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Call a Truce to Worship Wars
The worship war is real, though putting those words together—“worship” and “war”—seems unthinkable. I once found these words written by John Greenleaf Whittier in the front of a hymnal in St. Martin-in-the-Fields in London: “To worship rightly is to love each other, each hymn a smile and each kindly deed a prayer.”
But the present state of some churches doesn’t faintly resemble these poetic words. In pastors’ conferences and lay leadership retreats, I sometimes ask, “Will you please raise your hand if you church is having a worship war?” The percentage of hands in the air is astoundingly high—maybe 80 percent. These wars dishonor Christ and confuse many good people.
We need a truce, a cease-fire, an armistice. Rather than wounding any more of our troops, we could agree to turn our firepower on the enemy by considering the following issues:
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Today versus 10 years from now. Those now adamant about a certain kind of music will face their own children in the churches of tomorrow. When this rising generation demands its new music, how will today’s generation react? Will they deny their grandchildren the music they want? If our Lord tarries, it will happen.
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Check the message of the music. Obviously, modern technology must be used to make sure our message is heard and understood. Most Christians agree that new methods must be used to communicate the changeless gospel. Keeping outdated strategies will cause us to miss the masses, but changing the message is spiritual suicide.
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Encounter versus entertainment. Church services that merely entertain are not worship. Authentic, corporate worship must produce a holy meeting with God—a unique, awe-inspiring, divine meeting that cannot be found anywhere outside the community of faith.
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Need-centered preaching versus needed preaching. For years, I have strongly advocated that effective preaching must speak to real needs real people feel. I believe that still. But there is a danger to focus preaching so much on human problem solving that we neglect preaching on more needed themes. Preaching on themes like sin, salvation, holiness, faith, hope, love, and peace is more needed than ever.
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Our wants versus God’s will. Jesus tells us that God is seeking worshipers who worship Him in spirit and in truth. When God examines our inner life, I’m sure He looks past the music style to see whether we come to Him humbly, desiring to know Him better and to obey Him more fully. In the glory of the throne room, all that is shallow and peripheral must go. Every worship form must pass the test of being worthy of His approval.
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Who leads worship. I wonder how anyone can authentically lead worship who has not cared for straying sheep, interceded for the lost, married the young, buried the dead, or carried the people’s burdens to God in prayer.
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New people versus old saints. Do we possess a shred of evidence that these two groups need something different in worship? Surely, developing seeker-sensitive services does not mean crafting believer-alienating services. Surely, services designed to help believers mature do not repulse seekers. Can anyone conceive of Jesus saying, “If you don’t like what we do in worship, learn to live with it or get out”?
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Reality versus emptiness. Every worship form can be empty or full, depending on the leader and the worshipers. If we want our worship forms to express our adoration of God, we must seek His guidance in our planning for music and our preparation for the pastoral prayer, and we must ask for His anointing on our preaching. Argument about worship forms usually starts when meaning is missing.
Let’s declare a cease-fire to the worship war. Let us find ways to lead people into the majestic, awesome, life-changing presence of our holy God. His welcome awaits us there.
—Neil B. Wiseman, adapted from They Call Me Pastor
Live a Life of Absolute Integrity
Genuine authenticity and honesty form the bedrock foundations for every phase of ministry. It’s God’s requirement that produces great satisfaction.
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Credibility comes from Christ. Degrees, ordination credentials, and trappings of ministry, as important as they seem to us, do not make ministry spiritually authentic. Christ alone makes our ministry authentic.
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Ministry is more than what we do. Its impact depends more on who we are. God wants us to be honest, fair, real-persons of unquestioned integrity. These are the ministers He uses.
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Credibility authenticates ministry. Believability escalates whenever a pastor lives an exemplary, beautiful, Christ-centered life. It becomes a silent, convincing statement that the pastor is committed to more than minimum requirements of ordination vows, and lives beyond minimal standards of respectable behavior.
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Live the good life. Refuse to allow moral compromise or even the pastoral nitty-gritty to short-circuit your ideals. Resist relationships that hint of thwarting your vision or of undermining your awareness of God.
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Sterling behavior brings satisfaction. God plans for Christ-pleasing living to help us enjoy truth, love, and wholeness. It is written into the moral genetic code of human beings that love feels better than hate, honesty better than chicanery, honor better than corruption, and faith better than hopelessness.
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Self-evaluation is required. The pastor must initiate regular self-evaluation. Such a practice should be inaugurated before moral shipwreck or detrimental circumstances require such stocktaking.
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Establish a code of personal purity. Here’s a code of ideals you might consider: I will be fair, trusting, and conscientious in relationships with my family, congregation, community, fellow pastors, and community of faith. I will remember who I was when the Lord called me into His sacred service. I will embrace the Apostle Paul’s specific teaching as my own standard, ‘But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God’s holy people’ (Eph. 5: 3).
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Sustained satisfactions flow from pure living. Above all else, the most magnificent serendipity of such an emancipated life brings sustained satisfaction to a pastor’s inner world. She/He knows God is pleased and knows her/his own influence to be convincing and strong and pure.
—Adapted from Heart of a Great Pastor, 149-152.
Ten Questions for Improving Newsletters and Bulletins
Now that computers, e-mail, web sites, desktop publishing, copy machines, cell phones, and answering machines, are owned or accessible to nearly every church, it may be time to evaluate communication effectiveness. That is, how well do we tell our story, and to whom? And are we doing it well enough to be heard? Let’s try 10 questions.
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Newsletters—With the advent of electronic newsletters, are you reaching the people you intend to reach? What percentage of your potential audience does not have the technology or know how to use it? Do your bulletin and newsletter deliver inspiration, information, promotion, and expectation?
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Answering machines—If a person has a crisis in their lives, does the present way you use an answering machine make you available to them?
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Miscellaneous communication—Do directories, newspaper ads, sermon publications, budget/financial reports, telephone yellow pages, letterheads, business cards, and visitor cards communicate your real message to the intended audiences? And with quality and imagination?
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Communication copy—Does the wording preach, inform, or scold? Does it speak to the interest of people or communicate an institutional focus?
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Comparison—Do you regularly compare your communication pieces to the finest pieces you receive in the mail? Often the difference between an ordinary communication piece and a great one is imagination and creativity rather than money.
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Personalize—Do you find ways to personalize your messages?
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Layouts and eye appeal—If a parishioner received five pieces of mail at the time your newsletter arrived, would your communication be attractive enough that they would choose to read it first? The same question could be applied to five e-mail messages.
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Bulletin boards and homemade signs—Are your church’s bulletin boards up to date and interesting? Many church bulletin boards have posters and announcements that are years and years old. Hand-lettered signs give an amateurish feeling to a church, unless artfully rendered.
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Repetition and variety—Very few people hear a communication effort accurately the first time. Do you repeat your communication message frequently? And do you use variety in the way you repeat the message?
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Good gossip—Do you give people something good to gossip about often? One wise, old preacher said, “People are going to gossip—that’s their nature. You can either give them something good and positive to gossip or they will find something negative.” |
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Vol. 2, No. 1
In This Issue
• Call a Truce to Worship Wars
• The Glories of Old Age
• Live a Life of Absolute Integrity
• 10 Questions for Improving Newsletters
"Iron Sharpens Iron" -
a practice-of-ministry component
of the Soul Care ministry of
Clergy Development, Daniel Copp, director. USA/Canada Mission/Evangelism Department
of the Church of the Nazarene.
Developed and edited by
Dan Whitney and Neil Wiseman.
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