As most of my fellow Presbyterians know, officially on Sunday mornings worship starts at the Call to Worship, then generally women are not permitted to take part in the service and the minister is in control. That is all Biblical and well and good.

My question comes from reading 1 Cor. 14:26-30.

How do we reconcile multiple people speaking? Or how do we understand people have a "hymn" or speaking in tongues? Or what about someone having a "lesson"?

Do we recognize that this was still Apostolic era so church meetings where done slightly differently?

Essentially what I am asking is do these verses have an affect on our order of worship?

Are my questions making any sense?

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Willie Grills
Trinity Presbyterian Church
OPC
Huntington, WV

Good question. I want to hear others before I try to give an opinion on the answer to your question, but for now I will just mention that in my church, other godly men do take part in the leadership of the service, e.g. one man reads a Scripture passage, another man leads the congregation in prayer, etc. The pastor also leads the congregation in prayer a couple times, but there is one specific time when a layman prays for the congregation's needs and also leads in the Lord's prayer. These are different men every Sunday (Next Sunday I am reading 1 John 4:12-17).

Perhaps in a particularized Presbyterian church, these men would be elders, but at this point my church is not particularized and has only a teaching elder (Presbytery provides extra oversight over us for this reason).

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Austin
EE student at Texas State University
Member of Church of the Cross (PCA) in San Marcos, TX
Ps. 8:3-4 "When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?"

My church is in a very similar situation.