One Sunday morning, a neatly dressed man disrupted a worship service in a suburban church. Right in the middle of the service, the man stood up in the balcony and shouted in a clear voice, "I have a word from the Lord!" Immediately alert and ready, ushers sprang like gazelles up the balcony stairs and escorted the man out the front doors of the church and into the street.

Thomas Long of Princeton Seminary, commenting on this event, says, "There's a kind of irony here. Week after week, those of us who preach stand in the pulpit and announce implicitly or explicitly, ˜I have a word from the Lord. 'No one complains (not usually anyway). No alarmed ushers bound into the pulpit to drag us away. But let a stranger stand up in the balcony with a word and all decorum breaks loose. An unexpected voi…