Shouts

[deacon blues]

Originally Posted by Pressing-On

Not necessarily making fun of it, but I'll let these two posts speak for themselves.





The people in the upper room appeared to be "drunk" and so we don't really know what all they were actually doing, aside from speaking in tongues. I'm simply not going to interfere, in any way, with someone's expression toward God, unless they are harming themselves or the congregation. AND I am not going to post videos or comment in a way that makes it look as though I am judge and jury on it.

I think it's perfectly Biblical to care about worship that has order, thats modest, befitting and appropriate. Paul spends three chapters in I Corinthians addressing the inappropriate way the Corinthian Christians were worshiping. It was important to him as a leader of the church to communicate to the Corinthians that frightening unbelievers and causing them to believe they were nuts was not appropriate. God is not the author of confusion.

A good question would be to ask "Are we doing anything at our church that fosters confusion in the minds of unbelievers visiting our church?" I had to spend 1 1/2 hours doing damage control several weeks ago after some unwise members of our church decided to overwhelm a new believer, a former Catholic, with "super spirituality" getting in her face and declaring that there were demons in her house. If I hadn't defused her confusion back at her friends house alongside her yet to convert husband, would've stopped coming to our assembly.

So as a pastor I am very sensitive to these assumptions we make as lifelong Pentecostals that we should do whatever, whenever, however under the guise of "freedom in the Spirit". Spirit-filled, Spirit-led people have liberty, yes, but they're supposed to possess wisdom too.

It's not the first time I have had to help undo the damage done to people because people feel it's okay to get a little crazy at church. Worship doesn't have to be outlandish and a turn off to outsiders to be pleasing to God. If a fruit of the Spirit is self control, why can't some people seem to exercise that when they worship. I don't believe God possesses you and makes you do things you cannot control.