Myths Church Leaders Believe About Church Growth (Part 2)
Myth #2: We need to sing ‘felt-need’ worship songs
This is the second installment in a short series. For part one, please click here.
“Come on, let’s stand and lift up the name of Jesus!”
I’ve heard an invocation like that many, many, many times at the beginning of a Sunday worship service. The congregation stands, the music begins, and we all enter in to a time of worship.
Having been raised in church and been in vocational ministry for the better part of twenty years, I’ve been in countless services in a wide array of Christian traditions where that precisely is what happens—the name of Jesus is, indeed lifted up by worship team and congregation alike (though, admittedly, that type of invocation is more evangelical/Pentecostal-charistmatic in nature).
However, I’ve also stood in more worship services than I care to count where that may be the last mention of Jesus…sometimes until the preaching…sometimes until the dismissal prayer is given in Jesus’ name at the end of the service.
I’ve been a part of numerous services billed as worship unto Jesus, yet Jesus himself is never spoken of…never mentioned…like a guest of honor invited to a banquet to be subsequently ignored by both those in attendance and those throwing the party.
Myth #2: We need to sing “felt-need” worship songs
A Tale of Two Churches
Foundationally, there are only two different ways to do church. By “do church,” I’m referring specifically to the Sunday worship gathering of the local church. In that, there are only two different ways to do church—two different churches to an extent.
You’re probably thinking, “surely, he can’t be serious.” Well, I am serious. And don’t call me Shirley.
Sorry, couldn’t resist.
All jokes aside, I recognize there are scores of different church traditions, styles of worship, formality. Some ministers preach from pulpits that haven’t moved since the end of the Tudor dynasty while others preach from pub tables that are brought out only for the preaching component.
I recognize the role tradition plays in the central focus of congregational worship, which is usually showcased by the focal point in the architecture of a sanctuary. Sacramental churches center the Lord’s Supper, which is demonstrated architecturally by the central placement of the eucharistic altar.
Evangelical churches tend to center the preaching of the Word, often demonstrated by 500 lbs pulpits.
Spirit-filled churches tend to center the ministry of the altar, though “altar” is different in these spaces than what our sacramental friends might call it. It is the place of tarrying, of intercession, of healing, deliverance, the prophetic, etc. I’ve been in a few old Pentecostal churches where the altar had benches at the front for kneeling in prayer. Others simply use the steps or the space in front of the sanctuary stage.
Some people differentiate between “traditional” and “contemporary” churches…evangelical, liturgical, or Pentecostal churches…high church and low church churches…lots of different styles of churches.
But among all of these sorts of traditions and points of focus, crossing all denominational and stylistic boundaries, there are really only two ways to hold a worship service.
A church’s worship, its preaching, its entire reason for gathering is either:
Christo-centric or,
Anthropocentric.
That is, the church’s worship is either primarily focused on Jesus or with people.
Anthropocentric, “Felt-Need,” Worship
Anthropocentric worship (“anthro” coming from the Greek anthropos referring to “human”…thus, human centered worship) is worship focused upon humans. Sometimes referred to as “felt-need” worship, anthropocentric worship is focused primarily on the human experience in relation to God.
Hear me, this in itself is not inherently bad. The classic hymn It is Well with My Soul is a hymn that centers the human experience in relation to God. I’m not saying It is Well is a bad song!
However, we need to recognize several important, unshakable and never-ending truths about Christian worship.
First, Christian worship is meant to be centered on Jesus. Regardless of our styles and traditions, the entire reason for the gathered church is to rehearse the biblical story with Jesus as the anchor and apex of that story. The whole point of dragging yourself to church on Sunday is to reorient our lives toward Jesus—to lift our voices in worship to him. To lay down our lives once again as a living sacrifice to him. He is the beginning and the end, the starting point and the end point. Everything is in him, for him, by him. And we are commanded to align ourselves with a truth chiseled into the fabric of the cosmos—that in everything, Jesus is to be preeminent (Col. 1:15-20).
Second, our worship gatherings tell a cohesive story. About what we believe about God, about what we desire to be formed into. When crafted intentionally, the sermon, musical worship, call to response, etc., have the power to tell a story about what we believe about what God is doing in the local church and in the world.
Third, the stories we tell through our worship in church forms us. For those of us who grew up in evangelical and Spirit filled traditions this phrase may be new, but our ancient spiritual mothers and fathers used a phrase that is stilled used in various parts of the church today: lex orandi, lex credendi, lex vevendi. It roughly translates to “the rule of prayer/worship [is] the rule of belief [which is] the rule of life.” In other words, our worship shapes our beliefs, which in turn shapes the way we live our lives.
On Felt-Need Worship and Church Growth
There is some research evidence to suggest that there is a correlation between worship songs that are first person and focused on felt needs and churches that are numerically growing. This causes some church leaders to rush toward stacking Sunday worship sets with this song type, with the well-intended desire to grow the church.
More than a few churches have taken this to such an extreme, often coupled with felt-need TED Talk-type sermons (I talk more about the need to recapture the art of preaching in this piece), that they wind up reorienting the whole focus of the service away from the One who is and was and is to come and toward the individual. We wind up lifting up our own situations, praising our own praise, dwelling on ourselves, and seeking how to pragmatically improve our lives—using Jesus (and perhaps a few biblical prooftexts) as a sort of rubber stamp the feeding of our own narcissism and fleshly desires. Over the long haul this creates a congregation for whom Jesus is a mascot, but not Lord. He is a guru to improve the already-preset priorities in our lives rather than the King who calls us to abandon other allegiances and reorient the whole of our lives around him.
It is Well with my Soul is fine…but when it overtakes How Great Thou Art, we have been blown way off course.
Growing Crowds, Not Congregations
If we take seriously the Latin motto above (and we should, because scores of research support that we are formed by our ritualized habits like weekly worship), we need to ask ourselves a serious question: if an over-reliance on felt-need worship grows the church numerically but ends up malforming that church spiritually—is it church growth at all?
Is a group of people who may be swelling in size but starving for a Christo-centric nourishment of the soul a growing church or simply a growing crowd?
The calling of a pastor is actually not primarily to grow his or her local church. In his classic work of pastoral theology Working the Angles, Eugene Peterson notes that the primary task of a pastor is to orient a group of people toward Jesus. Jesus is the object of our allegiance and affection. It he who shows us both the perfect image of the invisible God and the one who shows us the perfect way to be human. It is into his likeness the Spirit of God forms us.
Thus, the calling of a pastor is to align with the work of the Spirit into the congregation’s formation into the image of God. However well meaning a church leader’s intentions may be, when church growth strategies move us away from alignment with the Spirit’s work to form us toward Christ and away from the exaltation of narcissistic versions of ourselves, we have abandoned the work of the pastorate altogether.
A Return to the Ancient Paths
When someone visits our churches, there should be no question—not a hint of daylight of possibility—about who the Object of our adoration is. We should be obnoxiously explicit in our exaltation of the name of Jesus. The entire form of our worship should be saturated in, centered upon, and reaching its climax in the worship of the risen King.
This is a true church growth strategy for two reasons. One, I believe people are increasingly growing tired of narcissistic, felt-need forms of worship that may hype up the emotions but are bereft of rootedness and depth. More and more, people are hungry for something transcendent, something ancient—yet fresh. In partnership with the Holy Spirit who both hovered over the waters at the onset of creation and is alive and working in our midst in this very moment, we have the spiritual food to satisfy that hunger.
Second, we need a more robust approach to what constitutes “church growth” that extends beyond the tired metrics of butts in seats. Pointing to attendance as a sign of vitality and health is a tired and lazy metric of church growth. We need to account for depth. We need to consider the stories we tell, the direction we are being formed into—the people we are becoming in his Name along the way.
We need a broad and sweeping reformation. Some of that reformation begins in reorienting our corporate worship back to the One who is actually worthy of that worship.