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Acts 2:14 Then Peter stood up with the Eleven, raised his voice

“Asking me to sit down while I delivered the Sunday message is like asking an Italian to talk without using his hands!” – Todd Burpo (Heaven is For Real).

Asking me to preach with in a quite voice, when I talk about His goodness and all He’s done for me… #PENTECOSTAL Alan Link Steve Steve

Link Hudson [11/04/2015 2:13 PM]
Peter didn’t have a microphone, either. 🙂 He might have talked a little quieter in a small room talking to 10 people than outside in Jerusalem on one of the feast days.

It’s okay with me if people want to preach really loud as long as they don’t hurt our ear drums. It’s okay with me if people want to preach a little more quietly as lon gas everyone can hear.

John Kissinger [11/04/2015 2:28 PM]
early Pentecostals did not have microphones either…

Link Hudson [11/04/2015 2:33 PM]
John Kissinger And yelling made a lot of sense if they were speaking to large crowds. I suppose some of the oratory styles of saying “And uh, let me tell yu today uh…” evolved as people were trying to project their voice over large crowds. And some people thought that was THE way to preach, so they’d do that to crowds of 15 people.

John Kissinger [11/04/2015 2:35 PM]
seems like they all understood and “Utterly amazed, they asked: “Aren’t all these who are speaking Galileans? Then how is it that each of us hears them in our native language?”

John Kissinger [11/04/2015 4:51 PM]
I shout when I preach because His Kingdom is not eating and drinking, but righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost! Two thirds of His kingdom is EMOTION, and I choose to pursue it…emotionally!

Link Hudson [11/04/2015 5:44 PM]
There is more to peace than emotion. But there are also times of silent.

I heard a man say once he’d visited churches where they said, “People get more excited at a football game than you guys.” He said, ‘Why should church be like a football game?’

There are times it is good to rejoice before the Lord. There are also times to be silent, to be still and to know that he is God. And someone can have peace and joy without shouting every minute. This is another area where ‘cultural packaging’ is an issue.

I think we’ve all seen emotional preachers, even some who could stir up a crowd, who didn’t share much content. Some churches are just loud and enthusiastic. It’s their culture.

There are some more ’emotional’ preachers in Indonesia… compared to other Indonesians. But the loud almost hyperventilating style isn’t as popular there as it is with some of the Pentecostals in the Southeast in the US. I was visiting a church, I guess it was more Charismatic than Pentecostal. They’ve got their own denomination. One of the speakers was from a Pentecostal type independent church in the US.

But they had a speaker from Africa. I’d seen how enthusiastic some African peachers and audiences could be when I was invited to a service at a prison. This man was preaching really loud and enthusiastically about how bad Paul was before conversion. The Asian audience was just sitting there. It wasn’t their culture to go wild or stand up and say amen. And he was talking about how bad Paul was. It wouldn’t have been shouting material in an enthusiastic crowd in the US, but maybe it was where he came from. I could tell he looked worried and confused. He wasn’t getting the crowd excited. It looked like a commedian bombing on stage who looked worried. People in Indonesia just normally don’t go wild like T.D. Jakes church. He finished his message and got off the stage.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a crowd clap or give a standing ovation and start shouting while a preacher was preaching at a Pentecostal church anywhere in Korea or Indonesia. Indonesian Lutherans and Reformed describe Pentecostal churches as churches where people ‘clap their hands.’ But that’s during the music, and maybe when is introduced.

I know some Pentecostals think that if a church isn’t that emotionally lively that it is ‘dead.’ But really, if we look in the Bible, is there any reason to think that they had the music pumping and peoe getting excited like we do on Solomon’s porch or in Aquilla and Priscilla’s house, or that Paul yelled really loud or tried to stir the crowd up to shout?

John Kissinger [11/04/2015 5:55 PM]
Nope. I’ve seen it in just about every Pentecostal church around the world. Not just the South East and not just English speaking

Link Hudson [11/04/2015 5:57 PM]
Clapping and standing up and shouting during sermons? What parts of Asia have you been to. I didn’t see it on my trips to the world’s largest church in Yoido. I can’t remember seeing it in 9 years in Indonesia at any of the GBI’s (COGs) there.

John Kissinger [11/04/2015 5:58 PM]
Seen in in many conservative Chinese congregations. And at the Assemblies of God church led by Yongi Cho. #Pentecostalism is emotional

Link Hudson [11/04/2015 5:59 PM]
I’ve seen everyone praying in tongues at the same time at Yoido and at some of the GBI churches in Indonesia. They told them to in Indonesia. I don’t remember at Yoido. I was wearing a headset and listening to a translator there.

Link Hudson [11/04/2015 6:00 PM]
We could argue about what is or what is not Pentecostal, but does it really matter. The issue is what God wants, or if certain things are okay with God but there is a lot of flexibility.

John Kissinger [11/04/2015 6:00 PM]
Crying, clapping, laughing, jumping, running, shaken by the power of God, carried around the room on their knees. Now you know my ABCs

Link Hudson [11/04/2015 6:03 PM]
How much emphasis does the Bible place on those things? Isn’t it better to focus on the things the Bible focuses on? There is some clapping in the Psalms. I can’t find anything in the Bible about people being carried around the room on their knees (why are you carrying them btw), or holy laughter for that matter.

When we gather together, we are to have fellowship with the body of Christ and edify one another.

John Kissinger [11/04/2015 6:03 PM]
The issue is that I am yet to see a human body that can contain the power of God without any external expressions. While many/most bapticostals will argue that one can contain the power of God unemotionally THUS making the sovereignty of God a subject to the human will. If you can control it, it simpley aint under the utterance of the Spirit Timothy Alan

Link Hudson [11/04/2015 6:12 PM]
John Kissinger I don’t find this philosophy of yours in the Bible. In fact, Paul’s words, “If any man consider himself to be a prophet or spiritual, let him acknowledge that hte words that I write to you are the commandments of the Lord”

just might have been pre-emptively aimed at someone who would have made the same type of argument– that he had no control over whether he could speak in tongues or prophesy. Paul had just told the prophets to be quiet when someone else recieved a revelation. Maybe the speaking prophet could have continued on and genuinely prophesied, but he was to let the one sitting by prophesy because ‘ye may all prophesy one by one…’. And the speaker in tongues might not have wanted to be silent if he saw that there was no intepreter. Paul might have been pre-emptively attacking the argument that he couldn’t speak in tongues because he couldn’t contai it.

Surely the ‘Pentecostal’ stuff in the Bible is more important than the ‘Pentecostal’ stuff from certain church traditions.

Paul tells someone who could, if he chose, to speak in tongues, to keep quiet in the church. I’ve never head any Baptists on this. Some Pentecostals the A/G do. The denominational pages address this issue.

I’m not against power encounters, but I don’t see that as what the Bible focuses on in terms of church meetings. That’s the downside of some Petecostal thinking– the excessie focus on wanting to have some kind of emotional experience. I’m not against experiences with God or emotions But I think this sort of thinking is why some folks think they are far from God if they don’t feel a certain way when they sing in church. Then there are worship leaders who emphasize it.

You can get churches that focus so much on feelngs and emotion, but they don’t focus those energies on the work of the Spirit that the Bible focuses our attention on. We are supposed to covet to prophesy. The Bible doesn’t say to covet to feel like you re going to explode. I’m not saying a power-encounter with the Spirit couldn’t make you feel that way, even in church. I’m saying we need to focus on what the Bible directs us to focus on, especially in church. People can also experience all kinds of stuff in their private prayer life.

Link Hudson [11/04/2015 6:27 PM]
I choose to be loyal to the Holy Ghost and the word of God over Pentecostal denominational traditions when there is a conflict.

Charles Page [11/04/2015 6:44 PM]
yet our role model for pulpit proclamation is Jesus in the synagogue. He stood at the pulpit and read from the text handed to him. It was Isaiah and when he read he sat down and then he preached, “this day is this fulfilled in your midst…”

Link Hudson [11/04/2015 6:59 PM]
I don’t remember the part in the Sermon on the Mount about the audience not being excited enough and how they needed to shout for a while either.

My wife went to a COG (GBI) Bible college, and someone taught the worship leaders not to insult the audience and tell them how dead they looked. In the US, I’ve heard people tell the audience they look like they’d been baptized in lemon juice.

Charles Page [11/04/2015 7:11 PM]
CoG worship service are demeaning to the serious inquirer.

John Kissinger [11/04/2015 7:16 PM]
Timothy Carter may be they just got sprinkled with lemon juice

Link Hudson [11/04/2015 7:20 PM]
I read that wrong and thought you said Timothy Carter got sprinkled with lemon juice.

I just read the Bible. It doesn’t make sense to me for people to emphaize so much things the Bible doesn’t emphasize or even talk about, as if that is what their faith is all about.

Link Hudson [11/04/2015 7:30 PM]
I’ve gone to some of the ‘Holiness’ churches, but I was influenced growing up by A/G churches I went to. There was some emphasis on enthusiasm, and here were people who’d stand up and clap in some churches, but not in others. But I can’t remember hearing the football game thing in an A/G church. I heard that in the ‘Holiness’ churches in the Southeast.

I don’t remember going to an A/G church and someone just starts shouting all by herself all excited and worked up during the worship service. There might be some A/G’s, especially in the Southeast, where, when the time comes for the congrgation to pray, everyone prays at the same time out loud. I’ve seen that in the ‘Holiness’ churches ithe Southest. I’ve seen a little collective speaking in tongues in an A/G (here recently in Hawaii), but that doesn’t really line up with what the A/G teaches.

The A/G is Pentecostal, too. You can probably hear the excitement at the football game line at some A/Gs, but it seems more likely in the ‘Holiness’ wing of the Pentecostal movement. There me some A/Gs where everyone prays at the same time together, especially in the Southeast.

And by ‘Holiness’ I don’t mean anyone is more or less holy. I’m using it more like Vincent Synan. I’m talking about the churches that came out of the Hoiness movement that used to believe in (or still do) the idea that sanctification is one-time experiential thing after you get saved. Also, churches where preachers might describe themselves as ‘Holiness preachers.’ I’ve never heard an A/G preacher call himself that. But I’ve heard a COG preacer sayhat, and of course Pentecostal denominations with ‘Holiness’ in the title might say that.

I’ve also noticed that some of the churches that aren’t a part of the Pentecostal subcultures I’m talking about have people who really operate in gifts of the Spirit, too, even if they don’t have leaders trying to get them emotonally worked up during the service.

John Kissinger [11/04/2015 7:34 PM]
Link I’m reading your confession here “I don’t remember going to an A/G church and someone just starts shouting” and I am getting more and more convinced you’ve never been to a Pentecostal church

Charles Page [11/04/2015 8:03 PM]
While directing a CoG Servicemen’s Center in Turkey a young airman attended our Center and chapel Pentecostal fellowship.

He was right from Ann Arbor, a Catholic Charismatic and he quickly assimilated into our work. He was planning to enter the priesthood. He was a genuine Spirit-filled young man and was thoroughly familiar with Charismatic/Pentecostal worship.

He served on the Center council as a ‘deacon’. I learned from him and we had a good working relationship. There a chaplian’s assistant who served in an installation capacity, he was also Catholic Charismatic. There was an Anglican/Episcopal chaplain and he was Charismatic. This all began in 1974 and these people were terrific people who influenced me greatly. I was there almost 5 years. I cultivated a good understanding of Charismatic movement.

Timothy Carter [11/04/2015 8:22 PM]
That sounds like a good experience 🙂