How to Have a New Testament Church Meeting

by Rusty Entrekin

The Corinthians practiced what are called participatory, open, or interactive meetings. Should we imitate them in this regard?
Did you know that the Bible gives us guidelines on how to have a church meeting? These instructions are found in 1 Co 14:26-40.

1 Co 14:26 begins with “What then shall we say, brothers? When you come together, everyone has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation.”

In this verse, the apostle Paul was describing what normal church life was like for the Corinthians. It may come as a shock to us to realize he did not say, “When you come together, the minister of music has a song, and the pastor has a word of instruction.”

Instead, “everyone” of the brethren at Corinth came ready to contribute something. Some might think that the Apostle was criticizing the Corinthians for this. Perhaps there was some mild criticism intended, for as we read on, the apostle provides guidelines regarding who can speak, how often, and when. He restricted the number of those who could publicly speak in tongues and prophesy in a given meeting, and corrected the behavior of some of the women. But if there was any criticism intended in verse 26, it was quite limited. Paul did not go on to restrict the right to speak to only a few men. He did not say, "Brethren, this ought not to be. Only the pastor and the minister of music should speak." Instead, he assumed the right of any of the brethren to speak in the meeting, and simply provided guidelines for doing so. Thus, his intent was merely to provide some course corrections, not to cancel the entire flight!

This verse makes it startlingly clear that at Corinth, the right to publicly bring a teaching to the entire church was not the exclusive right of one paid professional. Pastors were not the only people who were allowed to bring a word of instruction during church, and ministers of music (had they existed back then) were not the only ones who introduced songs to sing!
In Col 3:16, we learn that things were apparently like that at Colosse, too:

“Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom, and as you sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs with gratitude in your hearts to God.”

“Speak to one another,” Paul also wrote in Eph 5:19-20, “with psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
In the above verses, notice the emphasis on teaching “one another”, and singing to “one another.”

Reading this, it becomes painfully apparent that the way most of us have church today was not "normal" in New Testament times. Back then, church meetings were a time when the everyday, non-professional Christian contributed to the meetings. The right to teach in church was not the exclusive domain of the paid professional.

I see advantages in the way that the early Christians practiced church.

We often talk about the doctrine of the priesthood of the believer nowadays. But back then, they not only talked about it, they actually lived it out in how they practiced their church meetings.

It is tough for one man to meet the teaching needs of everyone in his congregation alone. Back then, more than one person taught in the meetings, so that was not a concern. And since church leaders got to hear teaching from others, it was less likely that they had unmet spiritual needs. Is there a church leader on earth who is so mature that he cannot benefit from the teaching of others in his church? I doubt it.

"But, brother,” I can imagine someone objecting, “we allow others with the gift of teaching to teach in Sunday School, not in church.” Well, at least the members of your church have some outlet for teaching one another, and that's good. There were also opportunities to teach outside of church meetings in NT times. Something distantly kin to Sunday School, classes for new converts, arrived on the scene rather early. Paul held discussions daily in the Lecture Hall of Tyrannus, and others surely did similar things now and then. But Paul could not have been speaking of one of these ancient predecessors to Sunday School, because 14:23 makes it very clear that he was writing about when the “whole church comes together!” And we know that Sunday school, invented less than 250 years ago, could not have been what He had in mind! No doubt, Paul was talking about church meetings, for he used the word “church” seven times in this chapter!

And so we cannot avoid the conclusion that any man with the spiritual maturity to teach was welcome to bring a message in an early church meeting. In fact, since Paul does not limit the number of teachers who may speak, it probably often happened that more than one man would teach in a given meeting!

No doubt, church meetings were different back then. But were they better, or healthier? I think that they were, at least after Paul got the Corinthians straightened out with these instructions. Otherwise, in the verses that follow verse 26, Paul would have steered the Corinthians more toward our modern way of doing things. But he didn't!

. . . It is obvious from Scripture that church meetings were participatory in New Testament times, and that everyone was allowed to contribute freely and spontaneously to them. It is also obvious that Paul wrote these instructions not just for the Corinthians, but for our benefit as well, because the letter was addressed not only to them, but to "all that in every place call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord".

Since that is the case, many of us will find this passage threatening to our traditional church mindsets. You may even find this passage somewhat threatening to your career, if you, like me, were trained to be someone whose primary job is to bring "the" sermon Sunday morning and evening. Who wants to "shake the boat" and challenge "the way we've always done it"?
That certainly makes 1 Co 14:26-40 tempting to ignore, doesn't it?

Although we may wish to take that easy way out, the apostle Paul does not give us the comfortable option of ignoring his words, if we want to have a clear conscience. Instead, he goes on to tell us that what he is writing is “the Lord’s command.”
“Did the Word of God originate with you? Or are you the only people it has reached? If anybody thinks he is a prophet or spiritually gifted, let him acknowledge that what I am writing to you is the Lord’s command. If he ignores this, he himself will be ignored” (14:36).