Order of Service

Something is on my heart that I'd like to let you guys poke around on. I'm not even sure I can express my feelings in words, but I'll give it a shot.

I've been doing a lot of soul searching in a bunch of different areas this year. Things I regarded as truth and reality, even Biblical truth and reality, aren't necessarily so- which is turning my world around in some ways.

One of the areas I'm examining right now is how the Roman Catholic Church has influenced what we Protestant believers think is Christianity for a long, long time. My 14 year old son and I are studying church history for his history course this year. We read and studied the OT last year and read the NT this year. We studied the Greek and Roman Empires, and now we are studying Constantine and the beginnings of the organized Catholic Church after the Council of Nicea. We'll start studying Augustine's Confessions next week after we wrap up our study of Eusibius.

This morning as I was having a Bible study with my children, the Holy Spirit led us into a conversation about the order of service in most evangelical churches today. I noticed that the order of service follows pretty much the Catholic litany, and not the early church as it is described in Acts. Once again, I am finding so much in our church teachings that have roots in Catholicism, which is a doctrine of the traditions of man, rather than what the Word of God actually says.

I have actually voiced my questions about the order of service to some of my pastors, who have answered with "God is a God of order- 1 Corinthians 14:40, which says "let all things be done decently and in order." I've been OK with that in the past, but today I've got that stirring in my spirit that says "we're putting God into our neat little box again, and God cannot be contained by the doctrines of man."

Why the restlessness today, when God is a God of peace? Do you feel this churning, too, or did I just eat something wrong? :-D I just feel that somehow we evangelicals are missing it, and as a result of missing it, some of the church is going off into all that apostolic power-seeking stuff. That's not right, either.

But what IS right? I may have an idea incubating, but I want to hear what y'all have to say to see if anything confirms what I "think" I'm hearing.

Blessings,
-Donna