OK Attitudes?

So why do we go to church? Why are you in the worship service each week when in the survey many of you say there are parts of it you don't enjoy?

Some reasons for church attendance might be:

To see my friends
It's a habit
It is a religious duty
Tradition

These are OK reasons. Nothing wrong with any of them, but they are just the sideshow. If the main reason you attend church is social, habit or tradition, then it is no wonder you go home uninspired by the service. How can you be inspired if you are not expecting anything from the service?

Some more reasons for attending church, that do expect something from the service are:

To be inspired by my favourite music
To hear an inspiring sermon

These are also OK reasons but they are also setting you up for disappointment; you just don't get those things every week. And even more importantly, these attitudes prevent any inspiration that may come from something you don't "like".

We are going to spend quite a bit of time on this subject of the attitude you bring to church each week. Today, we will look at the attitude to worship displayed in Psalms 100:4.

Enter into His gates with thanksgiving,
And into His courts with praise.
Be thankful to Him, and bless His name

Do you bring thanksgiving and praise with you to church each week? Or do you only have OK attitudes?

Heavenly Worship

"Imagine heavenly worship with all the angels of God praising the Father and His Son, Jesus! Our minds cannot fathom the depths and inspiration of being in the presence of God and praisng Him. Yet some day we shall. What will it be like? Just like church on Sabbath morning? If your response to that is "Oh, no," then your church may have a problems with Inspiring Worship."

That is Russell Burrill, in Creating Healthy Adventist Churches through Natural Church Development.

He goes on...

"Obviously our local church cannot equal the glories of heavenly worship, yet it should have some resemblance to what transpires in the heavenly courts. What makes heavenly worship heavenly?..."

That is an excellent question, and one we are going to consider now. But before we do, just stop for a moment and imagine the heavenly worship service. Why is it so good? What makes you want to be there?

Have you done that yet? Well you need to before we go on....

Have you done that? Good!

There are three parts to the Inspiring Worship Service and remember the definition of Inspiring: "an enthusiastic sense of the direct presence of God and making a meaningful connection with Him".

1. Praise


2. Teaching


3. Work of the people - what people bring into the service

We will be going into each of these areas in future, but the area we will focus on mostly is the third, what you and I bring into the service. There is something here for each of us to do.

Russell Burrill puts it this way...

"...What makes heavenly worship heavenly? God is there, the angels are there and the Holy Spirit has touched the people's hearts. If those are the components of heavenly worship, then certainly all three ingredients should be present on Sabbath morning when God's people meet to worship Him..."

"There is no doubt that God and His angels meet with us each Sabbath. Could the missing ingredient be that we have not given God the opportunity to touch our hearts during the week, and thus we little with which to praise Him on Sabbath? Inspiring worship occurs when God has stirred our hearts all through the week. when that happens, it erupts into exciting worship on Sabbath morning. Church services which appear to be "dull" may be a sign that members of the church have not spent time with God during the week."

Ouch! That hits a tender spot with me. Is my devotional and service life what it should be? Is my contact with God being so crowded out during the week that He can't get through to me on Sabbath morning?

We will go further into this important area in the coming weeks and months but until then we need start walking towards God for six days to arrive on Sabbath morning (see today's picture).

"Inspiring" Worship Service

The adjective, Inspiring, is what is measured in the NCD survey, not the worship service itself. The service may be very good in many ways, but it just isn't "inspiring" enough.

So what does "Inspiring" mean?

Inspiring means an enthusiastic sense of the direct presence of God and making a meaningful connection with Him.

So basically the worship service is good but people aren't able to say, "I really met God here today."

Now that's a pity because, for lots of people, the worship service is the only time in the whole week when they are open to contact with God.

It is also a pity because it may be the last time they are really open to contact with God.

Before beating up on ourselves too much, let's put it in the Natural Church Development perspective...

This result means that the major place we are getting in God's road, impeding the development of His kingdom in Toronto and preventing people coming to Him is right here, in the worship service.

He has been kind enough to point out our weakness and if we just get out of His road, He will fix this problem.

NCD reminds us that "the increase" comes from God. (I Cor 3:6,7) We just plant and water but the growth is from God (Col 2:19). When we work together with God, we will see healthy, sustainable growth in our church.

We did that last time with "Empowering Leadership" and just look at the results! Working with God is surprisingly good fun, I can't think of anything as rewarding as the last two years of NCD.

Next time I'll start to tease out the meaning of "inspiring worship service" and you will begin to see how you can get out of God's road (and get a front-row seat to the biggest game in the universe).

Remarkable Result

"Unusually good", "remarkable for any survey, especially for an SDA church", are just some of the comments from Ian Campbell the head of Natural Church Development for Australia as he looked at the results of our latest survey.

If you missed the presentation on Sabbath afternoon, May 8, here are the very abridged results. If you want more information, you can ask me, Pr Aaron or Alan Bowditch. I plan to cover the most important things in future emails.

Why was Ian so happy? The first reason is that our average went up from 31.9 to 48.7. That is 16.8 points, more than a standard deviation (15 points). He called this "unusually good".

Empowering Leadership, our previous minimum factor went up 21 points. We spent quite a bit of time on this so the increase was to be expected, but the size of the increase was "extraordinary".

What wasn't expected (by me anyway) were the increases in all the other health factors. Below is the list:

* Empowering Leadership +21
* Need-oriented Evangelism +30 (2 standard deviations)
* Holistic Small Groups +22
* Effective Structures +21
* Passionate Spirituality +18
* Gift-based Ministry +13
* Loving Relationships +9
* Inspiring Worship Service +1

Which is a "classic example of how focussing on the minimum factor has flowed over into all areas". Praise God!

This brings us to the new Minimum Factor: "Inspiring Worship Service". This is what we are going to concentrate on the rest of this year.

Photos from Inntravel.