Spirit-led Meetings: Maintaining Order While Experiencing Freedom

This is my fourth and final post in response to this article by David Walters. See Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

Order AND Freedom In A Meeting? Is That Possible?
I grew up in a church that excelled at keeping order in church meetings. Everything was decided beforehand, right down to the hymn numbers and who was reading what Bible verses and when. Nothing was left unplanned. If the Spirit wanted to influence the worship service in anyway, he had to get his input to the church office by Thursday afternoon when the bulletin was typed!

It's obvious that this kind of control in a meeting tends to stifle the Spirit, and his potential to speak through various members of the church body. But the opposite is also undesirable -- total freedom in a meeting so that a level of chaos prevails and the meeting is unfruitful.

It seems the Corinthian church was leaning towards the latter situation -- they were experiencing freedom and the gifts of the Spirit, but the meetings were getting a bit chaotic. Apparently people were talking at the same time, too many people were speaking while too few listened, and Paul was becoming concerned.

What then shall we say, brothers? When you come together, everyone has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. All of these must be done for the strengthening of the church. If anyone speaks in a tongue, two—or at the most three—should speak, one at a time, and someone must interpret. If there is no interpreter, the speaker should keep quiet in the church and speak to himself and God.

Two or three prophets should speak, and the others should weigh carefully what is said. And if a revelation comes to someone who is sitting down, the first speaker should stop. For you can all prophesy in turn so that everyone may be instructed and encouraged. The spirits of prophets are subject to the control of prophets. For God is not a God of disorder but of peace.
1 Cor. 14:26-33.

Paul clearly teaches that it is possible to have freedom in the Spirit in a church gathering while still avoiding disorder. So how do we achieve such a balance? A few thoughts ...

1) Control Must Begin with Self
It's difficult to have an orderly group if no one is practicing self-control. We must consider others in the group before ourselves. Speaking in turn or listening to what others say or following the direction of the leaders may seem like common courtesy, but I'm amazed at how some people can take the Spirit's leading as an excuse to be inconsiderate of the rest of the church.

"The spirits of the prophets are subject to the control of the prophets." No one can say, "The Holy Spirit made me do it." We each can decide when and where and how and even whether we bring a message that we've received from the Spirit. The gifts of the Spirit are always under our control.

Sometimes that means we have to wait until a later time in the meeting to bring our prophecy or prayer. Sometimes it means not saying it at all during this meeting and saving it for next week. If I seek to strengthen the church in humility, then "not getting a turn" shouldn't cause my ego any problems.

2) Leaders Must Exercise Their Authority
While an orderly meeting begins with everyone exercising self-control, it ends with the authority of the leaders. Leaders have a responsibility to maintain both freedom and control in a meeting. When the whole church gathers, it is the elders who ultimately have that responsibility, but when smaller groups meet it is whomever gives leadership for that group, such as the home group leader or worship leader.

What functions must leaders take on to ensure an orderly meeting happens in the midst of freedom?

a) Leaders set the expectations for the meeting.
The leaders must set the expectations for a number of aspects of the meeting. For example, the leaders must make the purpose(s) for the meeting clear, they must set the format and style of the meeting, and they must set boundaries defining what is appropriate or inappropriate for the meeting. This doesn't mean they have to write policy documents or post lists of rules on the door, but they must speak about and model these expectations when meeting together. These are not issues of right and wrong, but of preferences and strategies.

In our church, the Sunday morning worship meeting happens so we can worship God together as an entire church family, build relationships with each other, encourage and pray for one another, serve one another, teach God's Word, and create a public venue for visitors to check us out. We allow anyone to speak out during the worship time to bring their worship contribution, but during the teaching time we expect folks to raise their hand if they want to ask a question or make a comment about the topic at hand. We pray for people who have any kind of need, but we don't want Sunday morning to be a "Here's-my-list-of-prayer-requests" time. That happens in either home groups or smaller "prayer triplets" (accountability groups) where people can get a bit more personal. We try to finish at the same time every week because we rent a community centre, and we have to be out at a certain time to allow the next group to set up.

By having clear expectations, it gives us some boundaries to know what behaviours are appropriate or inappropriate in the meeting. For example, if someone speaks up in our Sunday meeting and says we should cancel the sermon and spend the next hour praying about a situation, we know that this is counter to our purpose of teaching God's Word, so we might take a few minutes to pray about it, but we're not going to cancel the teaching time. There is nothing wrong with praying an hour for something, it's just counter to our overall purposes in this particular meeting. In a prayer meeting, it might be entirely appropriate.

b) Leaders ensure that key messages are being caught by the group.
It's easy for us to focus on the contribution that we each want to share while ignoring all the other contributions being made. Sometimes a leader needs to interrupt things, highlight the last prophecy, and have the church pray into that topic for a few minutes. Sometimes a leader needs to remind people of prophecies brought in past weeks when they relate to new ones being shared now. Sometimes a leader can thread pieces from a number of different contributions into a common theme.

While each of us as maturing believers should be doing these things ourselves, the fact is we need to learn how, and the best way to learn is to see it demonstrated by the leaders.

c) Leaders ensure inappropriate or un-Biblical messages are stopped and corrected in a loving and gracious manner.
In my experience, this is the most difficult part of being a leader in a Spirit-led meeting.

If people in a church meeting "weigh carefully what is said" after a prophetic word is given, what if one person says that word is appropriate and another says it is inappropriate? How does the group decide who is right? How does the meeting proceed? There must be leaders who can give authoritative direction.

David Walters shares an example of a prophetic word of knowledge in a church meeting:
A young evangelist who traveled with me was in one of our meetings on a Sunday morning. The meeting was packed and there were many visitors. Sometime during the meeting he stood up and said, "The Lord has shown me that there are six people here that are involved in immorality and if you don't stand up right away, I will stand in front of you until you do." One by one, six people stood up for prayer and deliverance.

While David uses this of an example of God's Spirit moving in a meeting, I feel this is a good example of a false prophecy. If that had happened in our church meeting, I as an elder would've stood up immediately and stopped this word from proceeding any further. (Quite likely both of our other elders would've beat me to it!) I would explain that there would be no public confession altar call, and that we should each let God point out any areas in our lives that need repentance, but otherwise I would keep the meeting moving on. I wouldn't embarrass the young man who had brought the word, but I would be clear that we weren't going to follow his instruction.

Why would I do that? What's wrong with that prophecy?

1) It was brought with a sense of condemnation and guilt rather than love and grace. It was clearly not intended to build up the church, but rather to knock some people down a notch and probably to bump the speaker up a notch.
2) It was brought with an attitude of arrogance and coercion, not humility.
3) It was vague and general so its truthfulness could not be validated.
4) Confessions in our church are done in small accountability groups ("prayer triplets") and not in our public worship meetings. This is an expectation our leaders have set in order to keep our worship meetings more orderly.

Point 3) needs some elaboration. Because the sin of immorality could be interpreted to include any immoral thoughts, it could describe a lot of people on any given Sunday. Even though it supposedly only applied to 6 people, the likelihood is that it applied to far more than 6 people that Sunday morning, and the rest were all relieved that they didn't stand up first! Like a newspaper horoscope, if the predictions are common enough and vague enough, some people will think it's supernaturally describing their situation. If God brings a word of knowledge, it should be possible for the church to test its truthfulness.

If this message had been brought with love and grace, it might have been brought with words about God's desire to have sinners return to him to be received and accepted because of Christ's sacrifice for our sins. It would've been an encouragement for people to voluntary confess their sins, not an awkward coercion to force people to confess.

If this message had been brought with humility, it would've been given privately after the meeting, one-on-one, encouraging the individuals to find someone they trusted to confess whatever immorality they had committed. If God really wanted public confessions to occur that morning, he probably would've asked the person who received the prophetic word to be the first to confess.

If this message were specific enough to be testable, the 6 people would have names and faces, which would allow the one-on-one discussions to occur as mentioned above.


If inappropriate prophecies are left unchecked, it can cause confusion and sometimes harm to the church. Prophecy is both a powerful and dangerous gift. Like fire, it can do a lot of good or a lot of damage depending on how it's used. Most of the time leaders can bring correction privately after the meeting, especially if the problem was minor. Other times when the error is more serious, the correction must occur immediately and publicly. That's where Godly wisdom comes in to know what response is best.

All correction must be brought with the intention of building up the person who erred, not tearing them down. We don't want to humiliate the person so they are reluctant to use their gift in the future.

Order AND Freedom In A Meeting is Biblical

Therefore, my brothers, be eager to prophesy, and do not forbid speaking in tongues. But everything should be done in a fitting and orderly way.
1 Cor. 14:39-40

We must pursue both freedom in the Spirit AND order in our meetings because that is what God wants in his church. He says it's possible, so we must keep learning how to do both aspects better.

Spirit-led Meetings: Keeping Our Priorities Straight

This is Part 3 of my comments in regard to this article by David Walters. (Read Part 1 and Part 2).

Keeping Our Priorities Straight

When we come together as a church to worship God, we need to remember why we are doing so. If we forget our purpose for meeting, we can become focused on other good things while failing to achieve the most important things.

David Walters describes occasions where people do not hear clearly from God in the meeting, or the various contributions do not coalesce into a coordinated message.

"If we felt the presence of God wasn't really there, we would close the meeting and acknowledge that we missed God. We would have a coffee."

This suggests to me that the focus of that meeting has subtly shifted from being on God to being on the worshippers. If the worshippers don't experience God in a certain way (i.e. we somehow "miss" him), then there is no point in continuing the meeting. But what if God was actually enjoying the meeting?

There will always be occasions when we don't hear God's Spirit as clearly as we would like to, or times when some folks don't share their contributions out of fear or self-doubt. The result may be a meeting where there is no clear theme being heard from God. But what if God wanted to bring 3 or 4 themes that day? What if there were so many urgent issues happening in the church that particular week that God did not want to bring just one coordinated message? Maybe everyone was hearing God's Spirit correctly after all.

Worship Is Primarily An Opportunity For Us To Bless God.
Our primary purpose in a worship meeting should be to bring our worship offerings to God. We bring our songs of praise, prayers of thanks, our money, and our talents. We want to express in a public way how great God really is.

Hearing from God's Spirit is something excellent to pursue, and we should always desire to experience his presence, but that is not our primary reason for gathering to worship. We do not come to worship God for our benefit, but for his. If we primarily focus on receiving something from God in our meetings, our focus has subtly shifted to ourselves.

The great thing about our loving God is that he often blesses us, and speaks to us, and encourages us when we bring our worship to him, but let's not make "us" our main reason for coming together as a church. Let's allow God to have that privilege.

"Success" in a worship meeting (if we could measure such a thing) should be based on what offerings we bring to God, and not on what we receive from him.