Our Church is Moving to One Worship Service

This coming Sunday our church (zoarchurch.com) will transition from our current schedule of two morning worship services (one contemporary and one traditional) to one worship service.  The plan is to try this for three months and see how it goes.  I thought I would say a word or two about why we’re making this move.

Disclaimer:  I want to be clear about what I’m not saying.  I’m not saying that it’s a bad idea for churches to have more than one worship service.  If your church has more than one service, that’s great.  I just want to state as clearly as I can why I believe our church is making a change.  (By the way, I don’t claim that all our church members feel the same way.)  So here are two of the primary reasons.

1.      I think our church is stating clearly that worship is about expressing our adoration to God, not about satisfying our personal preferences.

Soren Kierkegaard was a philosopher/theologian who described worship as a drama or a play.  He said that in the worship drama it’s wrong to think of the congregation as the audience, the worship leaders (singers, musicians, preachers etc.) as the actors and God as the prompter.  He believed that the worship leaders were to be the prompters, all of us (the leaders and the congregation) are the actors and God is the audience.  In the worship drama, God is an audience of one.

Sometimes someone will tell me (most often through one of our deacons) that they don’t like the way we did something in a worship service.  Or I will hear the phrase, “I just don’t get anything out of that kind of worship.”  While I appreciate and try to respect individual preferences, I have to say that “getting something out of worship” is not our objective.  Our objective is not to get anything, but to give God our all in worship.

Is it nice to get an emotional charge when we worship?  Of course!  But if I measure the value of worship by my emotional barometer I’m afraid I will seldom get an accurate reading.  Can I be honest?  I think the relatively recent movement to make our personal preferences the single criterion for worship decisions has not only distorted the church’s understanding of worship, it has depleted our worship services of real influence in the communities we are called to evangelize.  

Which brings me to the second reason…

2.      I think our church is realizing that the evangelistic power of our worship is not in trying to have “seeker sensitive” worship services but in seeking to have Spirit filled worship services.   

As a young pastor I came along in the heyday of the “seeker sensitive” movement.  I must admit that I embraced it wholeheartedly.  I mean I swallowed it hook, line and sinker!  Now, in the dying embers of that movement I can see clearly that those who are outside of the church are not expecting, or even wanting the church to be more seeker sensitive. 

Let me state it this way.  I can’t remember talking to a non-Christian who told me they would come to our worship services if we had more edgy music, or more traditional music.  No one tells me that they want better preachers or better teachers or better singers.  Let’s be honest.  If we are trying to draw people into our worship services by providing them with a better show than they can get somewhere else we might as well give up.  They can attend almost any concert and hear better music.  (I have a DVD of the Eagles in concert that is better than any music I’ve ever heard in a worship service.)  They can go to almost any comedy club and hear a more entertaining speaker. 

Here’s the truth, in my opinion.  Non-Christians are not looking for churches that blow them away with a great show; whether the show is southern gospel or gospel rap or anything in between.  Non-Christians are looking for churches that blow them away with a genuine movement of the Spirit of God when they come together to worship.    

Jesus said, “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” (John 12:32)  During the season of Lent we remember the truth of this statement.  Jesus was lifted up on a cross and, amazingly, for two thousand years people have been drawn to him.

This is what churches are called to do in our worship services.  I think our church is simply trying to find our place in this long and time honored tradition of exalting Jesus.  I guess we’ll see if this is the way forward for us.  Either way, I’m really proud of our people for seeking God’s will and trying to follow his leadership.