1 Corinthians 11 and 14 - descriptive or prescriptive?

Steve Senensig wrote:

“As I was talking in that discussion about biblical accounts of New Testament church activities being descriptive or prescriptive, a question came to my mind that I have not allowed myself to fully deal with in the past couple of years. It’s one of those “am I really being honest with the text here” questions, and I thought I would throw it out here for discussion.


“Many times in discussing principles related to simple church, I reference 1 Corinthians 14:26. Now, please understand that my beliefs about simple church do not all hinge on this one verse, so it’s not a “make or break” issue for me. Quite honestly, open participatory meetings are described throughout the rest of 1 Corinthians 14. However, I want to be honest in my dealing with this particular verse.


“Let me quote the verse here in various translations so that we can get a feel for it, and then I’ll ask my question:


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. All of these must be done for the strengthening of the church. (NIV)


What is the outcome then, brethren? When you assemble, each one has a psalm, has a teaching, has a revelation, has a tongue, has an interpretation Let all things be done for edification. (NASB)


So here’s what I want you to do. When you gather for worship, each one of you be prepared with something that will be useful for all: Sing a hymn, teach a lesson, tell a story, lead a prayer, provide an insight. (The Message)


What then, brethren, is [the right course]? When you meet together, each one has a hymn, a teaching, a disclosure of special knowledge or information, an utterance in a [strange] tongue, or an interpretation of it. [But] let everything be constructive and edifying and for the good of all. (Amp)


How is it then, brethren? when ye come together, every one of you hath a psalm, hath a doctrine, hath a tongue, hath a revelation, hath an interpretation. Let all things be done unto edifying. (KJV)


Well, my brothers and sisters, let’s summarize what I am saying. When you meet, one will sing, another will teach, another will tell some special revelation God has given, one will speak in an unknown language, while another will interpret what is said. But everything that is done must be useful to all and build them up in the Lord. (NLT)


“Now, my question relates to the part where Paul says something to the effect of “When you come together….” Is this statement a description by Paul of what was currently happening in Corinth? Or is it what he is telling them should happen when they gather? In other words, were the Corinthians overemphasizing the idea that everyone could participate? Or was Paul saying that everyone should participate? Is it descriptive or is it prescriptive?


“In favor of it being descriptive, there is a similar use of the “when you come together” phrase in this same letter. That is in 1 Corinthians 11, specifically verses 18 and 20. (It also appears in verse 33, but that actually falls under the next idea of being prescriptive, so hold that thought.) In 11:18,20 it is obvious that Paul is describing their current condition. In fact, he even says explicitly in verse 18 that he has received word to this effect (“when you come together…I hear…”).

So, this would lend possibility to the idea that Paul is describing a current situation. In this case, he might be issuing a correction to them when he says, “Let all things be done for edification.”


“On the flip side, however, we have a prescriptive use of this phrase in 11:33 where Paul is correcting the problem identified in 11:18,20. In this interpretation, then, 14:26 would be seen as prescriptive. Additionally, we have the word “whenever” in 14:26, which does not exist in any of the uses in chapter 11. The uses in chapter 11 (from my very limited remembrance of Greek) carry the idea of “coming together…”, whereas 14:26 is more of a “whenever you do come together…” idea.


“An additional aspect of 14:26 which might possibly lend itself to understanding is the way the verse starts. Paul says, “What is the outcome then, brethren?” In other words, this verse ties in very much with what Paul had just discussed. In the context immediately preceding, Paul has discussed tongues and prophecy very specifically. And in the verses following 26, he is again going to speak about tongues and prophecy very specifically. Prior to verse 26, he uses the phrases “if all speak in tongues” (14:23) and “if all prophesy” (14:24). Verse 26 then provides a contrast very much in keeping with his discourse on the gifts in chapter 12. It is a description of the varied gifts that should all be exercised for the edification of the body.”

~ Steve Sensensig, 1 Corinthians 14:26 – Descriptive or Presecriptive?, Theologicalmusings blog

Participative’ worship

“It is unfortunately true that this open, free and spontaneous meeting, where joys can be shared and burdens can be borne, is sadly lacking in the contemporary church. There is a great deal of organization and formality, but little opportunity for open ministry and enthusiastic sharing of God’s gifts, and the result is that the majority of Christians have become silent spectators, contributing only the correct liturgical response and singing and occasional hymn.


…Much has been said in recent worship literature about ‘participative’ worship. In my view, some authors identify participation too narrowly with scripted congregational prayers and responses. Participation is something much more than that; it is a whole attitude toward the service. In my opinion, that attitude may well be lacking in churches that have elaborate patterns of responsive sentences, and it may be intense in churches that have a relatively simple pattern of singing, prayer, and sermon.”

~ Gary Inrig, Life in the Body 71

We must open up our meetings says one pastor

“In order for us to obey Paul’s clear teaching, we must open up our meetings so that people can share their burdens, or rejoice together in God’s blessings. In many churches, if a brother comes to a meeting with a wonderful blessing from God he wants to share, he must scurry around after the meeting, in order to communicate it to five or six others before they drive home. Similarly, in most churches, if someone’s heart is breaking with sorrow, there is no place in the meeting for them to unburden their hearts and receive the prayer and ministry of the body. Why not open our meetings so that the whole church can rejoice with us in our blessings, and minister to us in our sufferings? In this way, all may be encouraged by the joyful, and minister to the sufferer.”

~ Brian Anderson, Discovering Participatory Church Meetings, Milpas Bible Fellowship

Church among the Waodoni

In the book End of the Spear by Steve Saint, I came across something that jumped out to me. It would likely have been breezed over if I had not been doing this on-going study. Steve wrote:

When the Waodoni get together to discuss ‘God’s thing,’ they don’t have a formal program. They just let what happens, happen. Sometimes people will tell how their lives have changed since they started walking God’s trail. Other times someone will lead in chants or translated songs with outsider’s melodies — rough facsimiles of those melodies. Others tell stories from God’s carvings about God followers from long ago. No one is ever in a hurry to end the meetings, which often go on for hours.

~ Steve Saint, End of the Spear, p. 206

Don't stifle fellowship

The tendency of leadership is to stifle fellowship — which means, “to share in common” — by gravitating toward vertical rather than horizontal relationships; professor and student, teacher and disciple, pastor and parishioner.”

~ Howard Hendricks, Some things Every Church Must Do web article

Mutual edification is the hallmark of corporate worship

Certainly it is true that mutual edification is the hallmark of corporate worship . …And edification must not be understood to be merely the cognitive reception of biblical truth through preaching. Of course, it is true that mutual edification takes place through preaching. But congregational singing, sitting together under the Word as it is read, contemplating god’s Word sung, uniting in Word-centered congregational prayer, corporately confessing our faith, and rebuke and exhortation — all these edify.

~ Kent Hughes in Worship by the Book, 141

Why the NT church gathered

Peterson…examines afresh just why the NT church gathers, and he concludes that the focus is on mutual edification, not on worship.

Under the terms of the new covenant, worship goes on all the time, including when the people of god gather together. But mutual edification does not go on all the time; it is what takes place when Christians gather together. Edification is the best summary of what occurs in corporate singing, confession, public prayer, the ministry of the Word, and so forth. . . .Peterson, of course, allows that when the people of God gather together corporately, they are still worshipping. What he insists is that the distinctive element of their corporate meetings is not worship but edification.

~ Don Carson, Worship by the Book, referring to David Peterson’s Engaging with God, 1992.

Why Not Ecclesiology? - excerpts

It is an extraordinary thing that those who profess to care so much about Christ should seem to care so little about what His Word says about the church.

Ought we not to concern ourselves more about this great doctrine than we do? Most certainly!

Christ died for the church. It is His bride, His building, His body. When He left the world He commissioned it to disciple all the nations. How, then, can we conclude that the way we view the church is inconsequential in His eyes? We do not honor the Lord Jesus by ignoring His instructions.


Today, vast stress is laid on the thought that the gathered church is to reach out to the lost in such a way as to minimize the difference between believers and non-believers. But if you will read the New Testament you will see that the purpose of the gathered church was not evangelism. Indeed, it was not even worship.

To be sure, worship can and must take place when God’s people are assembled. But worship, as it is taught in the New Testament, is a daily activity, not something that is relegated to Sunday. The modern habit throughout the twenty-first century church is to downplay this subject. After all, we have our “worship” services, our “worship” guides, and our “worship” leaders. Clearly, however, the New Testament knows nothing about these man-made terms. When, then, should we worship? Anyone who has read Rom. 12:1-2 will know the answer.


In 1 Corinthians the apostle Paul is very careful to lay out principles governing Christian gatherings. He makes it plain that believers did not gather for public witness to the outside world. These were not evangelistic services at all. Rather, the church gathered for fellowship and mutual edification. It was a type of gathering in which believers came together with differing gifts. Just read 1 Cor. 14 and you will see that this was a bona fide fellowship meeting. Everything that was done was done in order to build up the church. Whether you came to this meeting with a psalm, a teaching, or some other contribution to make, you exercised your gift in the interest of those around you. “Let all things be done for edification” was Paul’s watchword. This same view of the church is to be found in Ephesians 4, where Paul emphasizes that the church is built up only as each member of the Body does its part. He is emphatic that the fullness of Christ can never be attained by any one Christian. Each believer has a gift, and each one must give that gift away to the whole church.


Paul’s teaching sheds a flood of light on what the gathering of the people of God looked like in the early church.


1 Co 14:26 clearly states [writes Steve Atkerson] the prerequisite for anything that goes on in a church meeting: “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.”

The word “strengthening” is from oikodome and means “edifying, edification, building up.” Certainly as we worship God corporately we are indeed strengthened. However, the ultimate focus of the meeting is to strengthen the church. It is not the Lord who stands in need of strengthening, but the Lord’s people. In this sense, the weekly assembly is for the benefit of the people present. A church gathering is to be designed to edify believers and to this end it is to be man-centered as well as God-centered.

~ David Black, Why Not Ecclesiology? web article

One reason most do not want a NT church meeting

…most Christians want to be spectators. Most Christians are content to attend church give their money and allow professional staff to “lead in worship” and provide the religious entertainment Sunday by Sunday.” Web blog article. Cp. America’s this does choose churches on the basis, what affirms us, entertains us, satisfies this or makes us feel good about God and ourselves.

~ Sally Morganthaller, Worship Evangelism, Page 19

Care needed in interpretation of NT

It is important in our honest search for NT truth to be open to the fact that we all read into documents from our cuclture and perspective. We have printed this before, but it needs to be a constant reminder.

The sheer diversity of the current options not only contributes to the sense of unrest and divisiveness in many local churches but leads to confident assertions that all the biblical evidence supports those views and those alone. . . . we unwittingly read our ideas and experiences of worship back into Scripture.

~ Don Carson, Worship by the Book, 13

The purpose of the gathering - to build one another up

Jon Zens, Building Up the Body - One Man or One Another?

The King James translation has in v.12, “for...for...for.” But there is in the Greek a change in prepositions not reflected in this rendering. The Greek original has pros ...eis...eis [“for...unto...unto”]. Thus, this verse can be rendered, “He gave... pastors-teachers for equipping the saints unto the work of ministry, unto the upbuilding of the body of Christ.” In other words, the function of the pastors-teachers is to equip the saints so that they can minister.

This construction is further borne out in the context. Verse 16 reveals Christ as joining the whole body together. The emphasis here, as in 1 Cor 12, falls on the total body ministry, not the exclusive ministry of pastors.

The elders’ function is a crucial part of the edification process. But the broader body ministry unto edification is specifically mentioned two times in v.16: (1) “every joint supplies”; (2) “in the measure of every part.” Thus, edification is not conceived of as being achieved by the ministry of one part (the “pastor”), but by a mutual ministry of every part. . . .

I am not suggesting in all of this that the elders do not teach in the church gatherings, or, conversely, that all must speak. Obviously, the teaching of the elders is to give backbone and guidance to the flock (Acts 20:28; 1 Tim.3:2). But it is clear that speaking words of edification in the local church is not limited to one “minister.” Where is any opportunity given to others to speak unto edification in our services? What grounds are there in the N.T. to limit public speaking to the elders, especially the “pastor”? 1 Cor.14 teaches the exact opposite of such an idea. Are the basic principles of this passage now obsolete because the canon of Scripture is closed?

. . . Heb.10:25, of course, is cited as a basis for people to “come to church.” It is probably the strongest passage on such a responsibility in the N.T. But what, according to 10:24-25, is to occur in our assembling? Where in 10:25 can you find the idea that we are to come to hear the ministry of one man? We probably assemble together, but do our services allow for the exhorting of one an other? If we are going to employ 10:25 to press the duty of assembling together, must we not also use it as a guide for what transpires in our services? In light of our practice, it appears that we use about half of the verse rightly (“assemble”), but think little about the other half (“exhort” one another).

For example, Thomas Goodwin, in discussing the “communion of saints, which the members of a church ought to have with one another,” states that, indeed, mutual care “is a constant duty, and that we ought to seek all occasions of acting it” (Works, Vol.11, p.355). However, conceiving of the church gatherings as focusing on the minister and the sermon, and believing that “in private occasional converse, one member may not have opportunity to discourse with another once in seven years,” Goodwin suggested that a separate “fixed meeting” was necessary, where the brethren could “know one another’s cases and experiences” (Works, Vol.11, p.353).

“The duty enjoined” in Heb.10:24, he says, “is a duty distinct from assembling together, which follows in the next verse [10:25]” (Works, Vol.11, p.354).

Thus, while the N.T. connects mutual ministry and our gatherings as a church, we have in our practice separated them without exegetical basis. Why? Because we have structured our “corporate public worship” around the “pastor,” and thereby relegated any mutual ministry to occasional meetings, perhaps “once a month” (Colin Richards, “Fellowship,” pp.91, 96, 97).”

God’s divine intention - community

God’s divine intention is not, as we so often declare, to save people from their sins. At least it’s not the ultimate intention. God’s purpose in election is that we’ll become like Christ. And not just you or me, but all of us, so that Christ might be the firstborn within a large family. The purpose of election is to have a whole family of the human family look like our big brother (who looks like our heavenly Father). God’s intention from the beginning of time was that every human would look, in character, like Jesus.

This being, the case, the divine intention for our churches is to be a community of conformity, transforming all people into the image of Christ. I often tell my church, ‘The purpose of San Clemente Presbyterian Church is to ensure that all people who come in here alienated from God find a relationship with God, take on the very character of God, and eventually look like God.

~ Tod Bolsinger, It Takes a Church to Raise a Christian, p.45

Mutual edification - the focus of the NT church

Don Carson, Worship by the Book, referring to David Peterson’s Engaging with God. He offers other references of those who support a similar view that I have not read on page 25.

Peterson…examines afresh just why the NT church gathers, and he concludes that the focus is on mutual edification, not on worship. Under the terms of the new covenant, worship goes on all the time, including when the people of god gather together. But mutual edification does not go on all the time; it is what takes place when Christians gather together. Edification is the best summary of what occurs in corporate singing, confession, public prayer, the ministry of the Word, and so forth. . . .Peterson, of course, allows that when the people of God gather together corporately, they are still worshipping. What he insists is that the distinctive element of their corporate meetings is not worship but edification.

What was the purpose for gathering?

“What was the specifically Christian aim of the gathering for worship? The occasion served for the ‘building up’ of the community as the Body of Christ, the spiritual body of the risen Lord . . . Everything that furthers a ‘building-up,’ so understood, and only this, belongs to the Christian service of those elements which serve only to satisfy profane, egocentric human needs, but at the same time excludes all excessive enthusiasm which would empty the service in its attempt to purify.”
“It is an extraordinary thing that those who profess to care so much about Christ should seem to care so little about what His Word says about the church. Ought we not to concern ourselves more about this great doctrine than we do? Most certainly! Christ died for the church. It is His bride, His building, His body. When He left the world He commissioned it to disciple all the nations. How, then, can we conclude that the way we view the church is inconsequential in His eyes? We do not honor the Lord Jesus by ignoring His instructions.

Today, vast stress is laid on the thought that the gathered church is to reach out to the lost in such a way as to minimize the difference between believers and non-believers. But if you will read the New Testament you will see that the purpose of the gathered church was not evangelism. Indeed, it was not even worship. To be sure, worship can and must take place when God’s people are assembled. But worship, as it is taught in the New Testament, is a daily activity, not something that is relegated to Sunday. The modern habit throughout the twenty-first century church is to downplay this subject. After all, we have our “worship” services, our “worship” guides, and our “worship” leaders. Clearly, however, the New Testament knows nothing about these man-made terms. When, then, should we worship? Anyone who has read Rom. 12:1-2 will know the answer.

In 1 Corinthians the apostle Paul is very careful to lay out principles governing Christian gatherings. He makes it plain that believers did not gather for public witness to the outside world. These were not evangelistic services at all. Rather, the church gathered for fellowship and mutual edification. It was a type of gathering in which believers came together with differing gifts. Just read 1 Cor. 14 and you will see that this was a bona fide fellowship meeting. Everything that was done was done in order to build up the church. Whether you came to this meeting with a psalm, a teaching, or some other contribution to make, you exercised your gift in the interest of those around you. “Let all things be done for edification” was Paul’s watchword. This same view of the church is to be found in Ephesians 4, where Paul emphasizes that the church is built up only as each member of the Body does its part. He is emphatic that the fullness of Christ can never be attained by any one Christian. Each believer has a gift, and each one must give that gift away to the whole church.

Paul’s teaching sheds a flood of light on what the gathering of the people of God looked like in the early church.

1 Co 14:26 clearly states the prerequisite for anything that goes on in a church meeting: “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.” The word “strengthening” is from oikodome and means “edifying, edification, building up.” Certainly as we worship God corporately we are indeed strengthened. However, the ultimate focus of the meeting is to strengthen the church. It is not the Lord who stands in need of strengthening, but the Lord’s people. In this sense, the weekly assembly is for the benefit of the people present. A church gathering is to be designed to edify believers and to this end it is to be man-centered as well as God-centered.”

~ David Black, Why Not Ecclesiology? web article

The purpose of the NT church meeting

Most Christians assume that the purpose of church meetings is to worship God. That assumption is understandable when we consider that most churches refer to their meetings as "worship services." It is important to note, however, that the New Testament never speaks of a worship service, although it does mention a "service of worship": "I urge you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship" (Rom.12:1). When Paul urged the Roman believers to present to God their service of worship he was not instructing them to meet together to sing hymns and songs of praise to God. On the contrary, he was urging them to continually offer to God their bodies as living sacrifices. That was to be their service of worship — the daily and continual dedication and surrender of their lives to God.

. . . Please do not misunderstand me to be affirming, however, that the church should not worship God through song when it assembles. The Scriptures declare that one important aspect of our gatherings should be "speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with our hearts to the Lord" (Eph.5:19; Col.3:16). However, the New Testament never identifies the main goal of the gatherings of believers as worship. Consequently, neither should we.

~ Brian Anderson, Discovering the Purpose of church Meetings (web article)

More talk about worship today than in NT

We are talking more about worship today than possibly ever before in Church history, certainly more than the Scriptures do. We need to remember that when we make worship too much the subject, we risk destroying the very thing for which it is intended. The subject can never be worship until the subject is first of all the Lord. To the extent that attention is overly drawn to worship, to the extent that it becomes the primary object of our work, the overriding protocol, within which the Lord and His work are subjects, we can only assume that we have begun to worship worship, or at least, to worship about worship, therefore to worship about God.

… While, interestingly enough, there are no definitions of worship in the Bible, there are innumerable ones in just as many books and tracts, many of them sheer poetry. Useful and rich as they are, and with due respect, virtually all of are limited, to put it bluntly, to what goes on in church. This misses, or at most pays lip service, to a fundamental law of worship, which is the beginning of the secret to the difference between authentic and inauthentic worship. It is this: Worship is not a special event or any sequence of them. Worship is fundamental to humankind itself, so much so, that we must assume that it goes on all the time, all around us, inside of us, and, in a paradoxical way, in spite of us.

~ Harold Best, Former dean of Wheaton conservatory, on the topic, Authentic Worship & Faithful Music Making

John Newton's comments

John Newton made the following observation:

The Apostle, Paul addresses the Corinthians as a Church of Christ; and we have from him a larger and more particular account of the practices of their Church than any other. In chap. xiv. of his First Epistle, after censuring and correcting some improprieties which had obtained in their public assemblies, he gives them this direction: Let the prophets speak two or three, and let the other judge. If any thing be revealed to another that sitteth by, let the first hold his peace. For ye may all prophesy one by one, that all may learn and all may be comforted.
“The general practice of congregational Churches in our time seems not to comply with this apostolic injunction, I think, my friend, in your assemblies, especially in your solemn stated worship on the Lord's day, there is seldom more than one speaker. The same minister who preaches, usually begins and ends the service.

~ John Newton, Apologia, Letter 3. Works of John Newton, Vol 4, 1822 Pp. 33-34

Brian Anderson wrote:

The traditional Protestant worship service today strongly resembles a show business performance. In both we find ushers, programs, music, costumes, lighting, a chorus, a stage, a script, an audience, and a master of ceremonies. (Christian Smith, Going To The Root, p.88.) The congregation sits passively as the audience while the pastor performs. When the congregation is permitted to participate in the meeting, they are restricted to singing in unison, antiphonal readings, dropping money into the offering plate, and taking notes during the sermon. The ordained clergy are expected to perform all significant ministry. Meanwhile, ninety-nine percent of God's people attend worship services Sunday after Sunday for years on end, without ever contributing any true spiritual ministry to the body of gathered believers.

. . .The modern day “sermon” lies at the very heart of most contemporary “worship services.” It comes replete with many distinguishing characteristics. It often takes the form of a lengthy gospel message, being a “preaching” rather than a “teaching.” Additionally, it is usually delivered in a monologue lecture format, with no opportunity for feedback or dialogue from the congregation. Furthermore, there is no opportunity for anyone to question the teacher, evaluate the teaching, or spontaneously contribute an insight on the subject being taught. Moreover, many believers today tacitly assume that the pastor is the only one who is uniquely qualified and gifted to teach the Word of God to the congregation. Finally, we assume that the way pastors deliver their teaching to the church is virtually the same as the way Christ, His apostles, and the early church taught their congregations.”

“First, let’s examine the commonly accepted supposition that states when the church gathers preaching should take center stage. After examining all the New Testament passages which list the words ‘preach’ and ‘teach’ and their derivatives, I made some interesting discoveries. The first discovery was that the New Testament speaks far more of ‘teaching’ than “preaching.” There are only fifteen references to Jesus preaching, while we have 58 references to Him teaching. In the pastoral epistles, where we would expect to find that which should characterize the ministry of God’s Word in the church, there are three references to preaching and fourteen references to teaching believers. Of the three verses which speak of preaching in the church, only one actually refers to preaching. The normal Greek word for preach (kerusso) occurs only in 2Tim.4:2. The other two references in the pastoral epistles which speak of “preaching” are translations of different Greek words. For example, in 1 Timothy 5:17 Paul refers to elders who labor in preaching and teaching. The Greek word for ‘preaching’ is logos, which means ‘word.’ Actually, Paul was merely describing elders who labor in the word of God. In Timothy 6:2 Paul urges Timothy to “‘teach and preach these principles.’ The word for “preach” is the Greek word parakaleo, which means “to exhort, comfort, or encourage.” Paul was actually urging Timothy to teach and exhort by means of the principles he had just enumerated. Thus, it appears that our emphasis on preaching in church meetings has been misplaced. The New Testament gives a far greater emphasis to teaching than to preaching.”

"Preaching" is a Biblical term more akin to "evangelism," or the announcement of the Good News in Christ. Entrance into the Kingdom by people is the goal of evangelism or "preaching," while the building up of those in the kingdom is better called "teaching" (although in a few N.T. passages this distinction is not hard and fast; cf. Hans-Joachim Wiehler.

~Brian Anderson, "Preaching in the Church?" Searching Together, Autumn 1982, pp 35-38).

Two different kinds of meetings in Scripture

There are two different kinds of meetings in Scripture—the church meeting and the apostolic meeting (my emphasis).

…In the latter only one man spoke, and all the others constituted his audience. One stood before the others, and by his preaching directed the thoughts and hearts of those who sat quietly listening.

~ Watchman Nee, Normal Christian, p.118

The variety of forms the basic biblical elements

John Frame in Worship in Spirit and Truth:

…shows how great a variety of forms the basic biblical elements can take. Some have argued against the use of choirs and solos on the basis of the ‘regulative Principle.’ Namely, that they are not prescribed by Scriptures.

But Frame asks, ‘If some are allowed to pray aloud while the rest of the congregation meditates, why can’t some be allowed to sing or play aloud while the rest of the congregation meditates?’ (p.129).

Why would song be regulated in a different way than prayer and preaching? Some have argued against using hymns and non-scripted songs on the basis of the Regulative Principle.

But Frame also asks, If we are allowed to pray or to preach using our own words (based on Scripture), why can we not sing using our own words (based on Scripture)?’ (p.127).

Why would song be regulated in a different way than prayer and preaching? Some have argued against the use of dance n worship, but aside from many apparent references to dance in worship in the Psalter, Frame asks, If we are exhorted to raise hands (Neh. 2:8; Ps 28.2; 1 Tim 2:8), clap hands (Ps 47:1), and fall down (1 Cor 14:25), is it not expected and natural that we accompany words with actions? (p.131)

We can’t preach, surely, without using our bodies to express our thoughts and words, so how can we arbitrarily ‘draw the line’ to exclude dance? Frame points out that the real way to make decisions about these issues (such as dance) is wisdom and love — namely, what will edify?

In other words, if you think that the dancers in leotards will be too distracting and sexually provocative for your congregation, just say so — don’t try to prove that the Bible forbids it. It is a bad habit of mind to seek to label ‘forbidden’ what is really just unwise.

~ Tim Keller in Worship by the Book, p. 199