The Battle You’ll Never Win as a Faithful Church
I sometimes hear people talk about how to draw people. In fact, since Central has become laser focused on evangelism over the last couple of years, I am fairly tuned into hearing about that.
Spoiler alert: what truly draws people is the Gospel.
That said, I hear people regularly talk about how people need to come to worship where they are because the worship is exciting. “You’ll leave feeling great.” “Our singing is outstanding.” “The sound is fantastic.”
There is nothing wrong with wanting our worship to be the best it can be. But the reason for that is vital. We should want worship to be the best we can make it because we are worshiping a perfect God and He is worthy of it. That said, our “best” must still remain within His settled parameters of “spirit and truth” (John 4:24), as well as being done “decently and in order” (1 Corinthians 14:40). And it is that latter one that sometimes gets forgotten in an effort to draw people based on our worship.
You see, in our quest to draw people with worship, we often feel as if we have to loosen up a bit. The singing has to be vibrant, so the song leader becomes a hybrid song leader/cheerleader. The sermons have been charismatic, so the preacher becomes more of a motivational speaker than an expounder of the text. We rethink how long to take for the Lord’s Supper (not too long, because visitors might get bored or feel awkward). And so on and so on.
Oh, and when worship is done, it is typically “graded” on how emotional it felt, not on how scriptural it was.
But here’s the thing: you can make worship very exciting…and never win the battle. You see, as a church of Christ, striving to worship by the New Testament pattern, you are never going to be able to “out-excite” churches that do not seek to follow the pattern.
I was visiting with a family recently and had a nice conversation. They had visited our services and were very complimentary of everything, especially how welcoming and friendly people at Central are (I hear that all the time). As the conversation progressed, though, they made it clear that they “needed” somewhere that was “more charismatic” in worship. And they made it clear that that was more than just a more upbeat song selection. They wanted a band. They wanted to do all sorts of things that are not found in New Testament worship. They needed to “feel” something.
That’s a “battle” we will never win, because we are not going to that battlefield.
What will we do? We’ll do our best (I hope) to worship God as He has directed, but we will remember that worship is for the members of His body. Worship was not designed for the lost.
Instead, we will just keep reaching people the old fashioned, boring way. We’ll just keep studying the Bible with them.
It’s not exciting. It doesn’t make for flashy Facebook posts. But it’s God’s way, and I’d rather stay true to that so that souls are won to Him.
AUTHOR: Adam Faughn
