Sally Morgenthaler, author of Worship Evangelism, has recently concluded that worship-driven churches, despite their best efforts, are not attracting the unchurched. This is a complete turn-around from when she wrote her book. Her article here is filled with wonderful honesty as she acknowledges that the worship culture is often self-absorbed and the unreached are not attending these Christian “parties.”
Here are a few excerpts of note:
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….
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…
The upshot? For all the money, time, and effort we’ve spent on cultural relevance—and that includes culturally relevant worship—it seems that we came through the last 15 years with a significant net loss in churchgoers, proliferation of megachurches and all…
Sally goes on to describe her transition: “As culture has become incessantly more spiritual and adamantly less religious, we… have become convinced that the primary meeting place with our unchurched friends is now outside the church building.”
Yes, yes, and yes!
Imagine the millions of dollars that has gone into these worship productions with a net result of so little.
Nevertheless, lest we rest on our laurels as we smugly acknowledge that “we knew it all along,” Morgenthaler reminds us that the needed alternative is to live life with our neighbors and do the work of building relationships outside the walls. Great challenge!! Indeed, it is much easier to evaluate what is not working in church-dom, then to take steps toward “being” the living church where we live.
I really like a quote from Shane Claiborne that says it’s time to "stop complaining about the church we’re disillusioned with and become the church we dream of."
You can read Sally’s entire article here.
Comments
5 responses to “Contemporary Worship Is Not Reaching Our Culture”
YES! You’ve hit the nail on the head with this post! I can stand here and say that I’ve been a part of, and a victim of the Contemporary Worship Scene. When I first received Jesus I attended a church that sang modern songs, (not hymns) but ones with scriptural relevancy and heartfelt desire to worship the Lord.
Shortly thereafter I moved to another state/region where this new style was set up to attract the unchurched. Over time, the music got worst and worst (for me at least) because the lyrics were all about “bless me, bless me, bless me.” joined in with “you got the riches, gimme the treasure.”
I mean, I know there’s an inheritance out there, but my growth was stunted.
[Yeah, I bet its a bit hard to say I was a victim], but that was the deciding factor of why church was not for me. I faced a major dilemma – I loved God, but hated myself for going thru the motions.
Ah.
Anyway, thanks for having the courage to put this up.
Roger, thanks for posting that. I read Morgenthaler’s book a number of years ago. I still think it had a lot of value to it, but my own experience in pastoring three churches pointed me to a similar conclusion: maybe it’s time we stop worrying about tailoring worship to meet a certain target, get focused on the simple basics of serving Christ, following his Word and worshipping Him, and loving and connecting with our neighbors and community, and let God take care of the results. I don’t think we’ll be too far off–and a lot of these other focuses left me disillusioned with much of what we’re doing in the name of Christ. We sure do get fixated on our programs and theories, don’t we? I wonder how much of our programming Jesus really identifies with–much like the Pharisees in His time???
Maybe I missed it, but isn’t the object and reason for our worship the Lord Himself? We probably miss the mark whenever we try to market the Church, it’s music, message, all the peripheral ministries. BECAUSE, it all tends to lose it’s authenticity. Our motives are compromised. We’ve left our first love. And so we have cookie cutter worship PERFORMANCE that totally misses the mark, hyped-up sermonic performance that has more to do with building a personality cult than preaching the word. Didn’t Paul say, “When you come together, EVERYONE has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. All of these must be done for the strengthening of the church.” It’s that EVERYONE part that virtually makes all modern Churches back-slidden and ineffective. Most folks ultimately realize that Church is really not about them, but rather the Pastor, or the denomination, and they see Churches as self-serving institutions. As Barna has been noting in his recent research, there’s millions now who will not darken Church doors anymore. So it really matters. But rather than address it, get real, and fix things, we seem to simply blame others and their sinful, wordly ways. We’re way off, and don’t even know it.
Randy
Good call Randy.
I think we need to extend our understanding of not only what “gathering” is for but also what worship is. When I still “attended” a large Baptist church, I was standing out with the kids church one night chatting to the 19 year old “leader” of that age group. We listened to the polite noise coming from the chapel and he commented, “What they’re doing in there is not worship to me. What I’m doing serving these kids; that’s worship.”
I think that to say any ‘church centric’ style will reach our world is mistaken but to also use this as an argument against ‘contemporary’ as if traditional style is doing a better job when it certainly isn’t.
Home churches, simple church, emerging church, contemporary church, traditional church – none of these styles (and none are strictly more biblical) are in themselves going to reach more people. The Gospel clearly communicated in word, through selfless service and the power of God impacts a life.
I think each one of these styles has helped to ‘retain’ people in the church but to grow we need to as Christians communicate the gospel, get out of our comfort zones. Most Christians do not even witness, for fear of ridicule, their promotional opportunties.
Anyway, just my thoughts,
4 Life,
Josh
LifeCity Church Canberra
http://www.lifecitychurch.com