Public Worship Requires Spirit and Understanding

If the church cannot say Amen, the gift has not yet served them.

What good is Paul to them if he comes speaking in tongues without revelation, knowledge, prophecy, or teaching? Lifeless instruments still have to give distinct pitches or no one knows the tune. An unclear bugle does not prepare for battle. So with speech: if you do not utter an intelligible meaning, you are speaking into the air. The world has many kinds of languages, none without meaning; if I do not know the code, I am a foreigner to the speaker and the speaker to me.

Since they are eager for spirits, they should excel in building up the church. The tongue-speaker should pray for the power to interpret. If I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays but my mind is unfruitful; I will pray and sing with the spirit and with the mind. Otherwise how can an outsider say Amen to your thanksgiving? You give thanks well enough, but the other person is not built up. Paul thanks God he speaks in tongues more than all of them, yet in church he would rather speak five words with his mind to instruct others than ten thousand words in a tongue. This is not a slight against emotion, nonverbal disability, multilingual worship, or private prayer. It is a rule for public building: the gathered people need understanding.