Let's Put Life in Church Services

First of Three Parts

Three years ago I was bored with the Sunday church services over which I presided. The Order of Worship had developed rigor mortis: the doxology, the hymns, the prayers, the special music, the responses, the announcements and offering, and the sermon had over the years settled into virtually the same slots in the church bulletin week after week. Stand, sit, sing, pray, listen, speak—we had programmed ourselves right into a rut.

By the dictates of tradition (and possibly the church constitution), I did most of the talking while the congregation did most of the listening for most of the Sundays every year.

As a result we came down with a painful case of The Uncomfortable Pew, and attendance sagged (I wasn’t the only one bored). We had ample ecclesia but little koinonia.

At the same time, fortunately, our youth groups were thriving. Our high schoolers and collegians began asking pushy questions. “Pastor, why can’t we have more life in our church services?” “What if the Holy Spirit’s agenda isn’t the same as the one you have in the Sunday bulletin; would he have a chance?” “How do we find out about God’s blessings in the lives of the other people who attend our church?” “Will we ever have a sense of spiritual togetherness?”

I considered resigning, but God wouldn’t let me go. We didn’t need a new man—we needed new life.

I took a summer sabbatical to pray, think, and view our church from a distance. When I returned, I cautiously became a co-conspirator with a few others in a revolution aimed at gradual overthrow of the established order of service. Although we mounted renewal efforts along a wide front, we chose to give prime attention at first to the Sunday-morning service, because that was the one time during the week when most of our people were together. We knew that God’s blessings came in many packages, not just the ones marked pulpit or preacher, so we made room for the people to participate. And, to prevent the ruin of otherwise good things through repetition, we determined that for as long as possible we would not structure any two services alike.

To give God sufficient opportunity to take matters into his own hands, we even adventurously scheduled some “unstructured” services. (I confess that at first I carried notes and lists of hymns to these meetings—just in case!)

The same location, time, and familiar faces up front every week provided the necessary sense of continuity and stability; longtime members did not feel they were being uprooted.

Within a few months interest and attendance picked up, and our meetings gained a reputation of being among the most exciting in the city. Members would call and apologize for an upcoming weekend vacation trip, then conclude with something like, “I really hate to be away on Sunday, pastor. I just know I’ll miss something I shouldn’t.” They were talking about vital fellowship, not sermons or guest superstars.

These services spanned the generation gap. The ratio of college-age young people to the rest of the congregation was reputed to be the highest for miles around. The next largest group was the over-sixty set. We were an urban church.

Best of all, the Holy Spirit was liberated in our midst. No dancing in the aisles, no shouting, no rah-rah platforming or anything like that. It was simply a soul-stirring sense that he was present in the lives of his people, and that we believers truly were “members one of another.” Often when I entered the sanctuary for a service I could feel a radiant atmosphere of love and joy. There was an air of expectancy, too, because we knew that God had been at work in people’s lives during the week, and we anticipated sharing in those blessings. Koinonia had come!

It could not have come had we bypassed the practical application of some basic truths. A partial list:

1. The Church is Christ’s; he—not the minister—must be the predominant figure when believers come together. Jesus is “in the midst.” This involves our attitude—and the occasion to express it together.

2. The Church is Christ’s body. Members have affectional and functional relationships to one another. This involves interpersonal ministry—and the opportunity for it to happen.

3. The Church is a miraculous fusion of people to each other (Col. 3:11), with positional and practical realities. The Holy Spirit is both convener and catalyst of this dynamic community. He must have freedom to do his work not only in lives of individual Christians but also in the corporate life of the Church—when believers are together.

4. The Church has no divinely prescribed structure or forms to which believers must adhere when they meet together. (Our liturgical roots are not very deep in history. Those who do claim to practice the pattern of the early Church surely would admit that forms extant then were but extensions and adaptations of Jewish synagogue styles that in turn were forged of utility during the Exile. We have scriptural guidelines for behavior when we are together but none for an Order of Worship. We are not even told when or how often to schedule communion. Those who are by tradition committed to liturgy can make use of prefixes—spontaneous, free, contemporary—or adapt or work around the liturgy to give koinonia a chance. Vatican II and denominational reform movements reflect this need.)

For a long time I thought that any attempts to bring significant change into such sacred institutions as the morning worship service would cause serious dissension among members. Not so, if change occurs by evolution instead of sudden revolution, and if the members are deftly drawn in as participants in the change-making processes.

Another myth I believed was that only small churches could have the kind of services that spawn koinonia, but recently I learned that the attendance at Peninsula Bible Church in Palo Alto, California, jumped from 250 to nearly 1,000 during Sunday-night “Body Life” services.

In next month’s Workshop column. Part II of this article will list many of the koinonia-supportive features we introduced in our morning services. Part III will describe the evening services at Peninsula Bible Church.—EDWARD E. PLOWMAN, assistant editor, CHRISTIANITY TODAY; formerly pastor of Park Presidio Baptist Church, San Francisco.

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