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I think the best course of action would be to simply ask one of the elders why they do that and then go from there. Let me know what they say, i'm curious to know what their reasoning is.

Well, No explanation has been given.

When someone comes forward to ask the prayers of the Church, the preacher asks all of the Elders to come forward and lay hands on the person that has come forward.

Sorry for not getting back to you quickly, James.

To my knowledge, the only reason the elders of the early church laid their hands on people was to set them aside for a specific work. I'm not sure why the elders where you attend would lay their hands on a person who had come forward to confess their sins. It wouldn't be to give them the Holy Spirit, since only Jesus and the apostles could do that nor would it be to forgive them, since only God can do that. Can you describe in a little more detail what happens?

Recently the Church of Christ that me and my family attends started laying on of hands by the Elders anytime someone comes forward.

I must say that I am somewhat confused about this and would like to hear some comments regarding this practice.

Hey Jake, Lots of good comments. One good brother wrote an article several years ago entitled "Let God do the Clapping." Thats good advice. We are not the audience, He is.

Hi JD and welcome!

Breaking fellowship with a congregation at the first sign of wrong you see them engaged in is definitely not the best thing. Every effort should be made to show that erring congregation the error of their ways. Using your examples, the church at Corinth was indeed weak and engaged in several things that were unscriptural and we see Paul admonishing them and showing them how to correct such things. If they had continued in those things without listening to Paul, what would have been the outcome? For that we go to your other example in Revelation. As you said here we see six of the seven churches of Asia who are currently not walking as they should. Were they immediately cut off? No. They are warned to turn back to their first love and to remember from "whence thou art fallen, and repent" (Rev. 2:4-5). They are given time to correct the wrong and make things right. If they did not, what would happen? They would be spit out of the body of Christ (Rev. 3:16); or in simpler terms, they would be lost.

So is clapping during services a sin? Let's see what we can find on it in the Bible. First of all, it is not mentioned as anything done by the New Testament church in their worship to God. Ok. So why do people clap during services then? The two reasons mentioned in the previous posts are the only reasons I can think of for why people do it. So let's boil those two reasons down... if someone claps in addition to their singing, they have sinned by adding to God's commandment to sing, so that would be a sin. So what if they are clapping to approve of something or to agree with something that was said or done. If you approve of a prayer, what do you do? You are allowed to say "amen" according to the example given in 1 Corinthians 14:16. So is it alright to clap after a prayer? What about after the Lord's Supper? If it's not alright to do that, why would it be ok to do so during the sermon or after a baptism? So instead of using the approved method of saying amen, people have changed that to clapping. Have they added something to the worship? Yes. Is that a sin. Yes, as previously mentioned below in Rev. 22:18-19.

Are Christians who do this still Christians? Yes, but they are sinning and it is our duty to lovingly show our brethren the error in their actions and bring them to a better understanding of the Truth.

Let me add just a little to the whole hand clapping "issue". First of all I don't like hand clapping in the worship service - I just find it kind of creepy. But is it a sin? Doubtful. Look for a moment at the church at Corinth. Here was a church that was making a feast out of the Lord's Supper, they tolerated and celebrated incest, they were in violation of Jesus' teaching on marriage and divorce, they abused the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and the list could go on but I think you get the idea. However; Paul never refers to them as anything but brothers, and never once questions their salvation.

I believe that being united with one another across the brotherhood is so much more important than dividing over trivial issues. and yes hand clapping is a trival issue. Sitting at my desk the other day I listed 50 issues the coC has divided over at one time or another. This was just off the top of my head. To list a few I came up with hand clapping, PowerPoint, felt boards (the PowerPoint of the 1960's), one cuppers, humming, use of songbooks, shaped notes, wearing hats, paid ministers, etc, etc, etc. For the sake of argument lets suppose that God has a firm position on each of these issues. Do you really think anyone could go thru and pick out exactly how God feels about each and every one of these? Again, doubtful. No, if you look at what Jesus continually called for and prayed for right before He left earth it was unity. And dividing over these trival matters certainly does not please God. And I would also encourage you to read Romans chapter 14. You'll see that differences of opinions are not only Ok within the church - they'er to be expected and we're to tolerate them as much as possible.

What issues must we agree on? That Jesus Christ is the Son of God. That baptism is the point of salvation and is for the remission of sins. Much more than that and we are only dividing the Lord's church. Look at the Corinthian church and 6 of the 7 churches of Asia in Revelation. These were all in extremely bad shape but they were still considered brothers and were in full fellowship.

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Enjoy!