Upgrading Our Worship
In his book Present Future, Reggie McNeal makes some thought-provoking observations about worship and God's mission.
"Worship, unfortunately, often occurs without a missioiologial perspective. Witness the church worship wars. These are the result of club members discussing their worship style preferences as stockholders and shareholders, not as missionaries. "Can non-believers really worship God?" or "Should our worship be seeker sensitive or seeker-driven?" as though worship is not a powerful evangelistic tool to express God's mission in this world! Non-believers are already worshipping, because people are built to worship something. Our challenge is to upgrade their worship to worship of the true God. The point is, absent a missiological center, North American theological reflections can easily drift toward figuring out who is right and who's wrong rather than who's going with the Gospel, who's listening, and who's responding."
In a few weeks, March 27th, more people who don't know Jesus will be attending church than at any other day of the year. Our friends, our neighbors... Will they be invited to spend that day with us? What would missionaries do?
Who is going with the Gospel?
Who is listening?
Who is responding?
Maybe we can help our friends, and one another, upgrade our worship!
posted by Brent @ 7:25 AM
6 comments
6 Comments:
"...as though worship is not a powerful evangelistic tool to express God's mission in this world!"
In my experience, I don't find this to be true. I have never once seen anyone converted by a phenomenal worship service. I find it hard to believe that a rational unbeliever would suddenly start believing because of some nice music, a moving prayer, or provocative sermon. Nor do I see this with the early church. There are no passages that I know of where Paul converted thousands by his "God inspired performance on the tamborine." Instead, it was demonstrations of God's power (i.e miracles), and the intentional involvement in the lives of others that turned people to Christianity. While inviting friends to church is not a bad thing, it should not be a substitute for a more personal involvement. The sermon of your life and the songs of your actions will be far more impactful than anything they would hear or see on Sunday morning, even Easter Sunday.
If you see evangelism as a process, rather than an event does it make a difference? If something doesn't take a person all the way from A-Z all at once, it is not evangelism? Or can a cup of coffee and conversation, or even worship be considered evangelism if it is part of moving a person to the next step in their spiritual journey? Is evangelism an event or a process?
Comments regarding the previous anonymous comment: Even though you have never experienced it, you should know it in your heart and in your mind anyway. To observe a worshipful experience and homage paid to God by a community of believers is a powerful draw and directing to God as seen in that unbeliever (I Cor 14:24-25) that falls down among proclaimers with the secrets of his heart laid bare, and while worshiping God exclaims, "God is really among you." The same could be said of the great worship scenes of the book of Revelation that draw the human mind to ask, "Who is this God that they praise Him so?"
Salvation could be more accurately seen as an inclusive process, a journey, or a pilgrimage, with distinct events along the way which inform, draw, and direct a seeker toward God and His Son, rather than a single event that suddenly prompts a "rational unbeliever". What you finally see is but a part of the journey that has been provoked by many prior events.
So you may have experienced it and never knew it. In seeing it you did not percieve it.
The previous anonymous comments walk across the very equal fact that worship observed can be a very powerful event to draw people to God, in order to get to the fact that the commenter wants to sit on,"Inviting people to church should never be a substitute for forming strong personal ties with an unbeliever to bring them to God." It's neither this nor that event but instead its all these events that God works his great redemptive miracles through today. Don't pass up any event that God can use in the Name of Jesus would be my take on it. Right?
Yes/and, not either/or! Sounds right to me.
It all depends on who you are reaching out to. If you are just trying to leech Christians from other churches, then yeah, juice up the worship. Make it the best, market it as the best, and people will come. If you want to reach the lost and the unchurched, then it is going to take much more personal involvement. I don't think they are going to care for how much they can "feel God's presence" when they don't even believe in God. Brent would probably have a better feel for statistics than I do, but I imagine that like 90% of people become Christians (in the US) because of a relationship rather than a church service (i.e. "event").
An additional problem with viewing evangelism as an event is that the event might suck (to them); it might be a turnoff to the person you are reaching out to. If the person you are reaching out to is like most people, then they are not going to church either because of a belief against it, or because they have bad experiences with it in the past. In either case, walking in the doors of a church is a major hurdle. And it is a hurdle no matter if you have instrumental music and women leading singing.
Do they need church? Yes. So how do get them involved in church? Through your small group. It is the obvious answer. Invite them to that before you invite them to church. That is where the real church stuff should be happening anyway. That is where needs are being met and people are being loved. That is where a newcomer is much more likely to encounter God, by being loved and related to immediately in that context. This will be a far more effective tool to make them wonder if "God is really among us" than having the person in the pew behind them singing in perfect tune.
Great points on the previous post. Small groups just might be more like the experience of the early church in worship than anything we do as a "church service" today.
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