Classic Episode
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This week, Jonathan is on vacation, and I am in the Rocky Mountains at a speaking engagement. So we bring to you a classic episode of Rainer on Leadership on rapid changes in church worship services. We will be back with new episodes next week.
Some highlights from today’s episode include:
- Hymnals are still alive, but screens are everywhere in churches.
- Multi is now normal—multi-venue, multi-site, multi-service, multi-lingual, multi-campus, and more.
- Our church services are more diverse because our neighborhoods and communities are more diverse.
- Worship wars used to be the primary source of conflict in the church, but they have begun to subside.
- People have a greater exposure to different types of worship styles now than in the past.
The nine rapid changes in church worship services we discuss today are:
- Choirs are disappearing.
- Dress is more casual.
- Screens are pervasive.
- Preaching is longer.
- “Multi” is normative.
- Attendees are more diverse.
- Conflict is not increasing.
- More worship attendees are attending larger churches.
- Sunday evening services are disappearing.
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To those of us who still enjoy dressing up for church, it seems there is an ever growing pressure to conform to the casual perspective. I am not saying a certain dress should be required. If you want to wear shorts and flip flops that is your choice. But it is also my choice to wear suit and tie.
I believe in giving God my best…..that includes my appearance! Especially when I’m WORSHIPPPING & REPRESENTING HIM…..That’s just me!!!!!
After my wife had served full-time on staff as the church Graphic Artist, myself on numerous “worship teams” and my son doing Drama & Art – all of us for 17 years – these kinds of petty issues (including, especially, all the spiritual abuse), are some of the reasons my family and I have just recently left the Evangelical Church, which has lost its First Love – it’s now all about Big Business and very Little about Christ!!
Thank God, we are now back to my Presbyterian roots and we have been attending several Presbyterian churches that we thoroughly enjoy – one of which is in the heart of Philadelphia’s Main Line and one of the others being the cornerstone Presbyterian church of our county seat. The liturgy and reverence for The LORD in these Presbyterian churches is beautiful and it has been unbelievably refreshing and healing for us!
The Choirs in these churches are quite alive – contrary to your report here; there are no screens to deal with and we either use Hymnals or lyrics printed in the Bulletins, with the few songs being driven by the Congregation and not the 30 minute Rock Concerts with all the Fan Dependent, Egocentric “worship leaders”; the Preaching is actually shorter – also contrary to this blog (if you can’t make your point in 20 minutes, something needs to be fixed); also … a few of them do have Sunday evening services – contrary to this report.
Let us, please, focus More on Jesus Christ and less on church – it’s business and people’s individual self-interests!
Thank You.
Near Washington certain Anglican, Catholic, and Orthodox churches are growing rapidly. The Anglican, where I attend, still has a choir and even chants the the psalm with the congregation, responsively. There is one anthem sung during the offering but all other singing is choir and congregation. Men still wear coats except in summer and there is no screen with Power Point. The homily is short and to the point.
Paul must have been terrible at getting his point across, he preached people out of windows. Your language in your comment shows a divided spirit not a unifying or edification spirit. Why can’t the church be diverse as was taught in the scriptures?
#8 has become a real sore spot for me, and I think it’s a sad testimony to the work ethic of the modern church. Time and again I hear people say, “We need to reach our communities for Christ! People in this area need Jesus!” Then they drive an hour to a church in another county because that church has “more to offer”. Am I the only one that sees something terribly disingenuous about that attitude?
When there are few people and no youth group of any type, it becomes hard to keep people especially those with kids. I grew up in an a church with few youth, no youth group, and one minister who never taught the youth anything. Even my parents’ generation had few people in that church to talk to. It makes things difficult.
That’s another one of my pet peeves. People say the church should “offer more” for youth and children, but instead of doing what’s necessary to reach them, they bail out and join another church.