mechanics don't sound very spiritual, but the development of skills is essential for us to be able to respond to the Spirit's leading.

Preparation on our part is a key aspect of having Spirit-led meetings.

Good Sermon on the Gift of Prophecy

I heard a good sermon on the radio a couple weeks ago on the gift of prophecy in the church.

John Piper (a Baptist minister from Minneapolis) gives a very good explanation of what this gift looks like in the New Testament, as opposed to how prophets functioned in the Old Testament. He also fairly presents some opposing viewpoints from other Christian leaders.

My favourite lines:

So for these reasons I am persuaded that the gift of prophecy is valid for today and is not equal with Scripture in authority but is valuable as a Spirit-guided expression of something we otherwise would not know or say, which is powerful for that particular moment and brings conviction or exhortation or consolation for the awakening or upbuilding of faith.

It is fallible. It may prove true and it may not because the human channel is sinful and fallible and finite.

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