Worship Evangelism Defection

Sally Morgenthaler, author of many books on worship, including the important “Worship Evangelism: Inviting Unbelievers into the Presence of God” has recently changed her tune. She has removed her website and has stopped teaching on this subject, because she believes that it is not working.

She has found, though experience, that worship as evangelism doesn’t work. She goes on in her article to show proof that it doesn’t work.

For all the money, time, and effort we’ve spent on cultural relevance—and that includes culturally relevant worship—it seems we came through the last 15 years with a significant net loss in churchgoers, proliferation of megachurches and all.

The whole “Oh, but we had 2 new believers last month” arguments are moved aside with “But how many would you have had if you put the time energy and teaching into strengthening your body to go evangelize with their lives rather than depending on a church event?” Worship isn’t the place to pull new people into the church.

When you plan cool worship, she finds, you mostly get disgruntled people from other churches, not new believers. Evangelism, as she now believes, needs to be putting worship into your entire life and living in the community in service and love. THAT gets people interested in Christ, not just in your concert. We need to avoid the hubris of “Oh, but ours is different…” and realize that this approach is inward-focused and wasteful.

I began challenging leaders to give up their mythologies about how they were reaching the unchurched on Sunday morning. Yes, worship openly and unapologetically. Yes, worship well and deeply. (Which means singing songs that may include anger, sadness, and despair. Have we forgotten that David did this? Have we discarded the psalms?) But let our deepened, honest worship be the overflow of what God does through us beyond our walls.

Worship is for believers to express themselves to God. Not for unbelievers to be sold on Christ.

May you, as leader of your congregation, have the courage to leave the “if we build it, they will come” world of the last two decades behind. May you and the Christ-followers you serve become worshippers who can raise the bar of authenticity, as well as your hands. And may you be reminiscent of Isaiah, who, having glimpsed the hem of God’s garment and felt the cleansing fire of grace on his lips, cried, “Here am I, send me.”

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Glorified Peanut Butter
(serves 4)
Stir with mixing spoon until thoroughly blended in order listed:
1/2 cup peanut butter
1/4 cup honey
1/4 cup of powdered milk
1 tablespoon raisins or currants

Sing to him! Make music to him! Tell about all his miraculous deeds! Psalms 105:2

We are a music-loving family, and the LittlePages are always clamouring to put on MediaMonkey so we can enjoy some music.

Although MrPages and I come from secular backgrounds, we have, as we have grown in our faith, moved almost entirely away from secular music. We do, however, shun a large portion of Christian contemporary music as evidence of art giving way to commercialism. (That, alas, is another post…)

I thought I might share a few of the LittlePages most popular choices of our, perhaps, lesser known worship music choices.

FretNot Gospel are a group of talented musicians who “play old-time American roots-gospel, the traditional church music from the hard days of the Emancipation on through to the Depression.” They “play anywhere for anyone the Lord Jesus Christ has called” them too! They have a great page of samples located here. If you click on the albums, you can listen to samples of almost all their work.

Seeds Family Worship CD’s are an awesome way to hide some scripture in your heart. These “children’s” CD’s are professionally done, and enjoyable for parents and children alike. MrPages, who music tastes tend to a little more heavier than my own, enjoys these CD’s immensely. (If you use Firefox, you may need to open this site in IE. Checkout this plugin to help.)

Lastly, the LittlePages love to listen to the Jost Family. This probably has something to do with hopes of creating our own little travelling-home- school-ministry-music-group, but it’s still good music with a great message. (You may need to load this in IE too!)

So go ahead:

Sing praises to the Lord, who rules in Zion! Tell the nations what he has done! Psalms 9:11

David Park over at NextGenerAsianChurch.com has a great post today about attempts to revitalize the church by dressing up the already failing church in new clothes.

David brings a twist to his writing in that he approaches his diagnosis from the needs of the Korean church. I’ve commented on his site about this, and I’ll say it again: I think his wisdom is true for the entire church, regardless of ethnicity. I think he focuses too tightly and could be an impressive force for larger church renewal if he’d expand his audience. I realize his passion is for the uniqueness of the Korean church in North America, but I believe his insight reaches much farther and cuts close to home outside the Korean church much more than he realizes. More people should read this man’s thoughts!

Some select tidbits…

We don’t need marketing. Quit creating things that we “need”. [emphasis mine, I love that phrase. --mrpages] We want to see some organic growth. We’ll spread the word ourselves if it’s valuable enough.

We don’t need another program. Missions is not a summer event – it is a lifestyle. Welcoming is not a team – it is a posture. Small groups is not a department – it is a circle of friends.

I’ll stop before I just blockquote the whole thing as “the best part”.

Another mother completely amazed that photos she posted for the public to see were taken and used by someone.

I don’t understand these people who put photos up on publicly accessible websites and are upset when people use them. Not even a personal website (which is just as public), this lady posted them on Flickr which is a publicly browsable photo album.

Folks, morally the internet is like the bathroom at a bar. If you wouldn’t post pics of your kids for the world to see in the men’s room at the Go-Go-Palooza Club, then don’t post them on the ‘net. It’s that simple. We see parents posting pics of their kids, with names and birthdates in their forum signatures, pictures of their house with addresses visible and full descriptions about the area of town they live in, and we just shake our heads. How simple to convince a child to get into your car when you know so many details about them!

Wonderfulpages easy rule is this: No names, no faces. Someone might be able to connect stuff we say back to google and figure out who we are with a little effort, but we’re not going to make it too easy.

Okay, not chocolate. But if it were chocolate, that would be the only way it could be better than this: Free worship stuff!

Sovereign Grace Ministries recently opened their entire resource library for free download.

Many of the conference messages also have a PDF of the notes handed out by the speaker. If you like, you can buy the messages on CD as well.

Sovereign Grace hosts an annual worship conference, so there are dozens and dozens of great sermons about worship, and practical discussions about being a musician and writing songs to check out.

The conference I was talking about in my last post is here.

I’m continually amazed at the number of people who are completely convinced that they can’t sing. I used to be one of them.

About the time God found me and took me as His own, that changed.

I don’t have a great voice. I have a hard time with tempo sometimes. I have to be careful in choosing songs that I can manage. I consider myself a “campfire” musician. I’m not going to do any solos. I’m not going to record any albums. I’m not going to be the next Canadian Idol.

But I sing.

I help Ash lead Worship one week a month. I lead singing at a couple of other ministries during the week. People would likely describe my style as more “enthusiastic” than “talented”

But I sing.

We’re getting together with another family to sing some praise and read scripture tomorrow, and I’m bringing my guitar. I’m a bit nervous. I have no idea how anyone else sings, and I will be leading some songs. As in: people will be following me. Vocally. There’s an emoticon that represents my feelings about that. =:-0

I’m sitting here struggling with that, because I want to worship with these friends, not lead them in song.

As I’m preparing I’m listening to a conference by Bob Kauflin, and he just said “Singing is not about whether you have a voice but whether you have a song.”

He continues: “You don’t have to have a great voice to lead people in worshipping God, but you do have to have a song. If you have been redeemed in Jesus Christ then you have a song: the song of the redeemed.”

Okay. I think I can do that. I may or may not be able to sing, but I most certainly have a song.

“Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and exhorting one another with all wisdom, singing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, all with grace in your hearts to God. And whatever you do in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.” - Colossians 3:16-17

I’ve been sort of quiet the last little while.

Part of my writer’s block has been not knowing what to write, or perhaps, more truthfully, how honest to be in my writing. I am a tenacious soul, in that once something’s on my mind, it’s hard to let it go and think about other things. Especially when one is in pain. It seems like lying, to pretend that everything is going alright, when it’s not.

So the post about scones and safe web surfing are gathering dust, because I couldn’t really bring myself to post them.

Instead, I’ve been feeling compelled to share my journey over the last several weeks.

Do not participate in the unfruitful deeds of darkness, but rather expose them. For the things they do in secret are shameful even to mention. But all things being exposed by the light are made evident. For everything made evident is light, and for this reason it says:
“Awake, O sleeper! Rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you!”
Ephesians 5:11-14

Three weeks ago, I started reading my bible every day. Not just bits and pieces of it, but reading the New Testament, like it was a novel, looking for insight into the characters, their lives and their motivations. I asked myself questions about their conversations, their actions, and their ideas. I couldn’t wait to have a few moments to peek into my Book again. Every morning I arose, and grabbed the book before my eyes opened, and every evening I drifted off to sleep over my worn little tome.

Two weeks ago, all Hell broke lose in my life. Every terrible thought that I have ever thought resurfaced to haunt me. I had nightmares. I yelled. I threw temper tantrums. I tempted those in my family to join in the “game.” My husband tried to throw a lifeline, but I refused it. Instead I dragged him into the muck and mire. We fought. Terribly.

How, after almost twenty years of walking with my Saviour, could I still be dealing with such disfunctionality. Where was my “new life in Him“? Where was the easy yoke and abundant life that I desired so much? How could these evil attitudes and habits still be evident in my life? I questioned God. I questioned the Bible. I questioned my faith. I felt like such a failure. I wished I was dead.

Somehow, throughout the evil turmoil, I continued to read the Scriptures. And the still small voice of the Holy Spirit lead me to Ephesians:

Finally, be strengthened in the Lord and in the strength of his power. Clothe yourselves with the full armor of God so that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavens
Ephesians 6:10-12

I realized that I was in a fight. For my spiritual life. I needed to make a stand. And so I fought against the hate in my own mind and I can tell you I am still standing. I’m still reading my bible. And God is still good.

I have lots more to share, but this is just the beginning.

A few nights ago Page1 was finishing up evening chores by putting bag of garbage outside at about 9pm. She came running back into the house yelling that there was something in the backyard. She thought it was a raccoon, but maybe it was just a big cat, but it was on the fence and it was HUGE!

It turns out that it was indeed a raccoon. We have seen them in our neighbourhood before, but never this early in the evening. He was perched on the back fence, eating whole peanuts out of our neighbour’s squirrel feeder. I ran to get the camera, and slowly made my way into the back yard.

The raccoon was obviously intent on getting as many peanuts as he could before he left, so he didn’t seem afraid of me at all. He glanced at me occasionally as I approached, but kept digging out peanuts and eating them until I was within about 10 feet.

He then turned and ambled along the fence, spotlit by MrsPages holding a big battery lantern, to the far corner of the yard. He jumped up into a tree and sat there looking at us, obviously just waiting for us to leave so he could resume his snack.

We’re always amazed at how much wildlife exists in our backyard. We’re only a mile or so from farmland, but we are still smack in the middle of suburbia.

A couple of years back, other neighbours had a raccoon removed from its nest in their chimney and it was a hissing, spitting ball of mean. I have no doubt that this little guy could be like that if he really tried, but our encounter this night was pleasant and ended well.

Of course, I didn’t try to get between him and his peanuts…

We’re poison.

We led worship in church this Sunday and we should not have. We went with horrible attitudes, and we sat and nitpicked the sermon, and then got up and sang to God again afterwards. I feel so cheap and fake.

I’m sorry, God for coming before you with a heart full of pride and conceit and anger towards others and having the hubris to actually attempt to lead your people in praise.

We sat and had a good discussion with Ash about it after the service, though, and I think we’ve started to figure things out. There isn’t one specific issue that we’re upset about. It’s all of them, and it’s none of them. Every single thing we look at about the church we’re finding problems with. Our fundamental, basic philosophy of ministry has changed to the point that we are having a hard time being in a normal church model.

So, the issues that we’ve highlighted (and more than a few that have died on the draft-post evaluation cutting room floor) are all still relevant. But they’re not the point. We can sit and argue minutiae about each one, and each one is never the actual issue.

We are so full of this powerful all-encompassing angst and discontent. We’ve been casting about looking for the source, and all those things are part of it, but they aren’t all of it. We have some ideas, and those’ll show up here later.

In the meantime, we’re just feeling like we need to protect our church family from us for a while. We’ve got some things to do and some things to pray about and some things to talk about. Until then, we’re toxic to our community. Bleah. So, we back away from things that make us more toxic, and we keep seeing people, and we keep praying and we keep talking and we try to detoxify, and we ask to be detoxified..

God, you have things for us to do. You put us where we are for a reason. You have always clearly guided us. Help us to feel Your hand.