Church Services

John at [Rabe Ramblings]( http://johnrabe.blogspot.com), has posted some comments regarding Willow Creek Church’s move to start “satelinte campuses,” using the franchise model (to quote a quote):

>”When Starbucks opens up a Starbucks,” Tomberlin said, “people expect it to be Starbucks, not a mom-and-pop coffee shop. There’s a lot of meaning in the Willow brand.”

I’m going to go with Mr Rabe here: [Yuck.]( http://johnrabe.blogspot.com/2005_01_01_johnrabe_archive.html#110615683598267399)

If you’re planting multiple churches with the same name and same basic order of service, you’re not a single church. You’re a denomination

While I’m at it, I thought I’d present a few thoughts on my ideal church setup…

The “seeker friendly” style of church service started, I don’t know, 10 years ago as a part of an attempt to reach out more effectively to the unchurched – those people who had never attended a church service in their life. It used to be that local evangelism in the West mainly entailed reminding people of what they had already been told – that they were sinners and needed the blood of Christ to redeem them. Today, like as not, those are completely foreign ideas, and so, the argument goes, a gentler, more appealing education is needed in the process of evangelism.

Fine.

The problem most critics have of these kinds of services (which, when done right *do* attract a lot of new people, often permanently) is that the whole event comes off as ***slick***. And to a lot of us, especially in a church setting that we prefer to think of as *home*, slick comes across not as effective presentation, but as ***fake***.

The problem is a conflict over understanding the proper purpose of the Sunday morning service. If you think the main purpose is to present the *gospel* to people, then you need to focus on that task and not let anything get in the way of an effective communication. But if you think the main purpose of the Sunday morning service is something different, say a time for the corporate body of believers to come together and worship the living God, then “slick” is death. There are comparatively few things that God has been known to strike people dead on the spot for. Lying to the Holy Spirit is one of them.

So we have a problem here: there are actually three basic purposes for which Christians gather together as Christians:

1. Worship. By this I mean simple adoration. This is usually what people think of as the musical part of the service: the part where we praise the Name of the living God and act in such a way that’s intended directly to give Him honor. This can include dance and any other kind of art with the purpose of motivating the viewer to acts and attitudes of adoration. I think this can also include exhortation, which would mean any kind of speaking with the goal of encouraging and motivating people who are already Christians to acts and attitudes of worship. Congregational prophecy would fit in this category.

2. Teaching. The focus here is presenting new information to believers (that’s new as in, information they didn’t know, not as in “strange doctrines outside the bounds of traditional Christianity”). This would include Sunday school, catechism, Seminary, and a huge chunk of most sermonizing. Granted, good teaching can often lead to adoration, but the point is the focus, which is primarily on the congregation.

3. Evangelism. By this I don’t mean any presentation of the gospel, since the gospel by all rights should be an integral part of every event where Christians gather together. What I mean is any concerted effort at presenting the Gospel to those who don’t already believe. This is where the “seeker-friendly” service fits in, as well as the Billy Graham Crusade, and any other event where your focus is for the benefit of the unsaved.

(There is also a fourth purpose for which Christians gather together, but the don’t necessarily do it “as Christians’ in any religious or spiritual sense, and that’s fellowship – hanging out. I believe there needs to be a place for hanging out at the church, even to the point of providing facilities, but it’s not the main focus of what I’m talking about here.)

The problem is that we have a tendency to try to do all of the above in a single Sunday morning service, with the result that a lot of people aren’t really satisfied, and some are downright offended. Here’s what I think: We should split these purposes up a bit more distinctly.

In my opinion, the traditional Sunday morning congregational service should be reserved for worship. 100%. I honestly think that adoration is the most important part of the Christian life: Put it this way: by all accounts, once we get to heaven, adoration is almost all of what we’ll be doing. If it’s so important that God has given it priority for all of eternity, how much does that indicate what our values should be here? Understand, I’m not saying that there should be no speaking part of the service, but that the focus of any speaking during this service should be vertical instead of horizontal.

This means I don’t approve much of the seeker service meeting on Sunday. Honestly, going out on Sunday morning is not a normal habit for the unchurched. Why on earth, then, is anyone trying to reach a group of people at a time when they’re not predisposed to seek you out? If you want to have a “seeker” service, try Saturday evening, at a time when people are more interested in going out and doing beneficial sorts of things. Friday night isn’t bad either – though you may have some logistical problems with later times and an audience that’s a little more predisposed to partying than learning hot to get right with God.

If I had my way, I’d have a separate service for teaching as well. I’m not saying It’d be a popular event, but I’m honestly convinced that theology is a severely unattended to aspect of Christian life. Part of that may be because it’s boring (or rather, we may have some ineffective teachers out there), but I think another part of it is simply how little place we give the mind in the evangelical church. I say, give teaching its own service, with a more flexible, thinking-based format and see what you can do with it. Don’t leave it only to the sort of teaching that traditionally happens on Sunday morning, complete with memorable sound bytes. Import some local bible school teachers to lecture for a few weeks. Host honest theological discussion between believers of other traditions. Put some grit into your church life!

My point is that the biggest confusion (and name calling) between people over church services isn’t over execution. It’s over clarity of focus in what precisely the purpose of the service is supposed to be. I think it’d be useful to at least try to make some clear distinctions between these main types of events.

I think, in my mind’s eye, the “worship” service should be the main congregational service, whereas the evangelistic service should be something focused on in a city-wide manner, with lots of cooperative work among churches. Part of that stems from my deep conviction that local congregations should deliberately to stay within a certain size range, say 500 – 1500 members. A properly effective evangelistic event requires the organizational effort of far more people than that, and can result in a lot more people than that being added to the church. Of course, a joint service would have to take a few tips from places like the [BGEA](http://www.billygraham.org) that directs converts to as many churches in the area as are willing to help with follow-up.

Teaching services can vary. Some kinds of teaching are best for small groups: Sunday school classes, Catechism, and the like. Some kinds of teaching – a really good lecture, for instance – are much more conductive to a large multi-church gathering. I think churches should work toward having both.

Reserving Sunday morning for adoration time means that it’s more congenial to the churches to support events that aren’t the sole work of a single congregation, since they would be less likely to interfere with the essential meeting of the local church.