the Spirit in that church were appropriately expressed only from the front of
the church through a microphone.
The Appropriate “Tone and Content”
Those expressions of the Spirit that were accepted as legitimate have a situ-
ation specific tone and content. Interpretations of prophecies may be evalu-
ated on the basis of both tone and content, while tongues may only be
evaluated on the basis of tone, because they have no textual meaning. Spiritual
expressions that were accepted had a joyful, entreating, or praiseful tone.
Further, their cadence was both melodic and poetic. Acceptable interpreta-
tions and prophecies had prophetic, encouraging or instructing content. Words
of encouragement were more common than predictions. The only predictions
that were heard were that the church will be blessed, revivals will sweep the
nations, and sinners must ask God for forgiveness and change their ways or
they will be brought out into public shame. Ironically, this last prophecy was
given when Jim Baker was the guest speaker at the Urban Church. An instruc-
tive prophecy was heard on only one occasion, when the Suburban Church
pastors were instructed to give communion. During an interview, a pastor
said that messages should not be discouraging to the congregation, or pub-
licly tear down its leadership. Since God’s messages are expected to build or
strengthen the church, discouraging messages are believed to originate with
a source other than God. We found that only encouraging and supportive
messages were discerned as legitimate during services.^12
Inappropriate Expressions of the Spirit
We have described the character of legitimate expressions of the spirit and
how they are legitimated by pastors and members of the congregation in
some detail because it is only in contrast to these practices that expressions
that are treated as illegitimate can be found and examined. What we looked
for were the incongruous cases that were not treated as legitimate. In what
Speaking in Tongues: A Dialectic of Faith and Practice • 273(^12) This policy obviously allows pastors to censor criticism of church policy and
leadership and indeed pastors explained in interviews that the policy had been adopted
largely for this purpose. It seemed to eliminate most of the instances of tongues they
considered inappropriate – and in so doing increased the orderliness of the service.
Given that order is a sign of spiritual presence this is important.