13
Worship Can Be a Witness
God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.
John 4:24
This weekend, millions of people will attend an evangelical worship service. The amazing thing is that most of those people could not articulate the purpose of the service they attend if they were asked. They might have a vague idea but it would be difficult for themto put into words.
In chapters 14 to 16, I will explain how we’ve designed a service format that has reached thousands of unbelievers for Christ. But first, I feel it is necessary to clarify the theological and practical reasons behind Saddleback’s seeker service. Everything that we do in our weekend services is based on twelve deeply held convictions.
Twelve Convictions About Worship
- Only believers can truly worship God. The direction of worship is from believers to God. We magnify God’s name in worship by expressing our love and commitment to him. Unbelievers simply cannot do this. At Saddleback, our definition of worship is “Worship is expressing our love to God for who he is, what he’s said, and what he’s doing.”
We believe there are many appropriate ways to express our love to God. These include praying, singing, thanking, listening, giving, testifying, trusting, obeying his Word, among many others. God, not man, is the focus and center of our worship.
2. You don’t need a building to worship God. Acts 17:24 says, “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands.” You’d probably expect this emphasis from a church that existed fifteen years and grew to over 10,000 in attendance without a building. I think we made our point.
Unfortunately many churches are obsessed with the edifice complex. No building (or lack of one) should ever be allowed to control, limit, or distract people from worshiping God. There’s nothing wrong with buildings, unless you worship them instead of the creator. Jesus said, “For where two or three come together in my name, there amI with them” (Matt. 18:20).
3. There is no correct “style” of worship. Jesus only gave
two requirements for legitimate worship: “God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth” (John 4:24). I don’t think God is offended or even bothered by different styles of worship as long as it is done “in spirit” and “in truth.” In fact, I’m certain that God enjoys the variety! Remember, it was his idea to make us all different.
The style of worship that you feel comfortable with says far more about your cultural background than it does about your theology. Debates over worship style are almost always sociological and personality debates couched in theological terms.
Every church likes to believe its worship style is the most biblical. The truth is, there isn’t a biblicalstyle of worship. Each Sunday true believers around the world give glory to Jesus Christ using a thousand equally valid expressions and styles.
Regardless of style, true worship employs both your right brain and your left brain. It engages both emotion and intellect, your heart and your mind. We must worship in spirit and in truth.
4. Unbelievers can watch believers worship. Unbelievers can observe the joy that we feel. They can see how we value God’s Word, how we respond to it, and how the Bible answers the problems and questions of life. They can notice how worship encourages, strengthens, and changes us. It is even possible for them to sense when God is supernaturally moving in a service, although they won’t be able to explain it.
5. Worship is a powerful witness to unbelievers if God’s presence is felt and if the message is understandable. In Acts 2, on the day of Pentecost, God’s presence was so evident in the disciples’ worship service that it attracted the attention of unbelievers throughout the entire city. Acts 2:6 says “… a crowd came together.” We know it must have been a big crowd because 3,000 people were saved that day.
Why were those 3,000 people converted? Because they felt God’s presence, and they understood the message. Both of these elements are essential in order for worship to be a witness. First, God’s presence must be sensed in the service. More people are won to Christ by feeling God’s presence than by all of our apologetic arguments combined. Few people, if any, are converted to Christ on purely intellectual grounds. It is the sense of God’s presence that melts hearts and explodes mental barriers.
At the same time, the worship and the message need to be understandable. At Pentecost, the Holy Spirit miraculously translated the message into words each person understood. The crowd of unbelievers said, “We hear them telling in our own languages about the great things God has done!” (Acts 2:11 NCV, italics added). This ability to understand caused them to be converted. Even though God’s presence was evident in the service, they wouldn’t have known what to do if they hadn’t been able to understand the message.
There is an intimate connection between worship and evangelism. It is the goal of evangelism to produce worshipers
of God. The Bible tells us that “the Father seeks [worshipers]” (John 4:23) so evangelism is the task of recruiting worshipers of God.
At the same time, it is worship that provides the motivation for evangelism. It produces a desire in us to tell others about Christ. The result of Isaiah’s powerful worship experience (Isa. 6:1–8) was Isaiah saying, “Here am I. Send me!” True worship causes us to witness.
In genuine worship God’s presence is felt, God’s pardon is offered, God’s purposes are revealed, and God’s power is displayed. That sounds to me like an ideal context for evangelism! I’ve noticed that when unbelievers watch believers relate to God in an intelligent, sincere manner, it creates a desire in themto know God too.
6. God expects us to be sensitive to the fears, hang-ups, and needs of unbelievers when they are present in our worship services. This is the principle Paul taught in 1 Corinthians 14. In verse 23, Paul commanded that tongues be limited in public worship. His reasoning? Speaking in tongues seems like foolishness to unbelievers. Paul didn’t say tongues were foolish, only that they appear foolish to unbelievers. “So if the whole church comes together and everyone speaks in tongues, and some who do not understand or some unbelievers come in, will they not say that you are out of your mind?” (1 Cor. 14:23).
I believe there is a larger principle behind this advice to the Corinthian church. The point Paul is making is that we must be
willing to adjust our worship practices when unbelievers are present. God tells us to be sensitive to the hang-ups of unbelievers in our services. Being seeker sensitive in our worship is a biblical command.
Although Paul never used the term “seeker sensitive,” he definitely pioneered the idea. He was very concerned about not placing any stumbling blocks in front of unbelievers. He told the Corinthian church, “Do not cause anyone to stumble, whether Jews, Greeks or the church of God” (1 Cor. 10:32). He also advised the church at Colosse, “Be tactful with those who are not Christians and be sure you make the best use of your time with them” (Col. 4:5 JB, italics added).
When you have guests over to your home for dinner does your family act differently than when it’s just your family at the table? Of course they do! You pay attention to your guests’ needs, making sure they are served first*.* The food may be the same, but you may use a different set of china or present the meal in a more thoughtful way. The table conversation is usually more courteous. Is this being hypocritical? No. By doing these things, you are being sensitive and showing respect to your guests. In the same way, the spiritual food is unchanged in a seeker-sensitive service, but the presentation is more thoughtful and considerate of the guests present.
7. A worship service does not have to be shallow to be seeker sensitive. The message doesn’t have to be compromised, just understandable. Making a service “comfortable” for the unchurched doesn’t mean changing your
theology, it means changing the environment of the service. Changing the environment could be done through the way you greet visitors, the style of music you use, the Bible translation you preach from, and the kinds of announcements you make in the service.
The message is not always comfortable; in fact, sometimes God’s truth is very uncomfortable! Still, we must teach “the whole counsel of God.” Being seeker sensitive does not limit what you say, but it does affect how you say it.
As I mentioned in the previous chapter, the unchurched are not asking for a watered-down message—they expect to hear the Bible when they come to church. What they do want is to hear how the Bible relates to their lives in terms they understand and in a tone that shows you respect and care about them. They are looking for solutions, not a scolding.
Unbelievers wrestle with the same deep questions believers have: Who am I? Where did I come from? Where am I going? Does life make sense? Why is there suffering and evil in the world? What is my purpose in life? How can I learn to get along with people? These are certainly not shallow issues.
8. The needs of believers and unbelievers often overlap. They are very dif erent in some areas but are very similar in many areas. Seeker-sensitive services focus on needs common to both believers and unbelievers. For instance, both believers and unbelievers need to know what God is really like; both need to understand the purpose of life; both need to know why
and how to forgive others; both need help in strengthening their marriage and family; both need to know how to deal with suffering, grief, and pain; both need to know why materialismis so destructive. Christians do not stop having needs once they are saved.
9. It is best to specialize your services according to their purpose. Most churches try to evangelize the lost and edify believers in the same service. When you send mixed signals, you’re going to get mixed results. Trying to aim at two targets with one gun only results in frustration.
Design one worship service to edify believers and another service to evangelize the unchurched friends brought by your members. At Saddleback, our believers’ service is on Wednesday night and our seeker services are on Saturday night and Sunday morning. This way you can use different preaching styles, songs, prayers, and other elements appropriate to each target.
When I started Saddleback, I asked unchurched people when they would be most likely to visit a church. Every single one said, “If I ever did, it would be a Sunday morning.” I also asked our members when they were most likely to bring unchurched friends. Again, they said Sunday morning. Even in today’s culture, people still think of Sunday morning as “the time you go to church.” So that’s why we decided to use Sunday morning for evangelism and Wednesday night for edification.
Evangelistic services are nothing new; only the idea of using the Sunday morning time slot for an evangelistic service is a recent variation. Earlier in this century, Sunday evenings were generally recognized as the “evangelistic service” of churches. A few churches still advertise a Sunday evening evangelistic service, although it’s doubtful that many unbelievers show up. Even believers don’t like to attend Sunday evenings! They’ve been voting with their feet on that issue for decades.
- A service geared toward seekers is meant to supplement personal evangelism, not replace it. People generally find it easier to decide for Christ when there are multiple relationships supporting that decision. Seeker services provide a group witness to enhance and confirm the personal witness of members. When an unbeliever attends a seeker service with a friend who has been witnessing to him, he sees the crowd and thinks, Hey, there are a lot of other people who believe this. There must be something to it.
There is incredible persuasive power in the witness of a crowd of believers worshiping together. For this reason, the larger your seeker service grows, the greater an evangelistic tool it will become.
- There is no standard way to design a seeker service. This is because unbelievers are not all alike! Some want a service that makes them feel a part of it; others want to sit passively and watch. Some like quiet, meditative services; others like high-energy services. The style that works best in southern California probably won’t work in New England and
vice versa. It takes all kinds of services to reach all kinds of seekers.
There are only three nonnegotiable elements of a seeker service: (1) treat unbelievers with love and respect, (2) relate the service to their needs, and (3) share the message in a practical, understandable manner. All other elements are secondary issues that churches shouldn’t get hung up on.
I first began offering churches suggestions for creating seeker services nearly twenty years ago. Now that this type of service has received a lot of media attention, I sometimes find people overemphasizing minor factors. They worry about getting rid of the pulpit, not wearing a robe, or whether or not to have a drama each week, as if these things will automatically bring the unchurched flocking to their church. They are wrong. If all seekers were looking for was a quality production, they’d stay home and watch TV where millions are spent to produce half-hour programs.
W h a t really attracts large numbers of unchurched to a church is changed lives—a lot of changed lives. People want to go where lives are being changed, where hurts are being healed, and where hope is being restored.
At Saddleback, you see changed lives everywhere. In almost every seeker service, we include a real-life testimony from a person or couple who have been dramatically changed by the power and love of Christ. This weekly parade of “satisfied customers” is hard for skeptics to argue with.
Saddleback Church has confounded much of the conventional wisdom about seeker-sensitive churches by winning thousands of unchurched people to Christ in spite of the most unlikely and difficult circumstances. Imagine a church where the location keeps changing; where the unchurched will come and sit in a tent that is freezing in the winter, damp and leaky in the rainy spring, blisteringly hot in the summer, and has howling winds rip through it in the fall. Imagine a church where people will park three miles away when necessary and stand outside under umbrellas in the rain in order to attend. When lives are being changed, problems that otherwise might seemoverwhelming to a church are treated as mere nuisances.
At every Saddleback service we invite people to fill out a registration card and sing worship songs. We take an offering, provide a message outline with Bible verses written out on it, and offer a time of commitment. Although I’ve heard some people claim that you can’t reach the unchurched if you do these things, over 7,000 unbelievers have registered a personal commitment to Christ at Saddleback, and thousands of others are considering that decision as they return week after week. It’s how you do these things that makes the difference.
New approaches and technologies are only tools. You don’t have to use drama and multimedia or have a nice building and convenient parking to reach unbelievers. These items just make it easier. Please realize that the suggestions I give in the next two chapters are only general guidelines, suggestions from what has worked at Saddleback. Do not treat them like the Ten
Commandments. Even I wouldn’t do everything we do at Saddleback if I were in another part of the country. You must figure out what works best to reach seekers in your local context.
- It takes unselfish, mature believers to of er a seekersensitive service. In 1 Corinthians 14:19–20, Paul says that when we think only of our own needs in worship we are being childish and immature. Members demonstrate incredible spiritual maturity when they are considerate of the needs, fears, and hang-ups of unbelievers and are willing to place those needs before their own in a service.
In every church there is constant tension between the concepts of “service” and “serve-us*.*” Most churches end up tipping the scales toward meeting members’ needs because the members pay the bills. Offering a seeker service means intentionally tipping the scales in the opposite direction, toward unbelievers. It requires members who are willing to create a safe environment for unbelievers at the expense of their own preferences, traditions, and comfort. Enormous spiritual maturity is required to voluntarily move out of a comfort zone.
Jesus said, “Your attitude must be like my own, for I, the Messiah, did not come to be served, but to serve” (Matt. 20:28 LB). Until this attitude of unselfish servanthood permeates the minds and hearts of your members, your church is not ready to begin a seeker-sensitive service.