if god is leading you, why would you let any man dissuade you?

You didn't eat anything wrong except the teachings of Constatine and man's doctrine!

Guess what? My family has had the same stirrings, myself included!

We have been going back to the book of Acts, our first century church model and found no formal order of service. It wasn't eactly 1.5 hours long with 1/2 hour of worship and 1/2 hour sermon, 1/2 hour of fellowship and 2 mins for the Holy Spirit. blech!

We have actually been studying the growing home churches, and how other country's such as China have church...it's been interesting to say the least!

Not only that, but we also got the same answer as you about the order of service and God being a God of order.....which is actually taken out of context.

So rest assured, you are not the only one feeling this way.

We were thinking that there is nothing wrong if we just want to pray and worship all of church....but know we shut it off like a light switch and turn on the preaching...then thing we can turn on the Holy Spirit....it's a shame really and border lines on blasphemy. (btw I use "we" as a general term)

I think it is because many churches leave out "The Cross".

One week at our Bible College we heard a worship "expert" talk about the worship order taken from Isaiah 6 (I'm not sure if it's the whole chapter or just vs. 1-9). That is the OT, however it is a vision of how they worship in heaven (or were at that moment) so it does seem to be fair ground. That is how some protestant services are modeled (praise, confession/repentance, hearing God's word, receiving a call, going forth, etc)

Here is a link to the man that was speaking and looks like some info about that, Robert Webber and Ancient-Future worship:
http://www.churchmart.com/webber/200308.html

Apparently they have an Institute for Worship Studies, too. You might want to check out the Newsletter Archive section, too.


On another note, I have the privilege of worshipping in house churches when I was in Russia. It could've been better... it was in Russian and I didn't speak Russian. I did really like it, though. It was long (2 1/2 to 3 hours; contrast that to 1 hour at my church here) but didn't seem long or tedious, even though I couldn't understand a lot of it! They had a lot of variety, usually 2 or 3 sermons by different people, not too long, 15-30 minutes, with group songs, special presentation songs (a small choir, a man playing the guitar and singing, someone playing the violin, etc), prayers, children quoting scripture, someone reading a christian poem, etc. I think they would figure out who had something prepared for the worship that day and try to plan a rough order that morning just before the service.
Oh, and afterwards, everyone would stay and eat a delicious meal together. By the time you traveled to church, attended church, prepared the meal, ate the meal, and returned home, more than half the day was gone - very pleasant, though.

I have attended the three-self church (official church) in china but not a house church. My dad attended a house church, though. Don't remember what he said about it, except that it was crowded and long. He really enjoyed it, though!

I think having an order of service has its place, and that careful planning of a worship service can be an act of worship in itself. But of course there needs to be sensitivity and flexibility amongst those leading the service to make last-minute and even impromptu spirit-led changes.

Some churches have different orders of worship and different elements each week. One thing that I think makes it so stale and lifeless is for a church to have a "set" way of doing things and then just plugging in the material to each section, i.e. "Call to Worship" -- Okay, this week it will be hymn #15. Next week, hymn #22. Hmm, opening prayer: This week it will Deacon X. Next week it will be... Offertory music: pianist chooses a different song each week, always the pianist. ETC. It's like fill-in-the blanks church.

One more point: level of confusion/distraction. Can happen in a liturgical church or in a free-style no planning church. To those not familiar with a liturgical church, every item will have the person trying to figure out what page they are on, what line they are supposed to read, what page the music is on, etc. Can't really concentrate on the actual content and worship because they are LOST as to what is going on, when!
For people familiar with this style, however, they can easily find their place, perhaps quickly reviewing the week's contents just before the service. They can concentrate on what is being said and done and the organization actually helps them worship.

Then again, free-style church can confuse some people. What is happening next? What is happening now? Some people honestly aren't very good at going with the flow. Of course this can improve as they get used to it. Not knowing what will happen until it happens leaves some people mentally/spiritually unprepared for the next element, as a "jolt", especially if the elements have no relation to each other as they probably would in a "planned" service.

Part of this difference is personality/temperament/thought processes, etc.

Many people have found that "un-planned" churches usually end up in a predictable routine. Then again, are these churches actually led by the Holy Spirit? Or just not planned?

At the risk of sounding like a musical "snob", I will admit that I do not like singing with overhead projectors. I am a musician, and I can read music notes as easily as I can read the English language. If I have a hymnal with music notes, I can sing a new song correctly on the first time, and this frees me to concentrate on the text. However, since projectors just show the words, I have NO idea how the tune goes for a new song, and I can't guess! I spend the entire song being lost, and by the time I have it pretty much figured out, the song is over. Obviously I was not concentrating on the text. I can't see how non-musicians have an advantage looking at an overhead, if they don't read music they can ignore the notes and just follow the text in the hymnal. And many people can at least notice when notes go "up" and "down" which does help.

And then there is the mental boredom of repetition. Singing the same songs over and over, or frequently (by weeks) drives me batty. I know there is much theological depth in a simple phrase like "Thank you for the Cross" or "I Love You, Lord" but I can't sing that phrase 46 times and be "into" it... but by looking around, apparently other people can.

In some instances people will claim that singing one song literally 18 times was "spirit-led" but I have my doubts. I mean, maybe it WAS. But it seems like a clanging gong to me, like the vain repetitions we know God doesn't think too highly of. I could easily be wrong on this one, but that is just my current impression.

There were a few times when my assignment was to construct an entire worship service, the order and the elements, and I really did enjoy the process as well as the end result.

Is that enough feed-back? :-) VERY interesting topic you brought up.
-Squeaky-