Churches that worship well don't do so by accident. These pastors have found intentional ways to train people to give God what he is due.

Leveraging the Worship Folder

In our worship folder, we have a section titled "Preparing for Worship." We give the text for the message the following week and the particular attribute of God that will be the theme for the service.

We hope people will read the text and begin to contemplate that particular attribute of God. We might give the page number in the pew Bible and say, "Look up this story and think about how God promised to deliver and how he came through."

And then almost every week we'll personalize it with a couple of reflection questions: "How have you experienced God's hope (or promise, or purity, or love? or … )?"

I preach five or so felt-need series each year, and a week or two in advance we put an insert in the worship folder that lays out the messages.

We do this so people can prepare in two ways: (1) they prepare themselves for worship, ...