Who Do You Design Your Worship Service For?

Tony Morgan writes a blog that I read on a regular basis. Tony is one of the pastors at New Spring Church in Greenville, South Carolina. In this particular blog entry he makes an interesting observation. Let me drop in the interesting part:

"Last Sunday at our Greenville campus, we had an older couple, probably in their sixties, accept Christ. That’s worth celebrating. I love to watch life change happen.

Here’s what’s amazing about stories like that. Our services in Greenville aren’t designed for people in their sixties. Our services are designed for a much younger audience. It’s an audience that loves loud music. They are comfortable with video teaching, because video is already a huge part of their lives. They love the coffeehouse atmosphere.

Here’s what we’ve learned. If we design our service experiences for a younger audience, we’re more likely to reach that younger person and we’ll also reach older folks. The reverse is not true. If we designed our service experience for an older audience, the younger crowd would not show up.

Now, here’s the reality. Most churches in America are designed for an older audience. In fact, the more-seasoned folks in those churches are sitting on committees telling the students and young adults how they can and can’t do ministry. The result? Younger people are leaving churches in droves." ~ Tony Morgan (you can read his blog here)

Morgan's observation is true. From my own experience here at IC Church of Christ, that is essentially what we have done. We set a target age of who we are going after, then we created a venue that connected with that group. However, the means to the end is not the coolness of your venue, or the presentation of video, or even the style of the music. The means to the end is still the power of God, the teaching of biblical truth, the leading of the Holy Spirit, and the focus on Jesus.

The growth and change in our church over the last year has come more from a focus on prayer (the church elders and I pray every Tuesday night over the church & the community) and basic biblical teaching and preaching. I think when I first arrived here in Iowa City I worked too hard on being cute, clever, and practical. So while the messages were all right, they never really connected people to the true life change that comes through Jesus Christ. In looking back at some of the messages they almost came off as being nice, "self-help" type of stuff that didn't even require the power of God in people's life. Now, it probably wasn't that bad, it just seems that way looking back. I've always preached Jesus and always will. It's just that I can tell a change in my preaching and how people have responded since I've changed my focus. Anyway, just a few observations I had that I wanted to pass on to you.