A Gifted Church
I Corinthians 14: 26 – 40

Preached by Rev Peter R Green, 17 November, 2002

THIS IS the final section of this vital passage about spiritual gifts. It’s all very well to have a bunch of principles: the question is, “Will it really work in practice?” Paul goes right to the heart of how the Corinthians worship together and says, “You can make it work!” And the same applies to you and me today: we can make it work!

In the past, Christians often argued about the right form of church Government. Catholics and Anglicans said that Bishops should run everything. Presbyterians and the Churches of Christ had elders in the local congregations. And Baptists and Congregationalists gave ultimate power to the congregation.

Look at the Corinthian church. Isn’t it fascinating? It seems to have gone down the Congregationalist path. It has gone a lot further down that path than we Baptists go. Paul never greets a bishop in that church. He never refers to an elder. He doesn’t even talk about a Pastor. There must have been leadership, though. Some people from Chloe’s place came to him with a report on the troubles in Corinth. If anyone headed that congregation, it was Chloe.

And, in Chapter 14, despite a real issue of chaotic services, Paul never calls on a pastor or an elder or a deacon or a bishop to deal with it. He goes straight to the congregation. They might speak in tongues, but these people have to be Brethren!

I really don’t think it is very important to stick to one form of government or another. There are more important issues. There are all kinds of ways of being the church.

But Paul’s basic points here are about responsibility, accountability and respect.

If I don’t come with responsibility and accountability and respect when I come to church, then we are in trouble. If you don’t come with responsibility and accountability and respect, then we are in trouble. It doesn’t matter what title you or I have in the church, responsibility and accountability and respect are what makes it all come together.

They talk about John Wesley and George Whitefield, the two towering individuals in the 18th Century revivals. Even now, some people are of the Whitefield party, and sensible folk are of the Wesley party. Well, I have to say that, because my background is Methodist!

There was always a kind of friendly rivalry between them, and at one point it spilled over into quite sharp controversy.
I admit that Whitefield was the better preacher. When he preached, people nearly a kilometer away could understand him. When he illustrated his sermons, he told the story so vividly that grown men and women would turn pale to think of the horrors of hell, or weep as they imagined heaven.
Once he was telling a tale of a man walking along a mountain path in the darkness, unaware that a landslide ahead had sliced the path off the mountainside. The man was walking to his doom.
Whitefield told about how the man was drawing nearer and nearer to his doom. Suddenly, a nobleman leapt to his feet and cried out, “For God’s sake, man! Stop! You’re about to fall to your death!”
When Whitefield preached, many hundreds repented and turned in faith to Christ. More were saved than were saved through Wesley.

Wesley was no mean preacher either. Where Whitefield was dramatic, Wesley was precise and insistent. He was like a lawyer, building a case bit by bit. Each part was another body blow, another slice with the sword of the Spirit, the word of God.
No one called out to the characters in Wesley’s sermons, but many called out to God for forgiveness, many writhed on the ground in agony over their sin. People often fainted, or sat there in a catatonic condition in terror that they had to meet their God and were not prepared. There was no way out. There was no hope, apart from Christ.
And hundreds turned to Christ through Wesley’s preaching.

Today many churches owe their beginnings to Wesley. Even the Nazarenes and Pentecostals owe their beginning to Wesley. But there’s only one very small group founded by Whitefield, and it wouldn’t have survived if the Countess of Huntingdon hadn’t taken it on and made it work.

What is the difference? Wesley held his converts accountable and responsible. He expected them to live in mutual respect.

If you became a Christian through Wesley, you joined a Methodist class, and, in that Methodist class, you were expected to participate, you were expected to be accountable to your brothers and sisters, you were expected to be responsible and you were expected to treat your brothers and sisters with mutual respect.
And Methodism thrived. Everywhere it went, however the detail might change from place to place, one thing remained constant: the Methodist Class System.

In our passage, we see the roots of the Class System. Paul wants the believers to treat each other responsibly and respectfully and to be accountable to one another.

Recently someone e–mailed me and commented that she was not keeping an effective quiet time with the Lord. So she was part of a Bible study group, and she asked the other women to keep her accountable. It turned out that all of them were struggling in the same way. So now they are accountable to each other, and their prayer life is really taking off! When they get together, they ask each other, “How is your quiet time with the Lord going?” And they expect an answer.

If you were a member of a Methodist Class and you didn’t have a good answer about your devotional life, or about your efforts to share the gospel, you were excluded from fellowship in the group until you were willing to take a responsible role again. It’s no wonder that Methodists overtook Baptists as the main non-conformist denomination in England. We talked accountability: they did it.

I set you homework last week. I told you to read that passage, the last bit of I Corinthians 14. I told you to think about it, to get to understand it.

Maybe I should also have reminded you of James 1:22:

Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.

Do you remember I said that Paul doesn’t speak to a pastor or an elder or a bishop in this passage?

So what does that mean? Doesn’t it mean that he expects the ordinary members to do what he says? Doesn’t it say he is convinced that the churchmen and churchwomen in the pew, the ordinary churchgoing public, are able to take responsibility for their own worship?

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.

He doesn’t set out what has to be in their times of worship and celebration. There is no prayer book, no missal, no Orders and Prayers for Church Worship, which all we Baptist ministers once used. But there is responsibility.

When I come here every Sunday morning, as I have done on most Sundays for the past 18 years, I come prepared. I bring what I hope is a word of instruction or a revelation. I often bring hymns with me. It is all prepared. My aim is to build you up. I’ve done this on about 890 Sunday mornings. I think I have only twice preached the same sermon, though I have preached on the same passage more than once in many instances.If you allow a minimum of 6 hours preparation each time, that’s 5340 hours or about half a year of non-stop preparation since February 1984. If you think in terms of eight hour days, that's a year and a half, roughly, without any holidays or weekends.

I’ll challenge you. How much preparation do you put into enhancing the congregation’s life when you come to church? In the time you have been here, how many years of preparing to minister to your brothers and sisters in Christ have you completed?
I’m not accusing you of doing nothing. I know that many of us share something. It might be something you heard on the radio, or a meal for us to eat. It might be selection of music to fit in with the mood of communion, or half an hour down the street to give out a leaflet in Jesus’ name.
No, I don’t accuse you of doing nothing; I just ask, what do you put into your service here? We call it a service, because it’s a time for us to serve God by serving each other in Christ’s name.

We are talking about responsibility here. Paul endorses it. If you are a true Christian, you have a spiritual gift, and, if you have a spiritual gift it is to build up the church. And, if it is there to be used, then use it!

One of the great truths of life is that you get out of anything what you are prepared to put into it.

I know from the Church Life Survey responses that some people in this church feel bored by what happens. I don't know who, I only know that.

OK: here’s a challenge: if you want change, then create change. Put the effort in, and you will get something good out. Don’t threaten to go away if I don’t make it change, as some of you have done. What if I call your bluff on that one? Instead, do what I do: put aside six hours to prepare something for us all. Even put aside three hours, and you will see phenomenal changes in this church! Write a testimony to build us all up. Pray for 3 hours. Think of someone with a need and get them a card.

So, the first rule: be responsible.

Some years ago I was at a support group meeting for pastors in this area, and we were talking about getting people to participate more.
I mentioned our sharing time which, at that time, wasn’t going too badly.
One of the other pastors said, “Oh no! I couldn’t do that! I did it once. It was at a special meeting, where we were going to have people come and maybe want to say something about what was going on, so I threw it open. Immediately a woman got up and gave us an organ recital.”
At first I thought that wasn’t anything to complain about. But he went on, “She recited every organ she had had removed, had repaired, or had medication for in the last ten years. And we couldn’t shut her up!”

It is clear that they sometimes had a problem like that in Corinth, too. Sometimes the tongues speakers would just keep rambling on, even though no one knew what they were going on about. And sometimes the prophets all spoke at once. And sometimes the women started chatting about something without thinking about the others in the place.
The solution comes down to a mixture of responsibility and accountability.

I have to be responsible, but I also have to be accountable to you, just as you have to be accountable to each other.
Particularly when I first came here, there were people who would sometimes pick me up after a sermon and challenge whether I had said the right thing. Mostly it was just that I was using unfamiliar words. Some of the older people — Mrs Clendinning, Mrs Harper and people like that — were keen Bible students, but, if they heard a word they didn’t know from the Authorised Version, they were sometimes a bit puzzled. And sometimes it was a valid comment, that I needed to take into account next time.

So Paul tells the Corinthians,

Two or three prophets should speak, and the others should weigh carefully what is said.

or in another place,

If anyone speaks in a tongue, two — or, at most, three — should speak, one at a time, and someone must interpret.

There is a pattern: I am accountable, and you must keep me accountable, just as I must keep you accountable. And, most importantly, when you and I share a partcular gift, then we have a special duty to hold each other accountable.

For example -- and I'm only using your names here because it's the easy way to say what I want to say, I am not assuming that you have the gifts I am talking about here -- for example, if Gwen is skilled at reflective listening, the kind of thing a Counsellor does to help you define the issues and the feelings, we’d have to recognise that an evangelist like JR, who is more inclined to tell facts, might not have any patience in calling Gwen to account, but Erica, who is skilled in counselling–type listening and helping, would have a very keen insight into Gwen’s ministries. I am not trying to define your gifts for you three; I‘m just illustrating a principle.

Tongues speakers are especially accountable to tongues–interpreters; prophets are specially accountable to prophets, and so on.
So accountability goes with responsibility.

And, finally, there is respect. Respect is an aspect of love in action. Respect values another person

If I am a tongues speaker, I respect others by not pushing in when two or three others have already had a turn. If I am a prophet, I respect others by not rambling on if the Spirit reveals something to someone else. If I am itching to chat in the meeting and not pay attention, I need to have enough respect that I curb that urge and find out what I want to know in a better place and at a more convenient time.

Paul doesn’t require absolute silence from women — in chapter 11 he discusses the conditions for a woman to pray or prophesy in church — but he does require respect. That is what he basically means by “subjection” in this passage. The Greek literally means to stand below; but, in common usage, it meant to stand in the right place. That’s respect: to be rightly related to the rest.

So...

Be responsible: use your gift.
Be accountable: let others help you develop your gift, and, finally,
Be respectful: observe what others need, and give them the space to grow and develop, too. Then God will bless us all!

AMEN