Is it wrong for a person to dance in church and say they are dancing in the spirit even though they have to practice the dance with a group of people before they do it in church.
Answer
My understanding of “dancing in the Spirit,” as told me by one who was a Pentecostal, is that it is not external dancing, but a feeling that overwhelms a person so they are trembling or “dancing” internally.
Even if there is an external phenomenon of “dancing in the Spirit,” which the Bible never mentions, I would presume it would be something that would come upon a person without practice, like the gift of tongues came upon those upon whom the apostles had lain hands. If so, then to practice ahead of time would be to prove that it was not “dancing in the Spirit.”
On the other hand, since this is something created by man rather than by God, I would guess that man can create his own definition and rules for the phenomenon. If they want to say that rehearsed dance is part of dancing in the Spirit, they have that right since they are creating the phenomenon outside of the context of the Bible.
Since dance was never a part of the worship of the church of Christ, then, practiced or spontaneous, it has no part in the congregational worship of God today. If they want to add it to the worship, then they should call it what it is, dancing because we want to add it to the worship, rather than lying about it being “in the Spirit.”