My friend Geoff Surratt is continuing his 5 Scary Trends series… Scary trend #3 is “Worship Worship”.  Geoff writes: I love corporate worship. One of my favorite aspects of working in multisite churches has been visiting multiple worship experiences every weekend. I have participated in as many as six different services in a single weekend, and I love seeing people connect with God through the leadership of a gifted team of singers, musicians and technicians. The scary trend, however, is the growing worship of the art of worship. The worship leader/pastor/director/producer has become...

Agree or Disagree? “The mature worshiper is easily edified.” When hearing lackluster (even if biblical) preaching, immatureworshipers will typically not listen to the message because they wish the messenger was more exciting. Conversely, mature worshipers eagerly receive the truth as it is proclaimed, even if it sounds like the preacher is reading a phone book. Found here… Agree or disagree? If I got up and read from Lamentations like Ben Stine for 50 minutes, is it right for me to think that you should be edified? I certainly hope not. (OK… hearing Ben Stine read Lamentations could...

OK… so the Bishop of Lichfield told a group of pastors in London last week that church services have become too long, and that they should aim to keep the time of the service to no more than 50 minutes. Stop singing so long.  Stop praying so long.  Stop preaching so long. This article also says that some services in the UK last up to 2 hours. Another argument:  people’s attention spans aren’t what they used to be. Actually… I think the Bishop is on to something here. I wrote a post about a year ago asking the question about why no church that I know of has begun...

OK… now that I have your attention. An interesting piece over at the Resurgence website this morning where Tim Keller talks about “Evangelistic Worship”. Overall, it’s a really well-written piece. But this is the ‘callout’ on the post. A quote by Tim Keller: The only way to have non-Christians in attendance is through personal invitation by Christians. While I know the point that Tim is making (especially about making worship ‘comprehensible to unbelievers’). His point about people not inviting non-christians to church UNLESS the worship is...

Because there are non-Christians present in corporate worship meetings, people leading those meetings need to be hospitable to non-Christians. This would include the preacher presenting the gospel to the non-Christians, someone explaining why the church meetings have certain elements such as communion or singing, and explaining Christian terms in a way that allows the non-Christian to understand what the Bible says. This does not mean that the entire service is to be seeker-sensitive and designed mainly as an evangelistic rally, but a sincere effort is made to help non-Christians understand and...