in the church meeting

Frank Viola quotes Watchman Nee from The Normal Church Life.

In the church meetings' each one hath a psalm, hath a teaching, hath a revelation, hath a tongue, hath an interpretation' (1 Cor 14:26). Here it is not a case of one leading and all others following, but each one contributing his share of spiritual helpfulness. . . Nothing is determined by man, and each takes part as the Spirit leads. It is not an 'all man' ministry, but a Holy Ghost ministry. . . An opportunity is given to each member of the church to help others, and an opportunity is given to each one to be helped. One brother may speak at one stage of the gathering and another later on; you may be chosen of the Spirit or help the brethren this time, and I next time. . .Each individual must bear his share of responsibility and pass on to the others what he himself has received of the Lord. The conduct of the meetings should bear the burden together, and they should seek to help one another depending upon the teaching and leading of the Spirit, and depending upon His empowering too. . . A church meeting has the stamp of 'one another' upon it.

This is a build on Viola's premise that every time the church gathers it is for mutual edification (1 Co 14.26, He 10.24-25, Ro 14.19, 1 The 5.11, He 3.13-14). To this I have to say a hearty Amen! ... but I also have to cry foul. These are my small group verses. I think Viola is making the same mistake as many others do regarding our Sunday gatherings. Everyone I know (or whose opinion I value) is at least a little bit dissatisfied with what we do on Sundays. Each person then finds their gift area in Scripture and then says, "see, this is what we should be doing on Sunday."

I think we are all wrong. Our problem is that while we know that form follows function, we have this huge elephant in the room called Sunday morning worship a la Western World and it simple doesn't fit anything we find in the Bible. So we try to force our favorite aspect of daily Christian living into that and it simply will not work - or it will work at the expense of other aspects of daily Christian living.

The verse in Hebrews used by Viola makes the daily living point clear. "... exhort one another every day, as long as it is called 'today ...'" I don't know Greek but I bet that cannot be turned into "wait for Sunday".

Net - I'm with Viola in that we have so diluted what "Sunday" is about that I suspect it is not effective at anything - well, actually, I think it effectively teaches some wrong things (but that's a separate post). I do not agree with him that it should become what he has so far suggested. His point is a mark of everyday Christian living and not a prescription for the Sunday morning liturgy.

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