The Myth of Church Growth

There is an important element of the church, at least over the past 50 years or so that we need to examine and look at with somewhat of a critical lens but really more with an honest lens. Over the past several decades the topic of church growth has taken on a life of its own. Certainly we all want the church to grow but what does that really mean? There is a church growth industry comprised of consultants, publishers, conference promoters and speakers etc. And actually while church leaders have focused on church growth, attendance has grown, buildings have been built and people have been attracted to mega churches. However, I call this the myth of church growth because to accomplish this “growth” we actually had to redefine what church is. If you have to move the target to reach the goal, you never did actually reach the goal.

What am I really saying here? The New Testament characterization of the church was a collection of believers. At least metaphorically if not directly, the church is recognized as the bride of Christ. She is exhorted to be pure and spotless and ready for her bridegroom. In the past 50 years in the evangelical church, the church has been functionally redefined as an evangelistic gathering. In other words, biblically the church is defined as a gathering of believers being sanctified. In the modern church, the church is defined (for growth measurement purposes) as simply a gathering of people even specifically targeting unbelievers. In other words, biblically the church was seen as a group of believers. The church growth industry has told the church to bring in everyone they can and measure that. There is a massive difference. There will be those who push back challenging that statement and in your specific case, you may be right but I would ask a few questions.

  1. What extent of your church programming is geared toward the unbeliever/unchurched?
  2. How much money do you spend on attracting or retaining the unbeliever/unchurched?
  3. Evaluating your church’s priorities, where does bringing unbelieving/unchurched people in to your service to hear the gospel land?
  4. How do you measure church growth? Is it based on church attendance or some other metric?
  5. If someone from the outside were to observe your church for a month, how would they characterize your church?

I listen daily to a political podcast. Often I am frustrated because I hear this broadcaster say something that is right on target and really important. I want to share that nugget for others to hear but often I can’t because either there is some language in context that I don’t want to have coming from me or he used a tone of voice that would not be received well by those who are not familiar with this person so I don’t share something I find important and helpful to others. He as gotten some criticism for this but his response is very telling. He says, “I can’t do a show for people who don’t listen to me.” Honestly that frustrates me sometimes but he is right. Why tailor his show to people who don’t listen to him? Yet that is what we do as the church all the time. In fact many if not most Evangelical churches tailor a message for people who don’t listen to us or who aren’t even there because we hope at some point they will come. At the same time we have a whole group of people who are there and are hungry for God’s Word but we often minimize them and focus the majority of our efforts on the visitors or those who may come in the door or those who aren’t even there. If we look at this critically it is a little insane.

Don’t get me wrong, I understand that Jesus instructed us to make disciples and to go into all the world. I get that. But let’s dig into that a bit. The most obvious issue here is that Jesus was talking to His 11 disciples who were not part of an organized church but who had been on itinerant ministry with Jesus for 3 years. There is no indication that Jesus was telling His disciples to gather unbelievers into an organized service so they could present the gospel. No, Jesus modeled presenting the gospel wherever He went on a daily basis. The other thing Jesus modeled was pouring into His disciples so they would be equipped to share the gospel wherever they went, whether that be a jail cell, a centurion’s house, in the Temple courtyard or on the town’s magisterial steps. Discipling them if you will.

What has been labeled church growth is actually a euphemism. If we truly look at the church growth movement, at its core it is nothing more than marketing. The truth is that the church has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on church growth and as we saw in the prologue, it just does not work. We see church growth in the book of Acts but it is not what the popular church growth models of today are. In the book of Acts we see the church growing by new believers being added. Church growth today is seen as simply the number of people attending often focused on unbelievers. We hope that someday they will become believers but even in our language we want to see unchurched become churched. This is not the model of the New Testament and it is neither a viable metric nor a biblical goal. Churches have given away a car in order to entice people in their doors. We have spent hundreds of millions of dollars simply on technical equipment let alone buildings to attract people to our services. I’ll go out on a limb here and say that I have to believe that it must be offensive God when we are essentially saying, “Your Word, that double edged sword, Your creation, the majesty and grandiosity of the universe and the world around us, Your Son who left heaven and died for us is not really enough. We need moving lights and emotional videos and giveaways and gimmicks to attract people to the message of Jesus. We’ll bring Hollywood movies into the church and theatrical set design and concert style music. Maybe those things will attract people to Jesus.

Church growth favors metrics and quantification but if we are honest, it is difficult to quantify the effectiveness of a worship service. How do you quantify how many people are truly worshiping or being convicted by the Holy Spirit? How do you quantify the glory of God? How do you quantify brokenness being healed or pride being broken in a congregation of people sitting in a service? How do you quantify worship or fellowship or the Holy Spirit? More often than not, church growth is reduced down to the number of people attending and whether we see a rise or fall in attendance. There is a massive problem here. We cannot quantify church growth by the number of people attending. To do so is a misleading and meaningless statistic.

If we quantify our worship service effectiveness with only attendance numbers, we could achieve massive church growth by simply inviting Taylor Swift, Drake, Miranda Lambert of fill in your own personal favorite to do our music. By our own definition we would have amazing church growth and incredible worship. Most pastors would say that is ridiculous and it is. But measuring worship or church growth by butts in seats is no different. Butts in seats measures only that, butts in seats. This measurement is an oversimplified, reductionistic metric that can only measure the effectiveness of our marketing. It cannot determine the heart or intention of the person there. It certainly does not reflect a biblical understanding of the growth of the church.

Not only is the metric faulty, our method is equally as faulty. Consider a company like Coca Cola or Proctor and Gamble or Johnson & Johnson hiring a sales force. Rather than training them well to represent and sell their products, they give them minimal training and give them this instruction, “Go out there and tell people that we have amazing products, products that will change their lives. Then encourage them to bring those people back to HQ at a specified time each week so they can hear about those products from the experts, we’ll even have cookies.” That is a horribly inefficient sales model and a company would not survive with that sales model. But, that is essentially the model of the modern church. That is what the evangelical church has been invested in for the past half century. I’m sorry but it is no wonder that the world around us finds us irrelevant.

The real church growth model lies elsewhere. It has nothing to do with marketing and it in part made itself real to me ironically in a business class. During this class we studied case studies of all different kinds of products from Apple Computer to Benihana restaurants to toothbrushes and the list goes on. What I found was that the more I learned about the history and the inner workings of that product, the more I knew that product, the more I wanted to have that product. I could bypass all the other toothbrushes for that one I was studying, not because anyone was trying to sell it to me but because I learned all that went into the making of that item. Let me try to relate this to the church.

Imagine a church that is immersed in knowing God deeply. The more deeply that church knows God, the more their love for Him grows. The more their love for Him grows, the more they naturally and organically tell others about Him. They can’t help it because they see the awesomeness of God not only in His majesty but also in His love for them. Imagine the effectiveness of this model with the church. The depth and width of her reach would be unending. Imagine this difference. One pastor preaches to tap into a “felt need” of either a subset of the congregation or even to those who aren’t even there but the church hopes will come. Another pastor preaches to his congregation with a message that ignites that church in the understanding and appreciation of who God really is with a message that transcends particular pain points but relates to all of life. The colloquialism would say he changes the water level that raises all ships. Which would prove to be a more effective strategy?

Let’s further put this into context. At our discretion we have the opportunity to talk about the star breathing, earth shaping, ocean filling, mountain building creator of the universe who has given us His Word written down so that we may know Him, the God of the universe intimately. But not only did He create the physical world around us, He also holds the spiritual world in the palm of His hand. He created a physical order, a social order, a spiritual order that all fit together like pieces of a puzzle and come together to form a mind blowing universe of beauty, revelation and symbolism beyond our comprehension. And then Oh, by the way He sent His Son from the glory of heaven to die the most humiliating and horrific death in order to make a way to bring us into relationship with this God while we were still His enemies. He even invites us into the Godhead as adopted children. How utterly breathtakingly amazing is that?! Is there really a limit to the depth and breadth of the knowledge of God (Job 11:7). Would our congregations not be better served by this than finding a temporary pain point of a segment of our congregation that week and give our wisdom on that subject until we whip the car around to the point of . . . and Jesus loves you so you should give your life to Him.”

If you are of an exegetical/expositionally preaching church this still applies. Just because you may be pulling God’s Word apart in digestible but deep morsels, do people leave your service excited about who God is? Are they blown away by the infinite God? Have they truly gotten to know Him more? Are their lives changing to reflect more the mind of Jesus or are their words closer to, “Great sermon today pastor.”? I once had a seminary professor say, “If you are not preaching expositionally, you’re not preaching.” But the truth is we can treat expositional preaching the same way we treat topical preaching. Today we are talking about a godly marriage OR today we are talking about 1 Timothy 3. There may be less difference than we think. There is a deep problem here and I find myself not only troubled by it but guilty of it as well. Let’s set that aside and come back to it in a minute.

When we talk about church growth, we often speak in terms of evangelism and discipleship. I’ve heard the metaphor of evangelism and discipleship as being wings on an airplane. The church needs them both. That is a nice word picture and it both simplifies and balances out the approach of the church. The problem is that it doesn’t work. An organization with a divided mission will at best have lackluster results for both but more likely it will fail at both. In fact, if we structure the church in this way, evangelism and discipleship are for the most part mutually exclusive in the current format when we talk about church structure.

By definition the two competing priorities cannot thrive together. I have watched this scenario happen multiple times. When the church focuses on evangelism, by necessity two things must be true. One, the message must be very simple, we cannot do a deep dive because we are starting at the beginning with the non-believer every week. Secondly the message is repetitive. If the goal is evangelism of the non-believer, the message every week is the simple gospel. This caters to our evangelistic priority but it does so at the expense of discipleship. This does not promote growth for the believer (discipleship). Often, eventually the believers leave because there is nothing for them. You may argue that there are multiple meetings that cater to both needs but at best you are making one a lesser priority. And in reality have you ever seen that work effectively? I have not and the data bears this out.

On the other hand if the church focuses on discipleship during its services the opposite is true. The believer is now being fed but the evangelism priority is diminished (in the church service) because the target has been for the believer. One may argue that an evangelism priority can still be maintained outside of the service time and I would hope that would be true. Once the church builds up the believers and believers experience the depths of God, words of life naturally will come from their mouths and not because they are taught what to say but because they are living out the life of a Christian and experiencing life in Christ. But when we are talking about church service content the two are in large part mutually exclusive.

If we are to look at real church growth, we need to put the target back where it belongs. Church growth ultimately is not about numbers. Don’t get me wrong, if we do this right, the numbers will follow but that is not our responsibility. In the book of Acts we see multiple times, “. . .And the Lord added to their number. . .” Numerical growth is His responsibility and He is faithful. The target is clear. Church growth is not measured in people, it is measured in believers, in sanctification and depth of knowledge and wisdom. If we grow our congregations deeper I believe God will exponentially grow us wider. But if we focus on the numbers, even what we have will fall off as we have seen in the deconstruction of faith in so many people and in the shallow cultural Christianity so many are content to claim.

Prologue
Relevant?
Defining Church
The Purpose of the Church
The Radiant Bride
Worship
Worship in the Church
Holy Huddle
Myth of Church Growth

The Holy Huddle

Often a criticism of a church that does not follow the seeker model is that the church is just a “Holy Huddle.” It is nice alliteration for an innuendo that the church simply gathers with self-care and lack of concern for the world around them. The impression is that there is a group of people with arms around each other’s shoulders, their back to the rest of the world, oblivious to everything else around them and only focused on their tight knit group. That may be the case for for some church bodies but that’s not a huddle, that’s a tea party. A “holy huddle” is exactly what the church needs.

Those who accuse the church in this pejorative way must never have watched a football game. I enjoy turning on a good football game on Sunday afternoon and watching two teams battling it out. If it is a good game, there is a lot of energy on the field. Opposing linemen are going after each other with everything they’ve got. The game is a combination of strength, strategy, stamina and often times, simply the relentless determination to win. Take any one of those elements away and that is a marker the team will be putting an “L” on their record. The key to all of those elements is the huddle. The huddle directs where the strength needs to concentrate. It lays out the strategy for a winning play and gets everyone on the same page. Often it involves a call from far above the field with specific instructions for those on the front line of battle. Stamina is as much about wearing the other team down as it is maintaining your own endurance and a good leader keeps everyone at the top of their game in the huddle.

The huddle is the place where the team gets together. They get their instructions. They are built up and encouraged but they are also called to account for missed plays. In the huddle the players come together as a unified team to accomplish a goal. Ultimately their goal is to win the game but in the huddle the immediate goal may be to gain 3 yards. The next play’s objective may be to break open the defense with a long pass or to ram the football down the throats of the opposition running straight up the middle. In any case, without the huddle, the team would simply be a group of individuals doing their own thing. The only thing sure about a huddleless team is that they are going to lose. You won’t find a football team having petifores during a huddle, they aren’t holding hands singing Kum by ya. They are planning how they can kick the butts of the other team in the next 15 seconds of play.

The thing is that the church is not just facing a few four hundred pound guys making a couple hundred grand whether they win or lose. Scripture actually says, “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against spiritual forces of evil on the heavenly realms. (Eph. 6:12) We are in the middle of an epic cosmic battle that goes far beyond bragging rights of a winning season and a very large ring. Our battle will not be forgotten next season, it will have eternal consequences. Our battle is not for fickle fans but for the infinite God.

The church could use some holy huddles. There is evil in our faces everyday just like a football line. Those snarling faces and that trash talk is happening each day on the field of life and the stakes are much higher than a “W” in a football season. We as the church are not going to take ground if we do not recognize the forces we are up against, if we do not have a strategy for the long game, if we don’t have a tactical plan for the next step and if we do not rally around each other, encouraging and holding our teammates to account. The stakes are our children, our homes, our jobs, our country, justice, economy and the list goes on. We cannot go to church a couple times a month sing some upbeat songs in a concert environment, listen to a sermon that talks about some area of life that may or may not be relevant to us, see friends and then go just about our week. We cannot be a spectator in a consumeristic gathering where we walk away evaluating the quality of the presentation. We need a holy huddle where Christians are gathered, unified and equipped to face the evil around them. We need a huddle with a strategy to take some ground that next week and come back for further instruction. We need a huddle where the body is both built up and encouraged but also held to account and pushed beyond itself.

Prologue
Relevant?
Defining Church
The Purpose of the Church
The Radiant Bride
Worship
Worship in the Church
Holy Huddle
Myth of Church Growth

Worship in the Church

So what does worship in the church look like? I don’t mean what you are used to experiencing weekly, I mean from your understanding of scripture, what would church look like? We are used to the modern Evangelical church where there will be several songs, someone will pray as a transition for the pastor to come to the platform, there may be some announcements toward the beginning or the end and there is likely an invitation. If you are part of a more formal liturgical church your experience may be a little more structured and contain a few more elements, but the Christian church of the west has a fairly typical program. However, Francis Chan in his book Letters to the Church says, “Imagine you find yourself stranded on a deserted island and you have nothing but a copy of the Bible. You have no experience with Christianity whatsoever, and all you know about the Church will come from your reading of the Bible. How would you imagine a church to function? Seriously, close your eyes for two minutes and try to picture “Church” as you would know it. Now think about your current experience. Is it even close? Can you live with that?”

We call our church services “worship” services. That is an important distinction. So let’s set aside our template that we are used to. Let’s set aside tradition and let’s look at what it would truly mean for our services to be “worship services.” I am already pumped just beginning to think about it. Just imagine the anticipation of walking into a room with like-minded believers coming with the intentionality and anticipation of entering the presence and encountering the infinite God of the universe who knows no limits of power and knowledge and wisdom. He knows no boundaries of time or space. There is not the slightest hint of deceit or false intentions but only perfect goodness, absolute truth, holiness and justice. And despite such infinite transcendence, He knows your name and loves you not like His child but as His child! And you get to enter His presence. WOW!

But worship is not about you. You know you are not worthy of such an encounter so you come in utter humility in your unworthiness but in the confidence of a child. There is nothing you can bring to offer Him that will impress Him, you can only offer yourself which is all He wants. You offer yourself in submission, uncertain of what He may ask of you but completely confident not only in His love for you but also in His character that He is only and utterly good. You offer your praise to Him for His attributes, for His goodness and His greatness. You offer your thanks to Him for all He has done for you and for those around you. But it is when you truly worship, when you offer your adoration, you offer your reverence for Him and your deference to Him that you sense His pleasure. As you empty yourself of adoration for Him, He fills you with the never-ending rushing river of His love and His grace. But it’s not about you at all, it is all about Him. It’s just that this is what you were created to do and you are now doing the most fulfilling thing you could possibly do and the most important thing you could possibly do. You may worship in a song that expresses your adoration and love. You may worship in prayer or in just speaking your love and devotion to Him. At some point in the service you may worship in presenting your material offering as an expression of His supreme value and as an expression of your absolute trust.

When we think of worship, we must think of emptying ourself of everything and offering it to God. We must think of acting in absolute humility and deference to the God of the universe. Scripture often gives us the picture of people who encountered God. They often fell on their faces in humility and worship. We see this in Revelation 1, in Daniel, in Numbers 20 in 1 Chronicles 29, in Nehemiah 8, in 1 Kings 18. Even the idol Dagon, when faced with the Ark of the Covenant, God caused the idol to fall face down in His presence. Falling prostrate is an act of reverence, of submission, of deference and of humility. Of course that is not the only posture for worship. We could argue that as David brought the Ark of the Lord back to Jerusalem that he was worshiping also. After every 6 steps David made an offering. Scripture says that David danced before the Lord with everything in him. His wife was ticked off at him because he behaved in an undignified way but David remarked that he was not dancing for an audience of people but he was dancing before the Lord. In these actions, completely the opposite of falling prostrate David was worshiping and we know this because underlying the posture and the outward manifestation, David was offering everything he had, dignity and all, for the glory of God. The core of worship remained while the manifestation changed. The act of worship is an act of emptying ourselves before God and recognizing His ultimate supremacy.

When we think of the songs we sing during our church services and songs we hear on the radio, often times they are songs of celebration of what God has done for us. Or they may be songs of encouragement of what God may do for us. These are not worship songs. They are about us and often they are about what we get from God, not what we give to Him. That doesn’t mean they are wrong or bad. Certainly there are many songs with bad theology but leaving that aside, we can still offer songs of praise and thanksgiving but we should be careful to know the difference between these and actual worship. Just because a song is about God does not make it a worship song. A worship song is a song expressing our adoration, our devotion, our reverence, ourselves to God. Just because I am thankful for my car does not mean I worship it. And just because I am thankful to God for something does not mean I am worshiping Him but worship Him we must. Let’s just be careful to identify what we are truly doing lest we think we are worshiping while we are completely missing the mark.

The Westminster Shorter Catechism asks, “What is the chief end of man?” Then it answers, “To glorify God and enjoy Him forever.” This is what we are doing when we worship. When we glorify God, we exalt Him. We lift Him up. We make Him the object of our attention, of our favor and we make much of Him. He is centerstage. He is center focus. Everything else is peripheral. One writer described it as everything around become shadows in the light of Him. When we do that we necessarily are humbled because He gets the full spotlight. The second part of that answer is equally important. We enjoy Him forever. When we enjoy something, our affections are turned toward that thing. We find satisfaction and contentment there. We stop searching for something better, but instead, we bask in the goodness of that thing. Again that thing takes center stage. John Piper says it well when he says, “God is most glorified when we are most satisfied in Him.” For someone to truly enjoy something or someone, he or she gives attention, deference and affection to that thing or person.

The worship of God is not only the one thing you were created to do, it is not only the greatest thing you could possibly do with your life, it is also expected and required by God. The opposite of worship is unthinkable when it comes to God. In Exodus 20 God says He is a jealous God. In fact in Exodus 34, He says His name is “Jealous.” In a world that tries to tell us that everything is a shade of gray, this is really black and white. We have two options, either God is everything we need or He is not enough. Imaging telling your spouse, “I love you but you are just not enough for me.” That does not end well. And we know as humans that a spouse actually cannot fulfill all our needs, we have need for friendships and more importantly we have a spiritual need of God. God does not share the limitations of our human spouses. To tell God, “You are everything to me” is an act of worship. To tell God by words or action, “You are not enough for me.” is an act of rebellion and defiance.

So what would a true worship service look like? It may take various forms but what would be non-negotiable would be that it would be making much about God and leaving ourselves to be only an offering for Him. It would express our joy, our satisfaction, the focus of our affection on who God is, not on His creation or His works or what He has done for us. It would be offering our affection, our devotion, our deference and our reverence to Him. Of course we may want to praise Him for His creation and we may thank Him for His works as a part of and as an act of our worship but we must be careful to truly pursue authentic worship. Are we thanking and praising Him merely for the benefits we received or have we set ourselves aside and we are thanking and praising Him based on His character and His greatness. Thanksgiving and praise because of benefits we have received from Him are wholly appropriate and good. Let’s just be careful to distinguish between sincere thanksgiving or praise and authentic worship. The focus and object of authentic worship must by definition be God or else we move into a realm of idolatry.

Prologue
Relevant?
Defining Church
The Purpose of the Church
The Radiant Bride
Worship
Worship in the Church
Holy Huddle
Myth of Church Growth

Worship

A. W. Tozer called worship the missing Jewel. John MacArthur called worship “The Ultimate Priority.” I won’t even begin to try to do better than these two but I will put an exclamation point on their characterizations. I was once talking with a pastor who, in our conversation, said that the problem within a certain denomination was that they focused on evangelism instead of worship. That was nearly 30 years ago and I am fully convinced that the evangelical church is declining for that very reason. If we consider a previous post where we tried to prioritize either evangelism or discipleship (or both) and we look deeply, we can see that in doing so we would try to prioritize the effect and leave the cause without attention. The effect of our worship should be evangelism. If we start with evangelism we completely leave the why out of our efforts and just land on “because we are commanded to.” Which of course should be enough for our actions but it leaves us with little depth in our conversations with people.

Evangelism and discipleship are the effects of worship. John Piper stated this so well at the beginning of his book, Let the Nations be Glad! In a book about missions he said, “Missions (evangelism) is not the ultimate goal of the Church. Worship is. Missions exists because worship doesn’t. Worship is ultimate, not missions, because God is ultimate, not man. When this age is over, and the countless millions of the redeemed fall on their faces before the throne of God, missions will be no more. It is a temporary necessity. But worship abides forever.” Evangelism and discipleship can never effectively take precedence over worship. To put them at the top of the priority list is a misplacement of priorities in the church. What Piper explains in the book is that evangelism is an act of worship. The reason and motivation for evangelism is to create more worshipers of God. God is not receiving the glory HE deserves unless all creation is worshiping Him. Evangelism is not ultimately about people, it is about the glory of God and it is done on our part for His glory as an act of worship.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. We have to look at worship more closely first. But even before that we have to clear up one thing. Worship has unfortunately often been equated with the songs we sing before or after a sermon. Maybe even songs from our Christian radio station. In our churches we often say, “let’s stand and worship” referring to singing but it is rare that we refer to other elements of the service or other elements of our lives for that matter as worship. While there is good reason that worship is associated with music, to equate worship to music is a tragic misapplication of the word. Let’s look at what worship really is.

At its core, worship is assigning great worth to something or identifying the worth of something but it goes beyond that. I identify worth to a lot of things but don’t worship them. I ascribe value to my vehicles but I don’t worship them. The same is true of my house. Unfortunately one may argue that my phone may be straddling the fence on this issue. But we can ascribe value without worshiping something. Worship takes that identification of worth to another level. If I worship an object I will sacrifice for that thing. It may cost a lot but I will sacrifice for it. I will act in deference to that thing. I will defer other pleasure, other comfort, other safety for that thing. I don’t just ascribe or identify worth to that thing, I ascribe or identify supreme worth to that thing. In a sense we can say that we bow down to that thing – maybe not literally but we hold it in such high value that essentially we become less and it becomes more. Very often we can think of sports teams in this realm but we can also think of wealth, position and relationships in this way. Consider the lengths many will go for their sports teams or for their wealth or position or even for a relationship. They will sacrifice money, time, relationships, their health or comfort, even their family for that thing of great worth. Their personal values diminish in the face of that thing. Then consider the personal emotional connection there is when there is a win or loss in that area, a game, a stock portfolio or a relationship.

The same is true with our worship of God but we need to add another dimension to our worship of God. In our worship of an object or a sports team, even though we sacrifice and act in deference to that thing, we still benefit. We do what we do for our own pleasure or enjoyment. We still recognize that we ultimately are equal to or greater than that thing and we hold the cards. In essence, if we step away from our worship of that thing, it loses value at least to us. If everyone stops liking a certain team, the value of that team declines dramatically. Much of its value is defined by our ascribing value to it. Old muscle cars are valuable because we define their value. Intrinsically they have no exceptional value. They are just old cars. Maybe “they don’t make them like that anymore” but the reality is there are are currently cars that can meet or beat their specifications. Old cars are subject to the laws of nature just like everything else. They wear out and the deteriorate. So the value of that machine directly matches the value I (and others like me) ascribe to it.

Because of who God is, that is not possible in our worship of Him. Because God is the creator of everything including us we must not only recognize that He is far greater than we are and simply because of who He is, He is deserving of far more than we could possibly offer in our lifetimes. For that reason alone He is the only one truly deserving of our worship. When we worship God we must come in absolute humility recognizing our unworthiness and ascribing ultimate worthiness to Him forgetting ourselves. Seriously, let me say that again. When we worship God we must come in absolute humility recognizing our unworthiness and ascribing ultimate worthiness to Him forgetting ourselves. It is the heart of worship. We come in humility and deference to Him ascribing to Him honor and glory. To be sure, we come with gratitude for His grace, with thanksgiving for His forgiveness and we come boldly as His adopted child but these elements surround our worship, they are not the essence of our worship. The essence of worship is based on the character and nature of God. And regardless of our worship, God’s worthiness can never be diminished or devalued. He remains the ultimate.

Many things we do can be an act of worship including singing but they are not intrinsically acts of worship. We can sing our adoration of God and ascribe honor and glory to Him in a song as worship. However, we can just as much sing about a dog in the back of a pick up or even sing blasphemies against God. The activity does not make it worship, the attitude and posture of our heart and the declarations of our mouth determines whether it is worship or not and / or who or what that worship is directed toward. Music is a powerful form of worship because in John 4 Jesus said that true worshipers will worship in spirit and truth. Music uniquely ties both of those elements in the lyrics of truth it proclaims and the emotion it generates or expresses. However, we can worship God in our work. We can worship Him in our studies. We can worship Him by giving and we can worship Him simply by acknowledging His power and majesty in the world around us. Again, the activity does not determine our worship, our heart, our attitude and our intent determines whether we are worshiping in these things. We may be doing certain activities yet not worshiping. IN that activity we may even acting in defiance of God if our heart is not right and purposeful.

There is another element of worship that is critical. Typically in the evangelical church, God is the subject of our worship. Listen to many of the songs we sing and you will hear it. Listen to our sermons. Often God is the subject of our song but we are the object. I never liked diagramming sentences in Jr. High School. And I certainly never thought it would ever be useful in life. But in this case I find it extremely important. If we take the sentence “Jeff threw the ball to Chris.” There is an action that is happening – throwing the ball. Jeff is our subject and really he’s not that important. What we want to know is who ends up with the ball? Who is on the receiving end of the action? In this case Chris gets the ball. He is the receiver. Worship is also an action. It is something we offer. Our worship needs to end up in the hands and at the feet of God. God must be the receiver of our worship not simply someone we are talking about. The object of our worship is the one receiving worship. If God is not receiving our worship we are at best neglecting our duty to worship or possibly worse, something or someone else is the object of our worship. We must be careful not to be part of unintentional idolatry.

So how is this relevant to the conversation we have been having about the church? It is not only relevant but it is critical. If the church were to focus on worship many things would fall into place. They would take their proper place in the church. Please hear me clearly. I am not talking about bands, music, lights, smoke etc. but true worship of God. First of all our focus would be a vertical, God focus rather than a horizontal human focus. We are intended to be the bride singularly focused on the bridegroom. Full stop. Our focus priority must be in place. When Paul instructs the church to be pure and spotless, we are far more likely to be be prepared when our focus is on God – in the right place. Secondly, as we keep our eyes on our Lord and Creator, our discipleship will grow exponentially because we are constantly getting to know Him and love Him more. But as unbelievers see our unrestrained devotion to Him, they will be attracted as well. More importantly though, the church will naturally talk all throughout the week about what God is doing in their lives. Evangelism will come from the overflow of the heart of God’s people. Imagine people as excited about God as they are about their favorite sports team, their favorite designer or their favorite ice cream. On top of that imagine hearing the life changes God is doing in His church. Why would people not be drawn to that?

Imagine employees going to their jobs and doing their work as an act of worship as if they were working for God. Imagine generous Christians giving in the name of Jesus as an act of worship to meet the needs around them. Imagine the sound of joyful Christians singing in worship in contrast to the songs of hopelessness from the world. Imagine artists and architects creating to the glory of God and medical professionals not only administering life giving medicine to patients but coming alongside them to the glory of God through the most difficult times in that person’s life. Then imagine all those worshipers gathering on Sunday morning in celebration of God’s glory but in utter humility recognizing the absolute supremacy of the God they serve. Against this, the gates of hell could not possibly prevail!

Worship brings God to the core of the church. God radiates in every direction when true worship is at the core of the church.

Prologue
Relevant?
Defining Church
The Purpose of the Church
The Radiant Bride
Worship
Worship in the Church
Holy Huddle
Myth of Church Growth

The Radiant Bride

Paul says: “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her,  that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.” Ephesians 5:25-27 ESV.

We must ask ourselves how our church model compares with Paul’s description of the church.  Are we on the right track biblically or spiritually?  If we are honest, we have to acknowledge that our drive for “church growth” does not allow us much room to focus on the church being presented as spotless, holy and without blemish.  The model in the majority of the evangelical movement is to bring as many people in the door to hear the gospel as possible.  Because of that emphasis of bringing new people in all the time our message rarely deviates from talking about a felt need and then turning the corner to a gospel presentation.  That is really all we can do in that model.  In an expositional preaching model, there may be an opportunity to get there but it also may depend on which portion of scripture you are in at the time.  There are other potential roadblocks in the expositional model as well.  One of those is that often this type of preaching leans more toward informational than transformational content which does not accomplish this goal.

Many years ago I was part of a church that I found very unique.  I had just graduated college and moved to a community for a job where I knew no one.  I found this relatively small church that was simultaneously similar yet vastly different than any I had been a part of before.  As the service began there was a guy at a piano on the platform.  He was more of a worship facilitator than a leader because anyone could begin leading a song from the congregation and he would pick it up and run with it from there.  Similarly anyone in the congregation could lead in prayer, scripture or exhortation.  All was done in order and that portion of the service generally would last about 45 minutes.  There was no program, simply opportunity for expressed worship or exhortation.  At that point the pastor would come to preach.

I once heard John MacArthur say something along the lines of, “I don’t study to preach.  I study to know God and I preach out of the overflow.” This pastor I think followed that path.  I remember one morning he stood up to preach and told the congregation that he had a message prepared but given the direction of the worship time before, the Holy Spirit was leading him in a different direction and he told us to turn to Leviticus.  Who does an extemporaneous sermon from Leviticus?!  What was even more unique was that this church really functioned like a flock with a shepherd.  This pastor led his flock in a way I had never experienced before nor have I since. When a sermon was discussed, the church as a whole was tracking along.  Regardless who I talked to in the congregation, each person was taking away relatively the same message.  My experience has always been that in talking about a sermon, each person I ask usually has a different takeaway from a sermon.  This church body presented a different way to experience church growth.  It is growth in depth more than in breadth.  It was truly a flock that grew together. And this model allowed for the preparation of the bride to be pure and spotless, ready for her bridegroom.

If we define the church to be the believing body of Christ and we find our purpose not to be people centered but bridegroom centered, making much of Him, then we can more readily prepare, exhort and build up the body to be that radiant, spotless bride that Paul speaks of. But what does that radiant bride look like?  There are certainly some high level attributes we can ascribe to a radiant bride.  Holy would come to mind first.  This is a bride that is set apart for her bridegroom.  There is nothing competing for her attention because she is already spoken for and set apart for him.  Next, a bride values the things her bridegroom values.  So we must look at what Jesus valued. Jesus valued truth, He emphasized truth often and in fact He specifically said that the reason He came into the world was to testify to the truth so that is crucial for Him.  Likewise, the bride must be unwavering in truth or there is a serious disconnect in the relationship.  Jesus modeled loving people so the radiant church bride would love people.  Jesus valued time with His Father and He submitted to His Father’s will.  It only follows that the church bride would also value time with the Father and be submissive to Him.  Jesus was compassionate and patient.  A radiant bride would carry those attributes as well.  In fact Paul gave us a pretty good list when he discussed the fruit of the Spirit.

Now go with me for a minute here.  If the church was all these things, grounded firmly in truth, loving, compassionate, gentle, patient, kind etc. would God not be able to quickly, easily and effectively use that bride to draw people to Himself?  Would we have to work so hard at all the gimmicks we use to try to attract people?  Maybe, just maybe people would be attracted to the radiant bride of Christ as she reflects all of the attributes of a just, all-powerful, all-knowing, star-breathing, world-creating, life-changing, truth-telling God who loved us enough to send His Son to die for us.  I think that would be more effective than robotic lights, smoke machines and cleverly crafted videos.  What a difference there would be if the church truly desired to be a radiant bride for her bridegroom.  Make no mistake, the end goal is to be a radiant bride for our Lord and Savior, it is not to be a supermodel poster for the world to be attracted to.  But if we keep our focus clear and our actions pure, the result will be that the world will be attracted (and offended at the same time) to this radiant bride.  And more importantly, the world will be more attracted to HIM!  The key to the church getting here is worship.  We probably need to look at worship.

Prologue
Relevant?
Defining Church
The Purpose of the Church
The Radiant Bride
Worship
Worship in the Church
Holy Huddle
Myth of Church Growth