Myths Church Leaders Believe About Church Growth (Part 1)
Myth #1: “We need to sing new worship songs.”
While there’s a lot of solid research that has been done over the past twenty years or so about what positively contributes to congregational growth, there are also a lot of myths that are believed. Similar to how proverbial statements like “cleanliness is next to godliness” are often assumed to be in the Bible because they’re so widely repeated, church growth proverbs get passed around between church leaders at such regularity (and with such confidence) that they are often taken at face value to be true. But many assumptions about church growth are actually myths—myths that are either only partially true, or are entirely false.
With that in mind, I’m beginning a semi-regular series of pieces about myths about church growth that we assume are true and attempt to shed some light on the nuances that, if understood properly, can actually empower churches to more authentically live out the call that God has given to them.
Myth #1: “We need to sing new worship songs.”
Truth: We need fresh expressions of musical worship
There is a lot of research that has been done that shows a positive correlation between adopting fresh, innovative expressions of worship and church growth.1 But this has caused many church leaders to wrongly assume that this means that old music = bad.
In actuality, the characteristic that appears to positively contribute to the growth of a congregation is a general posture toward an innovative and engaging spirit within the whole ministry ethos of a church. This includes musical worship, but also includes the broader ministries of the church, its perceived capacity to minister to the needs of its congregation and community, and more.
Concerning musical worship specifically, the qualifier appears to be that it is music that is “fresh”—meaning that there are regular additions of music that is new to the congregation, not necessarily new to exist. There is very little to indicate that people are choosing to come to a specific church simply because they hear a worship song is the latest and greatest.
I interpret this to mean that what actually matters is how congregations perceive their time in worship to be inspiring and how worshipful expression communicates that the Spirit of God is present now—an sense of imminence of God working that is necessary, not only for people to find meaning, but also to positively contribute to their spiritual growth.2
This means, practically speaking, that while recently published songs may contribute to this freshness, it’s woefully dull and vanilla to simply depend on CCLI’s Top 25 list for the offering of praise lifted up to the Lord by our congregations on Sunday.
Instead, we need to consider what it means to take on a more innovative approach to freshness—one that recognizes the fullness of the great gift of musical tradition the global church has given us throughout the world and throughout generations. Here are several suggestions of creating innovative worship:
1. Bring back the old, old stuff. Resurrect old hymns and reimagine them in fresh ways (or not…the Hipsters overplayed that a bit in the 2010s!). One simple, but beautiful example of this is Jenny & Tyler’s 2012 revival of See the Conqueror Mounts in Triumph!, an 1862 hymn:
This also provides opportunity to look at the rich music of other traditions within the Faith, exposing our congregations to a fuller scope of how big and beautiful the Christian family tree really is.
2. Bring back the new old stuff. We also need to consider the value of reviving fresh and anew some of the beautiful classics of the late 20th century (or as my kids refer to the decades of my youth as… “the 1900s”, as though I’m an ancient relic). For those of us who came up in church during those decades may seem overplayed at first glance, but for many people in churches today are fresh and new. Consider this example from Dominique Hughes at Nations Church in Orlando, FL:
These oft-forgotten catalogues of musical worship, especially from the 80s and 90s, can actually serve three purposes. First, as noted, they themselves are fresh to those who are not familiar with them. Second, many of these songs were written before the modern boom of anthropocentric (i.e., human-centered) worship. Call me old fashioned, but I believe our worship of Jesus should be centered on, well, Jesus (I’ll elaborate on that in another edition to this series). Third, these songs which are burrowed deep into the psyches of many a Gen Xer and Millennial in our churches, provide an anchor point in an otherwise turbulent cultural moment. Sometimes “freshness” needs to also be “rootedness.”
3. Consider the global body of Christ. If you read Church Talk for any length of time or follow Tara and me on social media, you know that we view the recent surge in kinism and geo-political isolationism that is characteristic of much of the so-called Christian Nationalist movement to be a cancer to be expunged from the Body of Christ.
We serve a global God who, in Jesus the Messiah, gave his life for the whole world and who, in Jesus the Messiah, is reconciling all the nations of the world unto himself. We has commissioned us to join him on his mission as one holy Christian an apostolic Church. Thus, regularly exposing our congregations to beautiful multi-ethnic expressions of Christian worship is essential to spiritual formation in the twenty-first century. Who cares if the language is the same or not—that’s what subtitles are for. But consider a low-hanging fruit example that can easily be integrated, like Wonder Working God by Watoto Church in Uganda:
In the next piece, I’ll tackle the myth that singing “felt-need” (human centered) worship is necessary for church growth (and how it is likely counter-productive in the long run).
See https://www.christianpost.com/news/contemporary-innovative-church-services-may-help-increase-attendance-spiritual-vitality.html#:~:text=A%20study%20of%20the%20American,than%20those%20that%20have%20not, and https://www.hartfordinternational.edu/news-events/news/new-report-examines-changing-worship-practices-united-states#:~:text=HARTFORD%2C%20CT%20,a%20new%20report%20has%20found
This resonates with Christian Schawrz landmark study articulated in Natural Church Development (ChurchSmart, 2003), pg. 26-27, 30-32; and my own doctoral dissertation: Todd Korpi, A Holy Priesthood: Cultivating Ecosystems for Missional Formation at Celebration Church (Fuller Seminary, 2022).