We have problems with people wanting to do mass prayers
Question:
We have a problem with some Christians imitating the Pentecostal's mass prayers where many people pray out aloud at once. I need your help with the Bible refutation.
Answer:
People tend to gravitate to things that are exciting and novel. A large noisy party is exciting. A lectureship in comparison is dry. Yet, in a party, there is very little communication taking place. Oh, people talk with others individually, but nothing is communicated to the group as a whole. In a lectureship, there is communication to all but less individual participation.
When the church is assembled for the worship of God, is it for individual worship or worship as a group? Paul's point in I Corinthians is that worship is a joint effort and expresses our unity. "Is not the cup of blessing which we bless a sharing in the blood of Christ? Is not the bread which we break a sharing in the body of Christ? Since there is one bread, we who are many are one body; for we all partake of the one bread" (I Corinthians 10:16-17). This concept is not limited to just the partaking of the Lord's Supper.
"When you assemble, each one has a psalm, has a teaching, has a revelation, has a tongue, has an interpretation. Let all things be done for edification. If anyone speaks in a tongue, it should be by two or at the most three, and each in turn, and one must interpret; but if there is no interpreter, he must keep silent in the church; and let him speak to himself and to God. Let two or three prophets speak, and let the others pass judgment. But if a revelation is made to another who is seated, the first one must keep silent. For you can all prophesy one by one, so that all may learn and all may be exhorted; and the spirits of prophets are subject to prophets; for God is not a God of confusion but of peace, as in all the churches of the saints" (I Corinthians 16:26-33).
If all pray at the same time, there is no building up of the group. Each individual might claim to benefit himself, but the church exists to build up the group. "And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ" (Ephesians 4:11-12). Instead, mass prayers give way to mass confusion and this is not what God desires.
