Worship as Evangelism
By Sally Morgenthaler |
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[Ed note: From May/June 2007 issue of Rev! Magazine (www.rev.org) Thanks to Sally and Rev! Magazine for permission to repost here]
Two years ago I taught my last seminar focused solely on worship. A year ago I disbanded my worship resource site, Sacramentis. My colleagues were concerned. How could I leave the work I'd begun? Did it mean I no longer believed worship was important? Who was going to take up the torch of worship evangelism? Was I just going to waste my legacy? Was I crazy?
 Maybe I was, but a storm had been brewing in my soul for five long years. I remember meeting with the worship leader of a well-known church in the fall of 2000. He had followed my work and respected many of my viewpoints. When we met over coffee, he shared a concern he'd had for a while over my book Worship Evangelism. In his view, Worship Evangelism had helped to create a "worship-driven subculture." As he explained it, this subculture was a sizeable part of the contemporary church that had just been waiting for an excuse not to do the hard work of real outreach. An excuse not to get their hands dirty. According to him, that excuse came in the form of a book—my book. He elaborated. "If a contemporary worship service is the best witnessing tool in the box, then why give a rip about what goes on outside the worship center? If unbelievers are coming through the doors to check us Christians out, and if they'll fall at Jesus' feet after they listen to us croon worship songs and watch us sway back and forth, well then, a whole lot of churches are just going to say, 'Sign us up!' "
To be honest, I wasn't surprised. The attitude he described certainly didn't fit every congregation out there in contemporary-worship-land, but it matched too much of what I'd seen. The realization hit me in the gut. Between 1995 and 2000 I'd traveled to a host of worship-driven churches, some that openly advertised that they were "a church for the unchurched." On the good occasions, the worship experience was transporting. (I dug a little deeper when that happened. Invariably, I found another value at work behind the worship production: a strong, consistent presence in the community.) Too many times, I came away with an unnamed, uneasy feeling. Something was not quite right. The worship felt disconnected from real life. Then there were the services when the pathology my friend talked about came right over the platform and hit me in the face. It was unabashed self-absorption, a worship culture that screamed, "It's all about us" so loudly that I wondered how any visitor could stand to endure the rest of the hour. 
Were these worship-driven churches really attracting the unchurched? Most of their pastors truly believed they were. And in a few cases, they were right. The worship in their congregations was inclusive, and their people were working hard to meet the needs of the neighborhood. Yet those churches whose emphasis was dual—celebrated worship inside, lived worship outside—were the minority. In 2001 a worship-driven congregation in my area finally did a survey as to who they were really reaching, and they were shocked. They'd thought their congregation was at least 50 percent unchurched. The real number was 3 percent.
By 2002 a few pastors of praise and worship churches began admitting to me that they weren't making much of a dent in the surrounding non-Christian population, even though their services were packed and they were known for the best worship production in town. Several asked me to help them crack the unchurched code. One wanted to invest in an expensive VJ machine and target twentysomethings. The others thought a multisensory, ancient-future, or emergent twist might help. However, when I visited their congregations, it wasn't hard to see that the biggest barrier to reaching the unchurched had little to do with worship technique or style. It had to do with isolation and the faux-worship that isolation inevitably creates.
No, what my friend shared with me wasn't news. He'd simply confirmed my worst fears. How ironic. When I wrote Worship Evangelism, I'd had no intention of distracting people from the world outside. I only wanted to give them another way of connecting to it. I certainly had never meant to make worship some slick formula for outreach, let alone the one formula. I'd only wanted to affirm that corporate worship has the capability to witness to the unchurched if we make it accessible and if we don't gut it of its spiritual content on the way to making it culturally relevant.
But those were different times. To witness through worship, the unchurched actually need to show up. And back then, this was happening. Those were the days when a church start-up could simply put up a billboard sign, send out several hundred glossy mailers, and the unchurched-curious would come to check it out. The contemporary, user-friendly spin may not have been as factory fresh as it was in the '80s, but it was still interesting. To the religiously allergic who hadn't been to church since grade school, it looked like religion had come of age.
And maybe it had. In the mid-90s, the community church section in the yellow pages was awash with self-conscious logos and catchy taglines, all competing with each other for that upwardly mobile, savvy church shopper. Strip malls and school gyms were bursting with "churches-on-wheels": shiny-faced set-up crews towing two-wheeled storage trailers, each chock full of sound equipment, Plexiglas podiums, informational handouts, plastic plants, name tags, and nursery toys.
But by 1998 something had shifted. The set-up crews weren't looking quite as fresh as they once were. Why would they, playing "portable church" 52 weeks a year, year after hopeful year? Of course, they were waiting for the "promised land"—the gleaming megaplex their pastor had envisioned on those 20 farm acres south of town. The savviest start-ups reached that promised land. Most did not. By 2000 there were only a few trailers backing up to warehouse doors. The start-ups had thinned out. It was as if the "if we build it, they will come" game had suddenly grown stale. Like last year's action toy, the bright outfits, plastic plants, oozy choruses, and pink-shirts-with-Dockers-slacks went into culture's garage sale bin. Contemporary church plants that hadn't reached critical mass (300 to 400) by the end of the '90s were in deep trouble.
But there was a conundrum. The contemporary congregations that were well-established by the turn of the millennium—with 1,000 or more attendees and with the founding pastors still at the helm—seemed to grow exponentially, and they kept growing. These mega-survivors were invariably congregations with visionary, talented leaders and the determination to do whatever it took to grow. Many of them became the largest congregations in their cities and have developed significant ministries that are still impacting the face of American religion.
Who they were and who they were growing by, however, is a crucial question. As negative attitudes toward conservative Christianity among the unchurched increased in the late '90s and early 2000s, most large-congregation growth efforts became more focused on the churched consumer, even as their written and spoken vision remained focused on the unchurched. And these star performers became masters at what the churched wanted. They raised the bar several times over for what could be expected out of a Sunday morning experience, and they worked tirelessly to develop the high quality, practical programs the churched now demanded. Having excelled at making theirs the best churched experience on the market, they were perfectly positioned to absorb the windfall of disgruntled attendees from dwindling mainline congregations and failed, contemporary start-ups.
 Some counter this view that growing churches have increased primarily by the churched. They cite situations where a large congregation has indeed attracted a high percentage of non-churchgoers.
Or they point to the well-advertised fact that both the number and average size of megachurches increased between the early '90s and early 2000s. Between 1994 and 2004, church attendance in congregations between 1,000 and 2,000 grew 10.3 percent. Congregations over 2,000 grew 21.5 percent. According to a Hartford Seminary study titled "Megachurches Today 2005," there are 1,210 Protestant churches in the United States with weekly attendance over 2,000, nearly double the number that existed in 2000.
Yet, according to The Barna Group, the number of adults who did not attend church nearly doubled in the same time period. In a parallel trend, pollsters were charting the lowest ratings for religion in 60 years. With both numbers and attitudes of the unchurched going in the opposite direction, where was all the growth in these big-and-getting-bigger churches coming from?
Location just might be a clue. Nearly 72 percent of churches with average weekly attendance of at least 2,000 people are found in a swath from Georgia and Florida across Texas to California...roughly the Bible Belt and the most churchgoing sectors of the Sun Belt. It's hard not to see the correlation.
As influential as they are, megachurches aren't the whole story of American religion. To get a complete picture of church growth in the 1990s and new millennium, we need to look at overall church attendance patterns. Traditional pollsters conduct telephone interviews and expect people to be honest about their religious practices. According to the numbers gathered this way, we're still at a 40 percent attendance rate. But pollsters who actually do seat counts and take exit polls tell a different story. The average weekly church attendance when measured by actual "bodies present" was at 17.4 percent in 2006, down from 20.4 percent in 1990. David Olson of TheAmericanChurch.org remarks, "You'd have to find 80 million more people that churches forgot to count to get to 40 percent.
The upshot? For all the money, time, and effort we've spent on cultural relevance—and that includes culturally relevant worship—it seems we came through the last 15 years with a significant net loss in churchgoers, proliferation of megachurches and all.
In 2003 the film Saved debuted at the box office. Many evangelicals were horrified and panned the movie. The fact that the film was produced in the first place should have tipped us off that something was afoot. The fact that it opened in theaters nationwide should have provoked a sizeable dialogue among contemporary church leaders about attitudes among the unchurched. But no such dialogue ensued.
Was the film exaggerated? Yes. It's satire, and that's what satire does. Was it slanted? Yes. But then, wasn't that the point—the chance for non-Christians to reflect back to us how some of them perceive us? Truth hurts. Here was a film that depicted the smug, self-absorption of an evangelical school culture—complete with narcissistic praise and worship. I wondered if the dozen or so who walked out on it were Christians who didn't want to face themselves on the screen. If it hadn't been for my colleague drawing me aside in 2000, I could have been one those.
The question is, should cultural and missional realities have anything to do with worship? Perhaps not. It would appear that we're more than capable of creating our own view of the world, and we tend to promote and perpetuate that view in our sanctuaries and worship centers. Somehow, the show goes on...even if most of the unbelievers we thought we were reaching either weren't there in the first place, or they left the building some time ago.
Early in 2005 an unchurched journalist attended one of the largest, worship-driven churches in the country. Here is his description of one particular service:
"The [worship team] was young and pretty, dressed in the kind of quality-cotton-punk clothing one buys at the Gap. 'Lift up your hands, open the door,' crooned the lead singer, an inoffensive tenor. Male singers at [this] and other megachurches are almost always tenors, their voices clean and indistinguishable, R&B-inflected one moment, New Country the next, with a little bit of early '90s grunge at the beginning and the end.
"They sound like they're singing in beer commercials, and perhaps this is not coincidental. The worship style is a kind of musical correlate to (their pastor's) free market theology: designed for total accessibility, with the illusion of choice between strikingly similar brands. (He prefers the term flavors, and often uses Baskin-Robbins as a metaphor when explaining his views.) The drummers all stick to soft cymbals and beats anyone can handle; the guitarists deploy effects like artillery but condense them, so the highs and lows never stretch too wide. Lyrics tend to be rhythmic and pronunciation perfect, the better to sing along with when the words are projected onto movie screens. Breathy or wailing, vocalists drench their lines with emotion, but only within strict confines. There are no sad songs in a megachurch, and there are no angry songs. There are songs about desperation, but none about despair; songs convey longing only if it has already been fulfilled."
No sad songs. No angry songs. Songs about desperation, but none about despair. Worship for the perfect. The already arrived. The good-looking, inoffensive, and nice. No wonder the unchurched aren't interested.
Truth may hurt, but if there's something leaders do, they tell it. In 2000 I didn't have all of the numbers I have now, but I had seen enough to know what was happening. The contemporary church—including the praise-and-worship church, the worship evangelism church—was in a holy huddle, and I began to talk about it. It was excruciating. It was career suicide. But from pastors conferences to worship seminars to seminaries, I began challenging leaders to give up their mythologies about how they were reaching the unchurched on Sunday morning. Yes, worship openly and unapologetically. Yes, worship well and deeply. (Which means singing songs that may include anger, sadness, and despair. Have we forgotten that David did this? Have we discarded the psalms?) But let our deepened, honest worship be the overflow of what God does through us beyond our walls.
Conference organizers were confused. They wondered what had happened to me. Where was the worship evangelism warrior? Where was the formula? Where was the pep talk for all those people who were convinced that trading in their traditional service for a contemporary upgrade would be the answer? I don't have to tell you this. The 100-year-old congregation that's down to 43 members and having a hard time paying the light bill doesn't want to be told that the "answer" is living life with the people in their neighborhoods. Relationships take time, and they need an attendance infusion now.
I understood their dilemma, and secretly, I wished I had a magic bullet. But I didn't. And I wasn't going to give them false hope. Some newfangled worship service wasn't going to save their church, and it wasn't going to build God's kingdom. It wasn't going to attract the strange neighbors who had moved into their communities or the generations they had managed to ignore for the last 39 years.
As I pulled my Sacramentis site off of the Web, I posted this statement: "Sacramentis has been a pioneer site on worship and culture for seven years. From the beginning, it has been a gathering spot for the most helpful worship ideas and resources we could find. Sacramentis has also been a place where church leaders could go deeper into what classic Christian worship is and does, and where they could re-imagine worship for communities where churchgoing is no longer the norm. But as culture has become incessantly more spiritual and adamantly less religious, we at Sacramentis have become convinced that the primary meeting place with our unchurched friends is now outside the church building. Worship must finally become, as Paul reminds us, more life than event (Romans 12:1-2). To this end, we will be focusing on the radically different kind of leadership practices necessary to transform our congregations from destinations to conversations, from services to service, and from organizations to organisms."
In January USA TODAY featured an article titled, "Can the 'E-Word' [evangelical] Be Saved?" I think we need to ask a parallel question. "Can the W-word [worship] be saved?" Saved from the definition that it's just what goes on inside the tent? From the lie that worship is a place you go, not what you do or who you are?
JCPenney stores adopted a new motto a few years ago: "It's all inside." That may work well for clothes and housewares, but it doesn't work so well for spreading the gospel. Ah, but aren't buildings important? Yes, they are. Jesus himself spent crucial time in synagogues and the Temple. He affirmed that the worship of God is central to what it means to be a disciple. But here's the catch. He did not make the building—or corporate worship—the destination. His destination was the people God wanted to touch, and those were, with few exceptions, people who wouldn't have spent much time in holy places. Jesus' direction was always outward. Centrifugal. Even in death, he was broken and poured out for the sake of a needy world. God's work may not be "all outside," but if we look at where Jesus spent his time, I think we can safely say that most of it is.
I am currently headed further outside my comfort zones than I ever thought I could go. I am taking time for the preacher to heal herself. As I exit the world of corporate worship, I want to offer this hope and prayer. May you, as leader of your congregation, have the courage to leave the "if we build it, they will come" world of the last two decades behind. May you and the Christ-followers you serve become worshippers who can raise the bar of authenticity, as well as your hands. And may you be reminiscent of Isaiah, who, having glimpsed the hem of God's garment and felt the cleansing fire of grace on his lips, cried, "Here am I, send me."
 SALLY MORGENTHALER speaks about leadership in a "flattened" world. She is a contributor to An Emergent Manifesto of Hope, edited by Doug Pagitt and Tony Jones (Baker). She may be contacted at info@trueconversations.com.
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Yes, yes and yes. Thankyou Sally for your honesty. I was the worship leader at my church and am no longer. Our church has closed its doors...couldn't pay the electricity bill (among other things). Those of us who were in leadership are now thinking through these exact things. I am now involved in singing at open mic's and meeting people who have a love of music like myself but as yet have not met the creator of that music. I now write songs that are about my saviour but are not weighed down with pleasantries and Christian jargon while still bringing hope to those who listen. I have longed to introduce people to my Saviour and see them grow in His grace and be transformed by Him...only now by challenging the boxes I have put around church and my Christian walk, do I finally see the potential for those dreams to be realised.
Wow - This is a terrific article! I applaud your honesty and courage to speak and act on this important reality. I am so hopeful about what I see happening as churches are beginning to realize that worship/church must happen outside the building seven days a week - not just on Sunday between 9 and noon. I personally know of a church (down here in the Bible belt) who voted to sell their church building and meet in homes and a local elementary school instead. Members are freed from the idea that church is a place to go - it's a people to be and they are being the church to their neighbors and co-workers as never before. Perhaps things will get worse for church attendance in the short run, but if the Kingdom is enlarged in the long run, then worship is indeed taking place.
Spot on Sally. Too much of the western church is into "performance" based worship. I am the evangelism coordinator from our church, and even though we are smallish (~150 in the congregation) when I spoke to a number or people today after church on the topic of your article, at least half felt that the worship service on a Sunday morning was the primary part of being a Christian - and our primary method of witnessing.
Makes me think I am belting my head against a brick wall. From your article, I am thinking of adapting a new slogan - "It's all outside." Look at the first century church and the undergound church in China today. They didn't need performance based workship to grow.
We need more people in churches will to say in prayer "send me" and "if you lead I will go".
For the most part it was a good article - well written and some good thoughts. However, I am concerned that so often people who are questioning the paradigms of church don't talk much of turning to scripture to re-align their perception of what church should look like.
Sally, Thanks for being so passionate on your journey. I saw you present at a Maranatha Conference in Greenwood, IN in 1996. I really thought you were great then. I bought your book and loved it. I don't think your book can possibly be blamed for the excesses you described. Thanks for using the main themes of Scripture to support your points. I truly think it is a case of both/and. I don't think your friend was right. People will take any principle and twist it for their own benefit. It is always true that churches need to be aware of the needs of true seekers as they design worship services. It is also true that people need to expose seekers to genuine worship so they get a taste of the Christian life. These are the two points I got from your presentation and book, which still seem incredibly valid to me. I am also feeling the call to go and serve, but I think corporate worship is more important than ever to guide and empower that move. Songs like God of Justice need to be produced in greater number. Articles critiquing those who make a show of worship, need to be written. Actual conversations need to happen. We can't just stop worshipping because people with false motives are messing it up. I wish you were still involved directly in the worship community. Truly, I think the overall affect has been positive. I serve a small church that has an authentic community and is moving to serve the community even more. Worship is a genuine gateway into the way of Jesus and can be done in a way that empowers people to worship as a lifestyle. Sally, I push back on some of your radical conclusions. You have done more good than you realize. Maybe not with megachurch leaders, but perhaps with the vast numbers of leaders who serve more genuine communities. Not to overstate the situation, but we don't quit the gospel just because a lot of people have used it to control others. As you dream it up again, don't be overly self-critical or corporate worship-critical. Models can change, but it is definitely biblical to come together to honor our triune God and inspire people to follow Jesus.
I'm sure this was a costly decision for you. To close down your ministry and move on to something else. To feel like perhaps you've been misunderstood. To see what you dreamed about and taught about become different that what you intended or meant.
Yet at the same time, I am encouraged by the shift towards getting outside of the church. I think that's a move in an excellent direction.
Chris
When I first returned to church after 30 years of rebellion and "searching," I was essentially "unchurched." But it wasn't the worship that ultimately kept me coming back, it was the message and the way I saw the gospel lived out through the lives of the congregation and the pastor himself. Ours is a tiny church (<100) but growing slowly. We're not in this to fill seats, we're there to grow and reach out through missions and service. Our worship team certainly sings some more contemporary songs, but the old hymns show up, too -- if only to remind us of our roots and traditions.
Bless you, Sally, for your bold step against the tide and your unflinching honesty about the problems with worship-centered evangelism. May your future service for the Lord be fruitful and fulfilling.
Thank you for this. As the pastor of a year old church plant, I have watched our group struggle through the hard work of realizing that worship evangelism (especially in an Austin context) doesn't work, but only manages to bring the dechurched back to church (not a bad thing, but not the same). The fact is, there is a level of "affirmation of message" that has to exist for a person to be able to worship. The idea that any type of worship that affirms "Jesus is LORD" would attract those who aren't sure He is (or are quite sure He isn't) is a bit absurd. If, then, worship is more for the already convinced than the unconvinced, we must create a better way to engage the unconvinced.
I could go on forever with this, this conversation has, in many ways, defined our church plant over the last year. Whether it is the decision to have house churches on Sundays and worship on Wednesdays or giving up on the idea of "getting people to go to church" and instead "being the church and going to people", this is a conversation every church needs to be having.
I agree with Aaron, Timothy, etc.
The problem is not Worship Evangelism or the church. It's people and their sinfulness. It's their sinfulness that compels them to disconnect from the world. And people very easily allow themselves to be distracted too. No doubt, part of the challenge is in the teaching and the example we set inside the church walls. But it's only a part. I would hope that the healthiest churches are well aware of this human tendency and counteract it by keeping all the focus and attention on Jesus and the Cross (as much as we can, anyway). I am becoming more and more convinced that this is the only answer, and this is our only hope.
Probably (although no one can say for sure one way or the other), Jesus spent more time at the temple than most people. He preached there. He taught there. He healed there. He prayed there. He worshiped there. And when the allotted gathering time was through, He did this outreaching outside the temple.
If I were to suggest to Sally (10 years) that I didn’t agree with what she was saying, a wall would have gone up. She would have either tried to defend what she was saying tooth and nail or she would have ignored me. That is human nature. It was only through an honest search and facing truths about the evangelical church and a deep gnawing that something wasn’t right that led her to different conclusions. There is something else that will cause a wall to go up in Sally. “Are buildings important?” She answered yes. It may take Sally up to another 5 years to come to the conclusion that they are not important. They are only important to Sally because SALLY thinks they are important. Buildings were not important to Jesus nor Steven (Acts 7 read Stevens take on the Temple… it was only built because of the stubbornness of the Israelites… God didn’t want it and He calls the Israelites a stiff-necked people for wanting it… Furthermore they were always resisting the Holy Spirit). Like so many other leaders Sally tries to haul the Old Testament into the New Testament. We need the building because they had the Temple in the Old. We need paid people because in the Old they had paid priests. We need the tithe because in the Old Testament they had the tithe……….. The temple system came to an end in Jesus. We were not instructed to build buildings so we could create it all over again. George Barna came to that conclusion a few years ago. Their church no longer meets in buildings. I could go into a long defence about the “unnecessary building” (and make a great case against it) but I really do not think that would do any good. Sally will just have to do an honest study about it. Nevertheless this is a great article. Evangelism has never been about “come to our church” but “GO into the world. The world will be reached by service and sacrifice…. Not by inviting them to church. I really believe the church is moving towards small organic/missional structures. But what do I know…..
Sally, I just stumbled across this article today. I've never read your book, but there is much in your article in which I can agree. My husband and I have left our church, of which we have been members, postmodernism being one of the reasons among many. Proverbs 22:28 says, "Remove not the ancient landmark which your fathers have set." Yet, many Christians have indeed forgotten their Christian heritage. They have thrown out the baby with the bath water. Let's toss out the creeds. Afterall, they resemble Roman Catholicism too much. Let's toss out anything that remotely resembles liturgical worship. That's too close too Catholicism and outdated as well. Let's get rid of those old, fuddy-duddy hymns. They aren't relevant to our culture and they won't draw in the youth. The church seems to be fixated on drawing in the young people, and the answer seems it seems, is making the church and her message and worship more pallatable to them. In the process, the church has conformed to our culture, which is youth oriented. Just look at the commercials and the latest sitcoms, if you can endure them for more than a few seconds! Modern Evangelicalism has removed the ancient landmark. The gospel no longer offends. Christ is no longer the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Baptism and the Lord's Supper are put on the shelf and filed away in the category of nonessentials. How many Christians know about the Early Church Fathers? How many even care? They were willing to give up their live unto death for the sake of the gospel. How many know about the courage of Athanasius as he stood against the popular heresy of Arianism? This man knew that only the scriptures, which have been inspired by God, could combat the rising tide of heresy. How many understand the purpose for the Reformation or even care, for that matter? These men laid their lives on the line for the gospel. Modern Evangelicalism has put the scriptures on the back shelf. Oh yes, the church claims she is all about the Bible, but is she? David said, "I have laid up thy word in my heart that I might not sin against thee." The writer of Hebrew says,"For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And before him no creature is hidden, but all are open and laid bare to the eyes of him with whom we have to do." As long as the modern Evangelical church thinks to make disciples of men through its "plastic" (remember that word?) praise and worship services, they will not reach the unconverted to Christ. As long the focus is on growth in numbers and making the gospel more attractive to the culture, the Church will suffer. So keep on trying to update your sound equipment, keep on trying to make the most appealing PowerPoint presentations possible, bring in the latest Christian rap musicians, get the young people to dress hip and lead worship in the worship team. Build a Starbucks in your lobby and sell the latest pop Christian literature and music that the purpose driven church can muster up. Use all of your 21st Century marketing techniques, but to what end? Remember our Lord's words, "Fear not little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom." And, "Enter by the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is easy, that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those that find it are few." And "When the Son of Man returns, will He find faith on earth?" The gospel must necessarily offend. As the Apostle Paul so boldly proclaims, "It pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God." Modern Evangelical church, return to the ancient landmark and discard your 21st Century business approach to church growth and renewal. Allow Christ Jesus once again to be your foundation and to build His church, and you will not fail.
Darlene
Sally, Thanks very much for your article, I really appreciate your insight and honesty. Yes, maybe what we need to do as followers of Jesus is to think about why we do some of the things we do. Worship is first and foremost for God not for the believer or even the unbeliever, its for Him alone. My husband and I have recently been involved with a small church plant group in Hamilton (New Zealand) and after 4 years have had to close the doors, partly due to; (as you have mentioned) "couldn't pay the electricity bill". Throughout this time God has been showing us that church is about community and relationships and not so much about programs and performance or just punching in your 'Sunday card'. We don't need a building to be the church. As Kester commented, being the church to the people in our own community and showing these people that we genuinely care. We have been involved in a local school that is fairly poor and lacking parental support, and have weeded gardens, fixed playground equipment, painted hopscotches among other things. It is these kinds of things I believe that speak to the 'unchurched' about the love of Jesus and open up opportunities for natural evangelism. As you have pointed out, there is a disturbing trend of believers coming to worship 'worship'! Its all about the songs, performance, and a whole subculture has been created around this. My primary passion is to come together with other christian brothers and sisters to worship and love Jesus with all my heart, this need not include the latest upmarket music or fancy instruments!
Sally, thank you so much for this article. It presents sobering information for our prayerful reflection and it represents a frank admission from a former worship-evangelism consultant in the emerging church.
By way of comments on your article, at the outset I found your concerns about worship-evangelism and attractional church style models of interest in that I attended the American Scoiety of Church Growth conference in 2004 in Pasadena where you were a speaker. It became apparent as the days unfolded that ASCG did not have have their own perspective on such issues, or at least they were not articulated at the conference, and each of the speakers seemed to have conflicting views, running the gamut from megachurch for everyone models to missional church approaches (presented as a refreshing alternative by Ryan Bolger of Fuller Seminary). Organizations such as ASCG, and many of our churches, from traditional to contemporary to emerging, need to consider the sobering ideas you present in this article.
It would seem that in an attempt at cultural relevancy and evangelism through worship that many churches gravitated too far toward engaging consumerist concerns and an inward focused approach that resulted in the church as a dispenser of goods and services rather than as a missional entity that equips people primarily for service to the world. Instead of missional incarnation and contextualization we perpetuated attractional methods that attempted to woo others into hearing the gospel within our subculture and through our forms rather than living and communicating the gospel (in the language of missions) in "receptor-oriented" ways, and this took place without our awareness that this was indeed the case.
I appreciated the clarification you provided in the article on your own views on evangelism-worship that you have articulated in the past. I was one of those who misunderstood what you were articulating, and confused your views with yet another form of attractional methods.
You also mention a consumerist approach to church and worship, and while some level of interaction with the consumerist ethos is necessary given its prevalence in American culture, including the evangelical subculture, nevertheless, the evangelical church seems to have capitulated too much to consumerism, so much so that it may indeed represent a form of syncretism.
If I were to state a disagreement with an aspect of your article it would be over the extent of discontent with the church in previous decades. Post-Christendom has been building for quite some time, and while the situation is better in the U.S. than the U.K., and the church still retains some positive cultural capital in America, nevertheless, dissatisfaction with the church as an institution and with individual Christians (yet paradoxically while also maintaining a positive view of Jesus) may be have been more widespread and for a longer period than we realize.
Finally, you raise the question as to whether "cultural and missional realities have anything to do with worship." Surely they do, but the manner in which they are explored is crucial. As your article indicates, we have engaged the culture through worship in attractional fashion with a Christendom mindset, and this has proven ineffective. Instead, we might explore incarnating the gospel within subcultures that then leads to contextualized forms of Kingdom community, including culturally-relevant worship. We desperately need Christians who think in dual fashion with fingers on the pulse of culture as well as theology, that reclaims the centrality of the missio Dei, and which looks to the history of Christian mission and cross-cultural missiology as the foundational platform for engaging the West.
Leslie Newbigin posed the question, "Can the West be converted?" The answer, of course, is yes, but it appears that the post-Christendom, late modern church in America and the West has quite a way to go in grappling with how this is best accomplished.
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Makes me think I am belting my head against a brick wall. From your article, I am thinking of adapting a new slogan - "It's all outside." Look at the first century church and the undergound church in China today. They didn't need performance based workship to grow.
We need more people in churches will to say in prayer "send me" and "if you lead I will go".
Yet at the same time, I am encouraged by the shift towards getting outside of the church. I think that's a move in an excellent direction.
Chris
Bless you, Sally, for your bold step against the tide and your unflinching honesty about the problems with worship-centered evangelism. May your future service for the Lord be fruitful and fulfilling.
I could go on forever with this, this conversation has, in many ways, defined our church plant over the last year. Whether it is the decision to have house churches on Sundays and worship on Wednesdays or giving up on the idea of "getting people to go to church" and instead "being the church and going to people", this is a conversation every church needs to be having.
The problem is not Worship Evangelism or the church. It's people and their sinfulness. It's their sinfulness that compels them to disconnect from the world. And people very easily allow themselves to be distracted too. No doubt, part of the challenge is in the teaching and the example we set inside the church walls. But it's only a part. I would hope that the healthiest churches are well aware of this human tendency and counteract it by keeping all the focus and attention on Jesus and the Cross (as much as we can, anyway). I am becoming more and more convinced that this is the only answer, and this is our only hope.
Probably (although no one can say for sure one way or the other), Jesus spent more time at the temple than most people. He preached there. He taught there. He healed there. He prayed there. He worshiped there. And when the allotted gathering time was through, He did this outreaching outside the temple.
Darlene
By way of comments on your article, at the outset I found your concerns about worship-evangelism and attractional church style models of interest in that I attended the American Scoiety of Church Growth conference in 2004 in Pasadena where you were a speaker. It became apparent as the days unfolded that ASCG did not have have their own perspective on such issues, or at least they were not articulated at the conference, and each of the speakers seemed to have conflicting views, running the gamut from megachurch for everyone models to missional church approaches (presented as a refreshing alternative by Ryan Bolger of Fuller Seminary). Organizations such as ASCG, and many of our churches, from traditional to contemporary to emerging, need to consider the sobering ideas you present in this article.
It would seem that in an attempt at cultural relevancy and evangelism through worship that many churches gravitated too far toward engaging consumerist concerns and an inward focused approach that resulted in the church as a dispenser of goods and services rather than as a missional entity that equips people primarily for service to the world. Instead of missional incarnation and contextualization we perpetuated attractional methods that attempted to woo others into hearing the gospel within our subculture and through our forms rather than living and communicating the gospel (in the language of missions) in "receptor-oriented" ways, and this took place without our awareness that this was indeed the case.
I appreciated the clarification you provided in the article on your own views on evangelism-worship that you have articulated in the past. I was one of those who misunderstood what you were articulating, and confused your views with yet another form of attractional methods.
You also mention a consumerist approach to church and worship, and while some level of interaction with the consumerist ethos is necessary given its prevalence in American culture, including the evangelical subculture, nevertheless, the evangelical church seems to have capitulated too much to consumerism, so much so that it may indeed represent a form of syncretism.
If I were to state a disagreement with an aspect of your article it would be over the extent of discontent with the church in previous decades. Post-Christendom has been building for quite some time, and while the situation is better in the U.S. than the U.K., and the church still retains some positive cultural capital in America, nevertheless, dissatisfaction with the church as an institution and with individual Christians (yet paradoxically while also maintaining a positive view of Jesus) may be have been more widespread and for a longer period than we realize.
Finally, you raise the question as to whether "cultural and missional realities have anything to do with worship." Surely they do, but the manner in which they are explored is crucial. As your article indicates, we have engaged the culture through worship in attractional fashion with a Christendom mindset, and this has proven ineffective. Instead, we might explore incarnating the gospel within subcultures that then leads to contextualized forms of Kingdom community, including culturally-relevant worship. We desperately need Christians who think in dual fashion with fingers on the pulse of culture as well as theology, that reclaims the centrality of the missio Dei, and which looks to the history of Christian mission and cross-cultural missiology as the foundational platform for engaging the West.
Leslie Newbigin posed the question, "Can the West be converted?" The answer, of course, is yes, but it appears that the post-Christendom, late modern church in America and the West has quite a way to go in grappling with how this is best accomplished.