14
Designing a Seeker-Sensitive Service
If, therefore, the whole church comes together and all speak in tongues, and outsiders or unbelievers enter, will they not say that you are out of your mind?
1 Corinthians 14:23 (NRSV)
Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity.
Colossians 4:5
Growing up in a Christian home, I was often frustrated when I brought nonbelieving friends to church. It seemed inevitable that whenever I’d get one of my friends to attend a service with me, that would be the Sunday my father would preach on
tithing, some guest missionary would show slides, or we’d have a communion service—not what my unsaved friends needed to hear or experience.
Yet it often seemed that on the weekends when I didn’t bring lost friends to church, the message would be on the plan of salvation. I’d think, “Boy, I wish my friends were here today!” From week to week, I didn’t know if the service would be a “safe” service to which I could bring unbelievers. The focus of the message was always unpredictable, alternating between evangelism and edification. I noticed this same pattern in the churches I attended while in college. Eventually, I gave up inviting nonbelievers to church. It wasn’t a conscious decision —I just got tired of getting “burned.”
Most churches rarely attract unbelievers to their services because members are uncomfortable bringing them to church. It doesn’t matter how much the pastor encourages members to bring friends or how many visitation programs are launched, the results are the same: Most members never bring any lost friends to church.
Why is this? There are three important reasons. First, as I mentioned, the target of the messages is unpredictable. Members don’t know from week to week if the pastor will be preaching an evangelistic message or an edification message. Second, the services are not designed for unbelievers; so much of what goes on in them would not be understandable to an unchurched friend. Third, members may be embarrassed by the quality of the service.
If you were able to get the typical church member to be completely honest about his church he’d probably say this: “I love my church. I love my pastor. I am personally blessed by what takes place in our services. It meets my needs. But … I wouldn’t think of inviting my unchurched friends from the office because the service wouldn’t make any sense to them. The messages are for me, the songs are for me, the prayers are prayed in terms I understand, and even the announcements are for me. My friends wouldn’t understand much of our service.” Ironically, at the same time he may feel guilty for not inviting his friends.
Increasing the size of your church does not require the intelligence of a rocket scientist: You must simply get more people to visit! No one becomes a church member without first being a visitor. If you only have a few visitors each year, you’ll have even fewer new members. A crowd is not a church, but to grow a larger church you must first attract a crowd.
What is the most natural way to increase the number of visitors to your church? By making members feel guilty for not inviting friends? No. By putting up a big sign that says “Visitors Welcome”? No. By cold-calling on homes in your community? Probably not. By holding attendance contests? Unlikely. By using telemarketing or advertising? Wrong again.
The answer is quite simple: Create a service that is intentionally designed for your members to bring their friends to. And make the service so attractive, appealing, and relevant
to the unchurched that your members are eager to share it with the lost people they care about.
Saddleback has offered that kind of service from its beginning. As other churches began to develop similar approaches, the term “seeker-sensitive service” began to be used to describe this type of service. By creating a service that Christians want to bring their unsaved friends to, you don’t have to use contests, campaigns, or guilt to increase attendance. Members will invite their friends week after week, and your church will experience a steady influx of unchurched visitors. In this chapter and the next one, I would like to give you a number of practical suggestions for designing a seekersensitive service.
Plan the Service with Your Target in Mind
Each week at Saddleback, we remind ourselves who we’re trying to reach: Saddleback Sam and his wife Samantha. Once you know your target, it will determine many of the components of your seeker service: music style, message topics, testimonies, creative arts, and much more.
Most evangelical churches conclude their worship service with an altar call. This indicates that, functionally, we connect worship with evangelism. But many do not realize that it is a self-defeating strategy to focus the first fifty-eight minutes of the service on believers and suddenly switch the focus to unbelievers in the last two minutes. Unbelievers are not going to sit through fifty-eight minutes of a service that isn’t in the
slightest way relevant to them. The entire service, not just the invitation, must be planned with the unchurched in mind.
Make It as Easy as Possible to Attend
Americans are conditioned to expect things to be convenient. Your goal should be to remove as many barriers as possible so that the unchurched have no excuse for not attending.
Of er multiple service times. This gives people more than one opportunity to attend. Saddleback has offered four identical services each weekend for years: Saturday at 6:00 p.m., and Sunday at 8:00, 9:30, and 11:15 a.m. We’ve often had unbelievers visit a service, go home and call a friend, and bring themback to another service because of the sermon topic.
Of er surplus parking. In America, it takes parking to reach people. One of the first things visitors notice is parking and traffic control. I once asked several pastors of the largest churches in California what their biggest mistake was in building. Every one of them had the same answer: not enough parking. When people come to church they like to bring their cars! If you don’t have a place for their car, you don’t have a place for them. No matter how big your building is, you won’t be able to fill it if there isn’t enough parking.
Of er children’s Sunday school simultaneously with the service. Unchurched people don’t want to deal with squirming children, either theirs or someone else’s. Saddleback offers four
Sunday schools at the same time as our seeker services.
Put a map to your church on all advertising. Nothing is more frustrating than trying to find a place without a map. Saddleback has its own four-lane, half-mile entrance into our property. It’s called Saddleback Parkway, and the church is the only address on it. Yet people still get lost trying to find us.
Improve the Pace andFlowof the Service
Almost all churches need to pick up the pace of their services. Television has permanently shortened the attention span of Americans. In one time-out during Monday night football you’ll see a replay, three commercials, and a network news brief—they don’t want you to get bored! MTV has shortened the attention span for baby busters even more. In one three-minute video alone you may be bombarded with several thousand images.
In contrast, most church services move at a snail’s pace. There is a lot of “dead time” between different elements. When the minister of music finishes a song, he walks over and sits down. Fifteen seconds later, the pastor thinks about getting up. Finally, he slowly moves to the pulpit and welcomes the people. By this time, unbelievers have already fallen asleep. Work on minimizing transitional times. As soon as one element ends, another should begin.
Look for ways to save time in your service. We regularly time each element of our service: the prayers, the songs, the
announcements, the message, the closing, and the transitions in between each element. Then we ask ourselves, “What took too much time and what needed more time?”
Our services usually last about seventy minutes. You can accomplish a lot in that time if you plan it wisely. For instance, your offering time can be cut in half simply by doubling the number of ushers and baskets.
Keep your pastoral prayers short in your seeker services. It is not the time to intercede for sister Bertha’s ingrown toenail! The unchurched can’t handle long prayers; their minds wander or they fall asleep. Pastors should be wary of using the pastoral prayer to catch up on their quiet time!
In addition to speeding up your service, work on improving its flow. The difference between an average service and an outstanding service is flow.
At Saddleback, we use the word IMPACT as an acronym to remind us of the flow we desire to create with our music:
Inspire Movement: This is what we want to do with the opening song. We use a bright, upbeat number that makes you want to tap your foot, clap, or at least smile. We want to loosen up the tense muscles of uptight visitors. When your body is relaxed, your attitude is less defensive.
To begin our service, we wake up the body of Christ by waking up our own bodies. When people enter a morning
service they usually feel stiff, sleepy, and reserved. After our “Inspire Movement” opening song the atmosphere always changes to being more cheerful and alert. The difference this opening song makes is absolutely amazing.
Praise: We then move to joyfulsongs about God.
Adoration: We move to a more meditative, intimate song to God. The pace is slowed here.
Commitment: This song gives people an opportunity to affirm or reaffirm a commitment to God. It is usually a first person singular song like “I Want to Be More Like You.”
Tie it all together: The very last thing we do is end the service on another short, upbeat song.
Make Visitors Feel Comfortable
Visitors have already formed an opinion about your church within the first ten minutes after they arrive. As I mentioned in chapter 12, visitors are deciding whether or not to come back long before the pastor speaks. First impressions are very difficult to change, so you need to think through what first impressions you want visitors to have.As the old saying goes, you never have a second chance to make a first impression.
In dealing with visitors, it is important to understand that their first emotional response is one of fear. If they are genuinely unchurched people they are wondering, “What is going to happen to me here?” They have the same feelings and fears you’d have if you were invited to a Moslem mosque for the first time: “Are they going to lock the doors?” “Will I have to say something?” “Will I be embarrassed by anything?”
Because visitors are filled with apprehension and anxiety, your first objective with them should be to make sure they’re relaxed. Communication is blocked when a person is afraid. If you can reduce visitors’ level of fear, they’ll be far more receptive to the Gospel. There are many practical ways to do this.
Reserve the best parking spots for visitors. A sign as you enter Saddleback’s property asks first-time visitors to turn on their headlights if they’d like the reserved parking closest to the worship center. If you have reserved parking for visitors you can station greeters there who can welcome visitors with a
smile and offer them directions as soon as they get out of their cars. At Saddleback, all pastors and staff park on the dirt. Only visitors get preferred parking spots.
Station greeters outside your building. We believe that welcoming visitors is so important we have four different kinds of welcome ministers: parking attendants, greeters, hosts, and ushers. Parking attendants direct the traffic. These are the first smiles visitors will encounter. Greeters stand in our parking lots and patio areas, casually greeting people as they approach the building. Hosts are stationed at our information tables. Instead of giving directions to newcomers, they personally escort people to where they need to go. Ushers greet people inside the service, pass out programs, assist in special situations, and receive the offering.
The most important people in any organization are those who have direct contact with the customer. At Delta Airlines, the most important people to me are the ticket agent and flight attendant. Delta’s president is unimportant to me. Why? I’ll never have any contact with him. In your church, your welcome ministers are the most important people to visitors because they make contact in that crucial first ten minutes. Be sure to use people who project personal warmth and smile easily.
It is also important to select greeters and ushers who match your target. If you want to reach young couples, use young couples; if you want to reach teenagers, use teenagers; if you want to reach retirees, use retirees. In many churches, the
greeters are the oldest members. If all the people a visitor meets in the first ten minutes are forty years older than he is, he will start wondering if he fits in your church.
One last point: Don’t identify outside greeters with badges. Greeters with badges make visitors feel they’re being welcomed by “officials” of the church. (One of our pastors incorrectly told a group, “We just put our greeters out there with nothing on them!”) Tell the greeters to simply be themselves—friendly members.
Set up information tables outside your buildings. It’s fine for the people manning these tables to wear badges because you want visitors to know where to go to ask questions.
Place directional signs everywhere. Clearly identify the main entrances to your building, the nursery, and especially the bathrooms. Visitors should not have to ask where the bathrooms are.
Have taped music playing when people enter your buildings. Most public buildings have music playing in the background. You can hear it in retail and grocery stores, doctors’ offices, professional buildings, and some elevators. They even play music on many airplanes as they sit on the runway. Why? Because music relaxes people.
Silence is scary to unchurched visitors. If you were to walk into a large room filled with 200 people and no one was talking, wouldn’t you wonder what was going on? You’d think, “What
do they know that I don’t?” But if you walked into a room where everyone was talking to each other, you would not feel self-conscious at all.
There is a place for silence in worship, but it’s not at the beginning of a seeker service. Have you ever seen a sign over a church auditorium that says “Enter in Silence”? That is the last thing you want in a seeker service. You want the atmosphere before the service starts to be alive and happy and contagious with joy.
We’ve noticed an interesting phenomenon: The louder you play background music, the more animatedly people talk. If you play quiet music, people talk softly. When visitors walk into a building where people are talking normally to each other and upbeat music is playing, it eases their fears. They notice that people are enjoying each other and are happy to be there. They notice that there is life in the church.
Allow visitors to remain anonymous in the service. Once visitors are seated we don’t bother them or single them out. We allow them to watch the service without publicly identifying themselves. We want them to feel welcomed and wanted without feeling watched.
Ironically, the way many churches welcome visitors actually makes them feel more uncomfortable than if they’d just been left alone. Visitors hate to be singled out for public recognition. (The one exception to this is visiting denominational officials!) One reason large churches attract so many visitors is because
newcomers like being able to hide in a crowd. In a small church everyone knows who the visitor is—and the visitor knows they know!
In America, the most common fear people have is going to a party where they will be surrounded by strangers. The second most common fear is having to speak before a crowd, and the third most common fear is being asked a personal question in public.
The way many churches welcome visitors causes them to experience their three greatest fears all at once! The pastor, thinking he’s being friendly, will say, “Please stand up; tell us your name and a little about yourself.” We don’t realize that when we do this, the visitor is dying a thousand deaths in his mind.
When I lived in Fort Worth, Kay and I belonged to a church that decided it would be better to reverse the process. So instead of having visitors stand and introduce themselves, all of the members were asked to stand each week while the visitors remained seated. Then the members were expected to turn to the seated visitors and sing a welcome song to them! Can you imagine this? The first time we visited, the members stood up all around us and all I could see was a bunch of big fat fannies. Then they began to sing to us, “We’re so glad to have you here. It’s so great to have you near… .” I wanted to die on the spot! Have you ever been sung to by a stranger? I get embarrassed if my wife sings to me! The moral to the story? Think through everything you do froma visitor’s viewpoint.
Even though I refer to newcomers as “visitors” we don’t call them that at Saddleback. We call them “guests.” The term “visitor” implies they’re not here to stay. The term “guest” implies that this is someone for whom you do everything you can to make feel comfortable.
If you use a registration card, have everyone fill one out. When everyone registers, visitors aren’t singled out. They see that this is something that everybody does.
Saddleback’s Welcome Card is a vital communication tool. We use it in at least a dozen different ways: to register attendance, record spiritual decisions, gather prayer requests, take surveys, sign up for events and programs, recruit leadership, evaluate services, update membership information, gather sermon ideas, and start new ministries, among many others. It is a vital link that allows me to keep my finger on the pulse of our growing church. These cards are worth their weight in gold.
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I used to read every single card every week. They helped me memorize all the names of people until we reached 3,000 in attendance. Now I only read the cards with notes that are specifically addressed to me. But it is still a direct link to me. Everyone knows that anyone can get a message to me via the Welcome Card. I’ve found that people will tell you things in writing that they’d never say to you otherwise.
On the card there is also a place for visitors to indicate whether it is their first, second, or third visit to our church. In response to each of these they get a different thank-you note fromme.
I urge you to not use registration books, which are passed down the rows for everyone to sign. They violate anonymity. Everyone on that row can see what a visitor has written. Also, the logistics of retrieving names from registration books are more difficult than with cards. Our cards are collected at the same time as the offering. It gives everyone something to put in the offering basket. As soon as the offering is collected, a team of data-entry people begins sorting and entering all the information fromthe cards into computers for use by the staff.
Of er a public welcome that relaxes people. The first words fromthe stage set the tone of the service. Each week one of our pastors will say something like, “Welcome to Sunday at Saddleback! We’re glad you’re here. If you’re here for the first time, we want you to sit back, relax, and enjoy the service we’ve planned for you.”
Let people know they can expect to enjoy the service. Tell them they won’t have to say anything and nobody’s going to embarrass them. Offer a disclaimer about the offering: “If you’re visiting with us, please understand that you are not expected to participate in the offering. This is only for those who are a part of our church family. As our guest we want you to get something out of this service. We don’t expect you to give.”
Begin and end each service with people greeting each other. We are told five times in the New Testament to greet one another and show affection. So at the beginning and the end of each service we tell everyone to turn around and shake hands with three (or ten or twenty) people.
Over the years, this simple tradition has created a warm sense of camaraderie and family between people who don’t even know each other. Sometimes I have people say something to each other at the end of a service like, “It was nice sitting by you today.” For some people this small act of friendliness is the only affirmation they get all week.
In the early years of Saddleback, the members practiced what we called the “three-minute rule.” We all agreed that for the first three minutes after the service was over, members would talk only to people they’d never met. This was based on the fact that the first people to leave after a service are the visitors. So we would wait until after all the visitors had left to fellowship with each other.
If you use name tags, make sure everybody gets one. Don’t single out visitors by either making them wear one when no one else does or by not giving them one when everyone else has one.
Of er a refreshment table at each service. Visitors hang around longer after a service if you can get a cup of coffee and a donut into their hands. This also gives members a chance to meet them. Eating tends to relax people in social settings. I don’t know why it works, but somehow a 300-pound guy feels more secure in an unfamiliar crowd if he has a small Styrofoam cup of coffee to hide behind.
It has always fascinated me that Jesus did so much of his teaching when people were walking or eating with him. I’msure this was intentional. Both of those activities relax people and reduce relational barriers. When people are relaxed they listen better and they are more open to change.
Brighten Upthe Environment
Facilities and physical environment have a lot to do with what happens in a service. The shape of your building will shape your service. Walk into some buildings and your mood will instantly brighten; walk into others and you’ll feel depressed. Just as the shape of a room can change a mood instantly, so can its temperature and its lighting. Be aware of these factors and use them. Figure out what mood you want your service to project, and then create it.
At Saddleback we summarize the mood we want in our seeker services with the word celebration. Each Sunday is Easter at Saddleback, so we are fanatical about creating a light, bright, cheerful environment. Visitors can sense this the moment they enter the facility.
Look at your facilities from the eyes of a visitor and try to determine what message your building is communicating. What is it saying? Does an entrance with heavy dark wood doors give off a different message than one with glass doors? Of course it does.
Even before the service begins, visitors are making value judgments about your church. The moment they get out of their cars in your parking lot they begin picking up clues by looking at the grounds around your facilities. Does your landscaping appear well kept? Is the grass mowed and are the hedges trimmed? Is there trash lying around? Does the church sign need to be painted? Cleanliness is attractive. Dirty,
unkempt grounds and facilities are repulsive.
Sometimes the message of the facilities contradicts the message intended by your church. You may be saying, “We’re friendly!” but your buildings may be saying, “We’re cold and impersonal.” You may claim, “We’re relevant,” but your building may be screaming, “We’re fifty years behind the times.” It’s difficult to project a “We’ve got it all together” image if your building is falling apart.
One of the problems faced in maintaining the church environment is that you tend to overlook defects after about four weeks. Once you become familiar with a building, you stop noticing what’s wrong with it. You become oblivious to the faded paint, the frayed carpet, the chipped pulpit, the outdated rack of tracts in the vestibule, the old bulletins left inside hymnals, the stack of music on the piano, the burned-out lightbulbs overhead. Unfortunately, these things stand out immediately to visitors, who notice details.
One way to combat this tendency is to do an environmental impact report on your church. Get a photographer to walk around your facilities and take pictures from the eyes of a visitor. Then show those pictures to your leaders and determine what needs to be changed. Most pastors have never viewed their auditorium while sitting in the back row. Environmental factors that you need to pay close attention to include lighting, sound, seating, space, temperature, plants, nurseries, and restrooms.
Lighting. Lighting has a profound effect on people’s moods. Inadequate lighting dampens the spirit of a service. Shadows across a speaker’s face reduce the impact of any message.
Most churches are far too dark. Maybe it’s conditioning from all those years Christians spent worshiping in the catacombs. Even churches with plenty of windows often cover them up. Somehow, churches have gotten the idea that dimming the lights creates a more “spiritual” mood. I completely disagree.
I believe that church buildings should be bright and full of light. God’s character is expressed in light. First John 1:5 says, “God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.” Light was the very first thing God created (Gen. 1:3). Today, I think God would like to say “Let there be light” to thousands of churches.
If you want to wake up your services, brighten up your environment. Take the curtains off your windows. Throw open the windows and doors. Turn on all the lights. This week, secretly replace all the lightbulbs in your worship center with twice the watts. Then study the change in mood in next Sunday’s service. You may have a revival on your hands!
Sound. Invest in the best sound system you can afford. If you’re trying to cut costs, do it in some other area—don’t skimp here. Saddleback grew for fifteen years without our own building, but we’ve always had a state-of-the-art sound system.
It doesn’t matter how persuasive the message is if people can’t hear it in a pleasing manner. A tinny, fuzzy sound system can undermine the most gifted musician and incapacitate the most profound preacher. And nothing can destroy a holy moment faster than a loud blast of feedback. If you are a pastor, insist that your church purchase a lavaliere microphone so you are not handcuffed to the pulpit.
Seating. Both the comfort and the arrangement of your seating dramatically affect the mood of any service. The mind can only absorb what the seat can endure. Uncomfortable seating is a distraction that the devil loves to use.
If you can get away with replacing the pews, I’d advise it. In today’s culture the only places people are forced to sit on benches are in church and in the cheap bleacher section at ball games. People expect to have their own individual chairs. Personal space is highly valued in our society. This is why box seats are prized at stadiums. If people are forced to sit too close to each other, they get very uncomfortable. There should be at least eighteen inches between people if you’re using chairs and twenty-one inches between people if you’re using pews.
If you use movable seats, set them up so that each person can see someone else’s face. It will dramatically improve how people respond to the service. If you are planting a new church, always set up fewer chairs than you need. It’s encouraging to your people when additional chairs must be brought in as people arrive. It’s very discouraging to worship in a service when surrounded by empty chairs.
Space. The one rule about space is this: Don’t have too much or too little! Either extreme will limit your growth. When your service is 80 percent filled, you need to start another service. One reason many churches plateau is that they think they don’t need to add another service because there are still a few open seats available. When you run out of space, you experience what Pete Wagner calls “sociological strangulation.” A small building can strangle the growth of a church.
You can also have too much space. Many churches have a building far too large for them to fill. Even if you’ve got 200 people attending, if your auditorium seats 750, it feels like “no one is here!” It’s almost impossible to create a feeling of warmth and intimacy when there are more empty chairs than people. An important growth dynamic is lost when your building is too big for your church.
The smaller the crowd, the closer the speaker needs to be to them. As your crowd grows larger, the lectern or pulpit can be moved farther back and raised on a higher stage. If you only have fifty people in a service, put a lectern just a few feet in front of your first row. Forget the stage.
Temperature. As a pastor who has preached for years in unair-conditioned gyms and unheated tents I say this with the utmost conviction: The temperature can destroy the bestplanned service in a matter of minutes! When people are too hot or too cold they stop participating. They mentally check
out and start hoping for everything to end quickly.
The most common mistake churches make regarding temperature is to allow the building to become too warm. An usher sets the thermostat at a reasonable setting before the service without realizing that, when the building is actually filled with a crowd, the body heat will raise the temperature substantially. By the time the air-conditioning has cooled everything down, the service is nearly over.
Before the service begins, set the thermostat several degrees cooler than what is comfortable. Cool it down before the crowd gets there. The temperature will rise quite quickly once the service starts. Keeping the temperature on the cool side will keep everyone awake.
Plants. I encourage you to use plants, trees, and greenery as decorations in your facilities. For years we hauled plants, ferns, and small trees in and out of rented facilities each weekend. Plants say, “At least something is alive in this place!”
I’m sure you’ve heard people say, “I feel close to God when I’m out in nature.” That’s understandable. When God made Adam and Eve, he didn’t put them in a skyscraper with concrete and asphalt all around them; he placed them in a garden. The natural beauty of God’s creation inspires, relaxes, and restores people. It’s no accident that Psalm 23 is the most beloved psalm. People can easily imagine the refreshing scene of still waters and green pastures.
As a side note, be careful not to overdo mystical, religious symbols in your facilities. Everyone knows what the cross is, but the unchurched are confused by chalices, crowns, and doves with fire coming out their tails.
Clean, safe nurseries. If you want to reach young families, you’ve got to have sanitized, safe nurseries. There should be no mop buckets in the corners, and the toys should be cleaned each week.
Clean restrooms. Visitors may forget the sermon, but the memory of a foul-smelling restroom lingers on … and on … and on! You can tell a lot about the morale of a church by checking out the quality of the restrooms.
The sad truth is that many churches need a completely new building. They’ll never reach their community in the building they’re using. One pastor told me in frustration that he was praying, “God, let the fire fall!”
When my friend Larry DeWitt was called to pastor a church in southern California, he found a small, clapboard church building in a high-tech suburban area. Larry recognized that the age and style of the building were a barrier to reaching that community. He told the church leaders he’d accept the pastorate if they’d move out of the building and start holding services in a Hungry Tiger restaurant. The members agreed.
Today, after moving to different facilities, that church has grown to several thousand in attendance. It would have never grown that large if they had stayed in their original building. As I stated in chapter 1, the shoe must never tell the foot how big it can get. Saddleback used high school campuses for our seeker services for thirteen years. In order to make the best of what we had to work with we organized two quality control crews. The first crew would come in before 6 a.m. and set up forty-two different classrooms and a gymnasium. The set-up crew would diagrameach classroom’s layout on the chalkboard before moving anything. That way everything could be reset in the right order by the takedown crew when they came in at 1 p.m. after all the services were over. Every classroom was vacuumed twice every Sunday—once at the beginning of the day and once after we’d finished using the rooms. It was hard work, but part of the price of growth.
The goal in all that we do to brighten up the environment is the same as what Paul said in Titus 2:10 (italics added): “… so that in every way they will make the teaching about God our Savior attractive.”
Create an Attractive Atmosphere
Atmosphere is that hard-to-define but unmistakable feeling you get when you enter a church service. It’s often called the “spirit,” the “mood,” or the “tone” of the service. Regardless of what you call it, atmosphere definitely impacts what happens in your service. It can either work for your purpose or against what you’re trying to accomplish.
If you don’t purposely determine the type of atmosphere you want to create in a service, you are leaving it to chance. At Saddleback we use five words to describe the atmosphere we seek to create each week.
Expectation. One of the frequent comments visitors make about our services is that they feel a sense of expectancy among the people. There is a pervasive enthusiasm at the start of each service that says, “Something good is about to happen!” People feel excitement, energy, and a spirit of anticipation about being together. Members sense that God is with us and lives are going to be changed. Visitors often describe the atmosphere as “electric.”
What causes this spirit of expectancy? It is produced by a number of factors: members praying for the services all week, members praying during the services, enthusiastic members who bring their unsaved friends to church, a history of lifechanging services, the sheer size of the crowd, celebrationstyle music, and the faith of the teamthat leads the service.
Your opening prayer should always express the expectation that God will be in the service and that people’s needs are going to be met. Expectancy is just another word for faith. Jesus said, “According to your faith will it be done to you” (Matt. 9:29).
Celebration. Psalm 100:2 says, “Worship the Lord with gladness; come before him with joyful songs.” Because God wants our worship to be a celebration, we cultivate an atmosphere of gladness and joy. Too many church services resemble a funeral more than a festival. A major cause of this is often the demeanor of those leading the worship. I’ve visited some services where I felt like asking the worship leader, “Do you ever smile?”
Worship is a delight, not a duty. We experience joy in God’s presence (Ps. 21:6). In Psalm 42:4, David remembered, “… how I used to go with the multitude … to the house of God, with shouts of joy and thanksgiving among the festive throng.” Does that describe the atmosphere of your services?
Af irmation. Hebrews 10:25 (NCV) says, “You should meet together and encourage each other. Do this even more as you see the day coming.” There is so much bad news in the world, people need a place to hear good news.
We want our services to be an encouragement, not a discouragement to people. Even when the message is confrontational, we start positive and we end positive. You can change a person’s behavior far more quickly through
affirmation than through criticism. Study the ministry of Jesus and see how skillfully he used affirmation to bring out the best in people.
Incorporation. We work hard to create a family atmosphere in our services in spite of our size. The way we greet each other at the beginning and end of each service, the way the people on stage interact with each other, and the way the pastors speak to the crowd all say, “We are a family. We’re in this together. You belong here.”
I love 1 Peter 3:8 in the Living Bible: “You should be like one big happy family, full of sympathy toward each other, loving one another with tender hearts and humble minds.” In a world that is becoming increasingly impersonal, people are looking for a place where they can feel they belong.
Restoration. Life is tough. Each weekend, I look into the faces of thousands of people who have been beaten up by the world all week. They arrive with their spiritual and emotional batteries depleted. My job is to reconnect them with spiritual jumper cables to the restorative power of Christ. Jesus said, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls” (Matt. 11:28–29).
One of the purposes of weekly worship is to be spiritually restored and emotionally recharged for the new week ahead. Jesus insisted, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for
the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27). In my message preparation I always pray, “Father help me to say something on Sunday morning that will prepare people for Monday morning.”
I envision the church as a spiritual oasis in the middle of a parched desert. We are called to offer the refreshing water of life to people who are dying of thirst all around us.
In southern California especially, people need relief from the rat race. For this reason we use humor in our services. “A cheerful heart is good medicine” (Prov. 17:22). It’s not a sin to help people feel good. By teaching people to laugh at themselves and their problems, it not only lightens their load, it helps themto change.
I believe one of the greatest problems among evangelicals is that we’ve got it backward: We take ourselves too seriously and we don’t take God seriously enough! He is perfect—we aren’t. It is more than a coincidence that humor and humility come from the same root word. In any case, if you learn to laugh at yourself you’ll always have plenty of material to enjoy.
Liberation. The Bible says, “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (2 Cor. 3:17). We avoid stuffiness, formality, and any kind of pretentiousness in our services. Instead we cultivate an informal, relaxed, and friendly atmosphere. We’ve found that an informal, unpretentious service disarms the fears and defenses of the unchurched.
People always feel more anxious in a formalsetting than they do in an informal setting. This is extremely important to remember if you are interested in changing lives. Services that are formal and ceremonial cause unchurched visitors to worry that they might do “the wrong thing.” It makes them feel selfconscious. I’m sure you’ve had that feeling when you didn’t know how to act in a strange, public setting.
When people feel self-conscious, they raise their emotional defenses. Since we want to communicate to the unchurched, our first task is to reduce their anxiety so that they drop their defenses. Once they relax, they stop thinking about themselves and are able to tune in to the message.
To many unchurched Americans, the word informal is a synonymfor authentic, while formality suggests insincere and phony. Baby boomers especially are turned off by pomp and protocol. For this reason, we don’t use reverential titles for our pastors at Saddleback. No one ever refers to me as “Dr. Warren” at our church; I’mjust called “Rick.”
We also have no dress code at Saddleback. The pastors dress casually, just like everyone else who attends. A recent survey by GQ magazine indicated that only about 25 percent of American men now own a suit. I haven’t preached in a suit at Saddleback for years. (Of course, preaching in a hot tent and gymprobably had something to do with that!)
What people wear to church is a cultural issue, not a theological one, so we don’t make a big deal about it. One
thing we know for sure: Jesus never wore a suit and tie, so it isn’t required to be Christlike.
Print a Simple Order of Service
Unchurched visitors don’t know what to expect when they come to your church. This makes themanxious. A printed order of service says, “There are no surprises here.” Telling the unchurched what you are going to do in advance relaxes them and lowers their defenses.
Describe the service in nontechnical terms. If visitors can’t understand your order of service, there is no reason to print it. In a typical bulletin you’ll find terms such as invocation, of ertory anthem, invitational hymn, benediction, and postlude. To an unbeliever, you might as well be talking pig Latin.
At Saddleback, instead of “Invocation” and “Benediction,” our program simply says “Opening prayer” and “Closing prayer.” Instead of “Call to worship,” it says “Song”; instead of “Offering,” it says “Giving back to God.” You get the idea. We have the Living Bible version of the order of service. We’re more interested in making it clear for the unchurched than impressing those who know what the more formal terms mean.
Include explanatory notes. When you go to an opera or play that is difficult to understand, they provide you with program notes. Tell people why you do what you’re doing in the service. Our bulletin gives an explanation for our Welcome
Card, the offering, the time of commitment, and other parts of our service.
Minimize Internal Church Announcements
The larger your church gets, the more announcements you’ll have. If you don’t establish a policy of what warrants a public announcement and what doesn’t, you will end up using a significant portion of your service on internal church announcements. How do you handle this?
Train your members to read the bulletin. Say something like, “This week, there are special events for men, single adults, and junior high students. Be sure to read your bulletin to find out what’s happening for you.” That is all you need to say.
Announce only events that apply to everyone. Each time you announce events that only involve one segment of your church, everyone else tunes out. Pretty soon no one listens. Don’t waste everyone’s time announcing events that appeal to only a small percentage of the congregation.
Avoid appeals for help from the pulpit. Pulpit appeals for volunteer help should be minimized in your seeker service. Personal recruitment works better anyway.
Do not conduct internal church business during a seeker service. Save it for your believers’ service. I know of one church that asked all the visitors to leave at the end of a service so the members could conduct their business. That’s being visitor-unfriendly!
Continually Evaluate andImprove
Each Monday morning after a game, NFL football players watch films from the previous Sunday to determine what they can do better next week. We should be even more concerned about what happens in our worship services each Sunday. The NFL is just playing a game; we aren’t.
Growing churches should always be asking, “How can we do it better?” They are ruthless in evaluating their services and ministries. Evaluation is the key to excellence. You must continually examine each part of your service and assess its effectiveness.
At Saddleback, the three tools that aid in evaluation are the First Impression card, the Welcome card, and a Worship Evaluation sheet. All three provide us with valuable feedback, which is the secret of continuous improvement.
The First Impression card gives us feedback from first-time visitors, helping us to see the service from their perspective. The Welcome card gives us feedback from our regular attenders and members. We receive a steady flow of suggestions and tips from those in the crowd. And the Worship Evaluation sheet gives us feedback from our own staff members. It includes an evaluation for everything from parking to bulletins to refreshment tables to the music and message.
In 1 Corinthians 14:40, Paul concluded his instructions on
seeker-sensitive services by saying, “Everything should be done in a fitting and orderly way.” This verse implies that planning, evaluating, and improving our services is a proper thing to do. Both the worship of God and the evangelizing of people deserve our best effort.
Remember Whom You Are Serving
You may feel overwhelmed by all of the suggestions I’ve given you for creating a seeker-sensitive service. Remember, these are important ideas, but they aren’t all essential to building a seeker-sensitive service. As I stated earlier, the only nonnegotiable elements of a seeker service are to treat unbelievers with love and respect, relate the service to their needs, and share the message in a practical, understandable manner.
Seeker-sensitive services are hard work! They take enormous amounts of energy, creativity, commitment, time, money, and preparation to pull them off week after week. Why bother? Why go to all this trouble trying to bridge the cultural gap between the church and the unchurched? Because, like Paul, we do it all “for Jesus’ sake” (2 Cor. 4:5).
You must know why you do what you do or else you’ll be defeated by discouragement. I remember one particular Sunday morning a number of years ago. We were setting up the high school for the weekend services and about half of our setup crew had not shown up, for one reason or another. As I was carrying nursery equipment from a trailer to one of the classrooms across the campus I felt overwhelmed with a sense of discouragement.
Satan began to throw darts of self-pity at me: Why should you have to do all this setup and takedown while the only thing other pastors have to do is show up? They just walk into
their own building. Most pastors don’t have to mess with this at all, but you’ve had to do it for years!
As I was beginning to enjoy my pity party, the Holy Spirit tapped me on the shoulder and asked, “Hey, Rick, who are you doing this for anyway?” I stopped dead in my tracks in the middle of the high school parking lot, began to cry, and reminded myself that I was doing what I was doing for Jesus’ sake.And what I do is nothing compared to what he’s done for me.
“In all the work you are doing, work the best you can. Work as if you were doing it for the Lord, not for people. Remember that you will receive your reward from the Lord, which he promised to his people. You are serving the Lord Christ” (Col. 3:23–24 NCV).