Last week I spent some quality time in my native (warm and sunny) California, far from my new digs in the Midwest. It was refreshing and delightful in every way. Not so much because of the weather, but because I got to talk with colleagues and friends about the state of worship in America. These are smart Who’s Who folks with vast experience in church growth and practices.
Their remarks, in part, might be summed up in these six questions and amalgamated answers:
1. How are we doing when it comes to the effectiveness of worship every weekend?
“We are both failing and succeeding–succeeding because we’ve never worked harder at growing our churches and bringing people in to ‘have a taste’ of the Christian faith. We’re failing because we are losing many believers out the back door because they think our emphasis on marketing is wrong.”
2. Do you believe modern worshipers are givers or takers?
“The fact that we’re trying to give our congregations exactly what they want musically suggests that they are takers, but a young and enthusiastic group of new leaders are taking congregants of all ages into expansive ‘giver’ explorations of missional opportunities.”
3. Are we going to move from the “Big Box” church mentality as was predicted a few years ago?
“We have already moved away from it in many ways. Multisite worship is huge in America and thousands of churches have moved out of the comfort of their huge sanctuaries into shopping centers and schools around the country. Home churches, too, are just about to regain some of the strength they had in the 70s and early 80s. While this information isn’t new, what is new is some recent statistics showing that we were not all equally prepared for the economic implications of losing folks from preexisting church facilities.”
4. Is our worship the same, better, or worse than it was 20 years ago?
“All three is probably the answer. It’s the same because we are still worshiping God and He hasn’t changed. It’s better because it has been revitalized in several ways–at least in the Evangelical church. It is worse because, given all the tools we have at our disposal in worship services, we still lack creative and imaginative ideas in a huge segment of our churches.”
5. Is excellence still a value in our churches?
“To the extent that ‘excellence’ is often seen as perfectionism, performance or some other pathological behavior, it has lost favor in the modern church. It has, however, another connotation which is often ignored but absolutely needed in the church–that is intentional, well-prepared, and unwavering passion for proclaiming and gaining the richness of God’s kingdom. We need to restore the values that treasured the ‘first fruits’ point of view in preparing worship experiences.”
6. Is the church and its worship practices more attractive or less attractive to nonbelievers than it was, say, 25 years ago?
“If you’re talking about the so-called ‘attractional church’ being, in reality, more attractional–it may be. Certainly the emphasis on families has engaged an increasing number of ‘soft’ Christians who were slipping away from the church. Music, casual dress and colloquial talk style have probably also helped. There is, however, a distinct lack of separation when it comes to the uniqueness of God and the secular world. If worship is too much like a town meeting or Amway convention, then our understanding of a sovereign God runs the risk of being trivialized out of our churches.”
There’s probably nothing surprising here for most of you. The most frightening comment coming from one of our interviewees, however, was that our worship services, “…might be the single least effective tool of building solid Christian believers.”
