| I very much prefer the spontaneous, from-the-floor approach.Something I consider a bit dangerous for the use of the gifts of the Spirit is something that I think has come in through the 'third wave' churches. That's Peter Wagoner's term for evangelical churches that came to believe in spiritual gifts after the Charismatic movement hit the more 'mainline' and traditional churches. Vineyard churches are 'third wave', and I guess some of the NAR and prophetic movement churches are, but they aren't as tightly knit doctrinally as Pentecostals are as I understand it.Anyway, in some of these churches, in order to give a prophecy, you have to write it out and hand it to someone who passes it up through the chain of command to the pastor. If they all approve it, you may get to share it.There are some problems with this, some assumptions made.1. The prophecies can always be written down.2. That prophecy functions normally when it isn't 'spontaneous'.3. That 'the pastor' has the right to choose whether the Holy Spirit gets to speak through prophecy in the congregation.4. That 'the right to speak' is determined by the pastor and not the Bible.We have one long passage that tells us what to do in church, at least as far as speaking and singing is concerned. There are a few other verses here and there. I Corinthians 14 is the passage. Now, the trick part is that much of it seems to be written to address specific problems, for example with tongues not being intepretted. But there are some things we can see in the passage.1. Paul is addressing church meetings where 'every one of you' can speak. His instructions assume this type of meeting.2. Paul assumes there may be tongues and interpretation and gives instructions for them. Tongues spoken out in church are expected to be interpreted, or else the speaker is to be silent. 3. There are specific rules for prophesying that all that 'ye may all prophesy.' Prophesying in church is encouraged.4. There is no reference to a pastor or elders MCing the meeting.5. There is no reference to a pastor preaching a sermon, but there is a reference to 'every one of you.. hath a doctrine'.That being said, if someone gets a tongue and no one gets an interpretation, if someone else gets a word of knowledge that some timid saint in the corner got the interpretation, given the open format for church meetings described in the passage, I wouldn't consider it out of order for the one with the word of knowledge to share it to encourage the other person to share the message in tongues. I would hope that wouldn't have to happen every time. But if the Lord gave the word of knowledge, shouldn't the person who got it make good use of it |