Quote:
Originally Posted by Pressing-On
Right. I understand that. I see it. But, what is the answer? How do you have order, which is certainly the idea behind the 5-fold ministry and avoid that?
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Speaking of "order"...
EVERY church has a liturgy. A liturgy is, simply put, an "order of service", which is nothing else than "what we do and how we do it when we get together."
Some churches have extensive, complicated, highly formalised, detailed liturgy. Some churches have a stripped down bare bones extremely flexible liturgy. Most are in between. There is no church that has NO order of service, however.
The goal I would think would be to have a BIBLICAL order of service. Now, the Bible contains no strictly laid out order of service with everything spelled out. But that doesn't mean there is no order of service!
The church is designed to last across time, to transcend any one local region, language, culture, or time period. There must be allowance for variety of expressions of the faith across nations, tongues, tribes, lands, and times. Yet there must also be some basic structures, or "essentials" that are universal to all true churches, regardless of where or when they might exist.
And the Bible provides exactly that!
For example, churches are to teach one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. That is universally essential. But the language, melody, the individual particular songs, and how many, and when in the meeting they occur, are variable factors that will be different from assembly to assembly.
Corporate prayer likewise is a universal constant, but when in the meeting, the particular form of words used, volume, length of time spent, etc are going vary from church to church and even perhaps from meeting to meeting.
I believe the Bible provides some structure, and some hints as to the Divine Pattern of a new covenant "order of service", but much is variable and depends on the church, culture, and the occasion. Our goal, then, in my opinion, is to be as Biblical as possible in all we do. Recognizing of course that being Biblical includes the Biblical instruction to allow for some variation, and especially allowing for the leading of the Spirit, all within the boundaries set by the Word.