Courage to Define Reality and Face Results

The most controversial and unnerving session of this past June’s Arts Conference at Willow was one in which author and pastor Dan Kimball first shared insights from his book, They Like Jesus, But Not the Church, and then a panel of church leaders wrestled with some of Dan’s findings and with the future of the church.  Our main focus was the weekend gatherings, when the church comes together, and what needs to change going forward.  We tried to cover too many subjects, and longed for more time to hear the perceptions of our excellent panelists and the interaction with the attenders.  But through the wonders of blogging, our conversation can continue.

During the panel discussion, Sally Morgenthaler challenged us to consider her point of view that worship evangelism, which she advocated and wrote a book about in the mid 90’s, is not effectively penetrating our culture.  I admire Sally for her courage, especially her willingness to revisit some of her own assumptions which have defined what she was always known for.  Sally’s words probably raised the blood pressure of a lot of arts leaders, because the thought of starting over, trying to define a new paradigm and possibly abandoning a lot of our current practices is both daunting and disconcerting.  Besides, aren’t most Christians fairly satisfied with the state of corporate worship?

As I continue to reflect on these vital issues for the local church, including my own, I am reminded of the words of our pastor Bill Hybels, who says that part of a leader’s most important job is to define reality.  Are we really willing to look objectively at our individual church communities and ask these kinds of questions:

• Are truly non-churched people really showing up in any significant percentage at our church on Sunday mornings?

• How many of our visitors or new attenders are actually Christians who have transplanted from another church?

• For those who truly are not yet in the faith and who come on Sunday, what is their level of engagement with the church service, specifically the parts of the service outside the sermon/teaching time?

• What is the reaction and response of non-churched people to the forms of communication we employ in our churches – to our music, our spoken words, our visual communication, our videos, our drama or our dance?  Are we communicating with relevance, cultural sensitivity, authenticity, creativity, and excellence?

• Sally asserted that much of Christian worship music all sounds the same, and is distinctly different from the direction of secular music.  Do you agree?  If it is true, what does this mean and should this change?

• How much are most non-believers actually drawn into extended times of congregational singing (what we often call worship)?  Are we limiting ourselves too much to music as an art form?

I could go on, but these are just a few of the questions bouncing around in my head and heart these days.  We would love to hear your thoughts and comments.  All of us are trying to figure out how to build up believers AND extend ourselves to those not yet in God’s family.  We won’t all land in the same place.  But do we have the courage to ask the questions, challenge our own status quo, and face the truth about what is and is not really taking place on Sunday mornings?  I for one don’t want to duck my head in the sand, pretend these issues are not real, and simply coast on what we’ve always done that seems fairly acceptable to most Christians already in the fold.  The kingdom will not advance unless pastors and arts leaders boldly ask these kinds of questions.  With the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and a spirit of discovery together as the wider community of faith, I believe we can make progress…I believe we must.  In too many places, business as usual is not working.  There, I said it.  What do you think?

Comments

[FreedbyJC]

WOW! Sorry I missed the conference...I'll need to get the DVDs for our Worship Vison Team.

You & Sally have put to voice some of the same uneasy feelings I've had ove the last few years and made the light shine in some shadowy places. Thank you!

[Zach Nielsen]

As a worship pastor I can comment on the music question. Is worship music all the same? Generally speaking I think so, but it depends on how you define "sameness". Does worship music that you hear on the radio totally have a sound all to it's own? Definitely. One can certainly indentify a Christian station on the radio after about 2 seconds of listening to it. Should our worship music sound different? Maybe, maybe not. This depends on who is playing. I don't think we artists we should copy the culture. This reeks of inauthenticity and should be avoided at all costs. Each individual musician should figure out their own voice and do that! In the long run this will speak much more authentically than trying to be "Relevant" to whatever MTV (pick your pop culture medium) says is hip right now.

Excellence should be the norm before "relevance"

Our discussion of relevance always reeks of homogeneity. Relevant to whom? "Contemporary" to whom? We assume there is a sense of relevance for all people. You know what is relevant? A person called by God doing what He calls them to do with excellence. Not trying to copy the what the culture says is "cool". Unbelievers can see through our (usually poor) representations of what the culture sees as cool and thinks we are just plain weird.

Much more to say... that is enough for now.

Enough for now.

[Kevin M. Stone]

I have said more than once lately that we are definitely not reaching as many "non-churched" people as we think we are. In fact, if you really look at the data through clear (not "church colored") glasses, you can pretty easily see that most of the folks coming to check us out are churched people looking for a "better church" for a myriad of reasons.

What do we really have to do to reach truly non-churched people? Services are great for creative presentation and biblical communication. But, I think it's time we look at other parts of the church, the ministry (and parts of our jobs as church leaders) for opportunities. Let's face it ... how "normal" is a church service (regardless of what's presented) to a truly non-churched person? How can they possibly relate to: opening song, welcome, worship songs, offering, video clip, message, communion, announcements, closing song, etc. if they are non-churched?

[Joni]

Boy years back when I was part of planning worship services, we looked at the whole service as worship with an ebb and flow on the level of intimacy--leading people closer or acting as an usher. disclaimer of course: the Holy Spirit is ultimately in charge. But we wanted to give opportunities for people to meet with God. Some engage visually, with the teaching, with music, or drama. It wasn't just the music that was considered worship. It was the whole thing.

Music styles are popular because people like them and relate to them. So if we are asking people to like and relate to church music with uninteresting melodies, canned arrangements, predictable form and trite lyrics, its not going to relate well and will become a thing to endure, not to engage in. And yes, it has to be authentic. So maybe we need to ask for a change in our hearts to up the ante in our craft.

Great stuff from Sally, again.

[Scot Longyear]

Hi Nancy,
Thanks for the great blog. Excellent content and it always makes me think.

I am a friend of Sally Morgethaller's and have been wrestling with the all of the worship evangelism and it's proper place. We have been on a journey that began a few years ago when we made a decision not to continually invest the majority of our resources in the Sunday gathering. I wrote our story out for Sally, it was the one she shared in the session she did with the Willow staff.

Thanks for wrestling with all of us as we serve the cause.

Blessings!!

Scot

[Peter Hamm]

IMHO this is related to another issue in Dan's book that I am wrestling with right now. The culture at large seems to be "reachable" with arts/culture aimed at a young 20-something person, and yet those people are not leading in our churches. We need to invite those people alongside us and let them lead with us, and slowly give the ministry away to them so that the church can remain relevant. Then they have to do the same thing when they're in their (cough cough) 40s or so...

[brad andrews]

I recently spoke with Sally in a phone conversation and posted some excerpts at my blog @ relevintage.com. She asked me to post her thoughts here and the Willow Creek Arts blog:

Have we trained our people to care about the wrong things? Particularly, high production at all costs?

Sally: This describes so many of the large churches – over 1000 – that I have worked with and seen over the last few years who ironically have stopped growing, many of them are in denial that they are actually losing ground – they are saying that they are at least maintaining – where the last few years that is hard to even say that because the losses are becoming pretty evident.

The really savvy leaders are asking the deeper questions. However most leaders, especially if they are of the baby boomer variety, even young boomers, old X'ers who were trained by boomers, are going for the band-aid – let's get a VJ machine, let's get another screen, let's increase the production value - thinking if they increase the excellence factor – the cool factor – that it will fix whatever problem.

It is a paradigm that is all about 'people come because it's a good show' and if people aren't coming, the show isn't good enough. That is the paradigm that came of the 90's which really came out of a pretty strong 80's performance paradigm. It got entrenched in the 90's. Many churches added praise and worship choruses in the 90's. Make it good, if you are slacking, make it better.

What impact does the worship space have on worship?

Sally: Buildings are us. Buildings determine what we do and how we do it in worship. They are not neutral. If all we have is a box and a stage, it is driven by a broadcast value. Those churches are built for presentation. They are not built for interaction. They are not built for anything that would come close to a mystical experience.

Short of going back and asking how the environment impacts the worship and how we are helped to engage with God at a different level and with other, all we are left with is to tweak what they were built for which is performance.

To ask the question is very scary for many large churches. Because then we have to say, "We have the wrong kinds of buildings…"

It is an identity issue if a church's identity is performance. When someone says 'let's create some intimacy' it doesn't jive with a performance mentality.

If a church is going to spend more money on technology to increase the excellence to bring more people in, that fits into the performance value. Making a room smaller, taking the stage and eliminating the distance – which is a huge issue for emerging culture – doesn't feed the performance identity.