In my home church I lead the praise in the morning and evening service once a month, and I also take part in a team of people (the heroically named Worship Action Team) who are in a sense responsible for the ongoing worship life of the church. We organize the praise times, manage the different areas of worship in various aspects of the church etc. And if truth be told, it's incredibly easy to become complacent and forget what that responsibility really means. The members of that team have stood up and said that we each believe God is calling us to take on a role in ensuring that the members of the congregation can comfortably meet with and experience the presence of God when they enter into a communal time of worship in our church. Not something to be taken lightly!
Now I see no reason to not throw this out there right at the beginning: I frequently find myself unsatisfied with many aspects of our worship services.
There.
I said it.
I'm often told I'm much too cynical but the truth is I know many other people who are finding themselves in the same boat. And I should make it clear, I am fully aware that this isn't the forum for rambling on about how I or anyone else thinks a church should be run, and that is not what I'm looking to do here. But at the same time, why not get some thoughts out there before we become the sort of people who spend Sunday afternoon bitching about Sunday morning? The kind of people who use the order of service just to figure out in advance what they're not going to enjoy over the next hour?
You see, our church is blessed with a large congregation the range of which is enormous. We are not a young church with a few old folks, nor vica versa. Nor are we particular traditional or modern, and it is a wonderful thing in many ways. I believe that young and old can learn a massive amount from each other, and to see people of such different backgrounds and characters within the one family is an incredible thing. And yet, among the blessings, tensions exist.
Every year a group of our young people head out to Summer Madness and outreach teams and other such events, and experience worship much more suited to them, and while it inspires and encourages and challenges them in amazing ways (I am convinced this is why we have so many leaders in organizations who are in their late teens and early twenties), it hits them like a ton of bricks to come back to a typical church service. And likewise, we have people who have been coming to Orangefield and offering up their time and their services for years and years, and perhaps resent the idea that the worship which they have enjoyed should be altered or changed to something they don't relate so easily with. Piled onto this we have people who have come from other churches, and they have joined us because they find us to be a welcoming and friendly place (I have genuinely never been to a church that does the 'family' thing quite like Orangefield) and yet they struggle with how we do worship because they have come from something very different. And this isn't speculation, I know people who have said they're in this situation!
And so we have the current situation, whereby we try and throw a little bit in for everyone. We make sure we have at least one hymn per service, we tend to open up with a more modern upbeat number, we make sure we do a new song every now and then, we have a youth service every once in a while, we have a couple of services that we routinely keep very traditional, and we make sure that we stick to the same service layout each week so that all of these things are kept in check.
But my issue is this: By trying to keep everyone happy, we keep no-one happy.
People don't leave thinking of the little bit of the service that was for them, they leave thinking about the 90% that wasn't. Now, I used to be very much of the opinion that this was down to the attitude of the individual, that the style of worship or the layout of the church service shouldn't really matter if we are there to meet with God. Should our ability to meet with God really rely on what's going on at the front of the church? Surely our relationship with God should be beyond the mechanics of a service? And I still think there's truth in that (slightly hippy-ish) argument. But over the last while I've come to thing that perhaps that is ignoring the responsibility of someone who says they want to lead worship. If what's going on at the front doesn't matter then why would anyone be called to lead? Moreover, if it is completely down to the attitude of the individual then why would we meet as a church?
Nowadays I find myself looking at it a different way, which was greatly inspired by a young chap the past summer. At the end of our outreach week we had an evening of worship and the opportunity was given for anyone to come up to the mic and share a little encouragement or thankfulness or anything they felt God putting on their heart, and Phil Douglas came up and acknowledged that we were all bowled over by what God had done in the past week, but then pointed out that we shouldn't be surprised when God responds to His people doing His work. We should always look to Him, and we should always be expectant that when we do He will get involved. I'm paraphrasing and he put it much better, but it's an incredibly important thought, and one that I think is of paramount importance to the worship-life of a church. I fear that we have become too heavily focused on what the various different opinions and personal preferences in the congregation think we should be doing as a church, rather than what God is calling us to do.
Let me give an example. Each of our four worship team leaders have experimented in services over the years with things a little out of the church's comfort zone; things like open times of prayer, or getting people to pray with the people around them. But because there is always that initial air of awkwardness or because some people let it be known afterwards that they don't like such things, it happens very rarely. Now, if all four of the people who lead our worship have felt called to try things like this out, it would seem to me pretty clear that God is telling us there is a place for this in our communal worship. So it seems crazy, and if I'm honest a little infuriating, that we wouldn't push for it.
Again, let me make it clear, this is all just thoughts being poured out and nothing more. So I guess what I'm trying to say is it makes far more sense to me to become a church that can be united by its worship, as opposed to one whose attitude of worship takes on different personalities at different times and welcomes people in one moment before alienating them the next. And here's the really uncomfortable bit...to do this, people will probably leave. AND THAT'S OK. To go back to the earlier example, if the church decided that they were going to be a church that prayed together and in front of others during their services, I have no doubt that some people would decide they weren't comfortable with that and would find another church more suited to their personal tastes. This is a good thing! We are all one church, one body, it shouldn't be a terrible tragedy if someone goes to a church that allows them to worship comfortably! We seem to be worried that if we don't cater to everyone's needs then someone might leave, but as far as I'm concerned one of the few benefits of having a church with so many denominations and styles is that regardless of how you want to worship God or involve yourself you are certain to find somewhere that fits you! And if our church was to decide that they want to return to a strict traditional style of worship then I like to think that while I would almost certainly go elsewhere, that I would still feel they had made a massive step forward and there would be no ill feeling whatsoever.
This is a bit of a mess, I know, and I should probably say, I'm not trying to speak on behalf of anyone, but a lot of these thoughts have been influenced by conversations with fellow Christians. Hopefully it resonates with some people or at least gets some thoughts stirring.
I'll leave you with this:
"Day by day continuing with one mind in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, they were taking their meals together with gladness and sincerity of heart, praising God and having favour with all the people. And the Lord was adding to their number day by day those who were being saved."
Acts 2:46-47
