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October 15, 2008
Live from REVEAL: Getting the Weekend Right
What does truly transformational worship look like?
by Skye Jethani
This morning kicked off with a time of singing led by the worship band from Gateway Church in Southlake, Texas - one of the churches being highlighted at the conference for their strong REVEAL survey results.
One of the often repeated findings from REVEAL is that frequent engagement with church activities does not predict one's spiritual growth. That being the case, I was curious to see how they redefined the purpose of the Sunday/weekend worship gathering. Many churches, especially the seeker-driven variety, have seen the worship event as the center of the church's missional solar system. Would that still be true in a post-REVEAL era?
The answer seems to be, Yes. Robert Morris and David Smith, both pastors from Gateway Church, were interviewed about their worship services. Morris said, "Worship is not about observing God, it's about experiencing God." Both Morris and Smith talked about the importance of giving people the opportunity to respond through a "ministry time" when people can come forward for prayer.
Gateway's church members expressed a high level of satisfaction with their church's worship services in the REVEAL study. REVEAL also showed that people in most churches want to be more challenged and given practical applications.
Toward this end, Morris emphasizes the importance of the Bible and preaching. "The church is a swimming pool. It has to have a deep end and a shallow end. If your church has no deep end, when you win people to Christ you'll lose them in 3-5 years."
Morris emphasized repeatedly the pastor's role to "feed the sheep." If we "feed" the mature sheep they will reproduce through evangelism, and they'll stay in the church. This is also consistent with REVEAL's finding that it's the mature believers in the church that fuel virtually everything else, including outreach. Morris said, "We don't steal sheep, but I'll tell you what - we plant grass."
Both Morris and Smith said that our temptation is to dumb down things in order to make the weekend service appealing to non-Christians. Smith says that's a mistake. The "average Joe" today wants something authentic and genuine, says Smith. They want to see Christians passionately loving and worshipping God.
Comments
I'm at REVEAL too, and the worship that Gateway modeled didn't seem to be anything different. Perhaps a bit more passionate and expressive ("let's SHOUT to the Lord" and lots of clapping and cheering for the Almighty), but given Gateway's Pentecostal DNA, that's not surprising.
But it also involved time of silence and self-reflection. And yes, the contemporary passing of the peace ("turn to 3-4 people around you and tell them, and really mean it, 'God bless you'").
Posted By: Marco | October 15, 2008 11:31 AM
Skye, I would just encourage congregations to take conclusions and implications drawn from the data with a grain of salt. I think it is appropriate for church leaders to look at how their congregations answered the questions and then reflect: "Hmm . . . I wonder why __% of our congregation said ____" but they need to be careful about drawing prescriptions too quickly or naively trusting "key findings." Remember that correlation does not mean causation. Surveys like this do descriptive work--much of it will be things observant pastors already sensed--but the prescriptive work is another story.
Bradley Wright's substantial critiques of the conclusions being drawn from the Reveal data still stand. http://blog.christianitytoday.com/outofur/archives/2008/01/reveal_revisite.html
There is a rich literature on sociological study of congregations (Mark Chaves, Nancy Ammerman, Stephen Warner, Scott Thumma, Rodney Stark) available but "secrets" and "solutions" are rarely found there--generally their conclusions explode easy answers. There is no substitute for a wise leadership team who continues to experiment and pray and consult with the congregation on how to see the formation of better and more disciples.
Andy Rowell
Duke Divinity School
http://www.andyrowell.net/
Posted By: Andy Rowell | October 15, 2008 11:34 AM
Bradley Wright, associate professor of sociology at the University of Connecticut, has now thoroughly and aptly reviewed Follow Me, the second Reveal book (September 2008). It is quite similar to the first Reveal book but you will be interested to know Willow itself is not included in the data this time--though you learned nothing about Willow Creek from Reveal either since their data was mixed in with six other churches.
See:
Search for Follow Me at Bradley Wright's blog
I love Willow Creek and Bill Hybels but I am sad that they are not using quantitative data better because it is no doubt confusing them and a lot of other people.
The Reveal and Follow Me studies look for factors that are highly correlative in spiritual growth. However, none of these "discoveries" are in fact at all surprising.
If church leaders get access to the raw data and were able to interpret it in ways different from how it is explained in the Reveal and Follow Me books, that could indeed be very fruitful.
There are other consultants who do church self-assessment work.
Allelon
Alan Roxburgh
Church Innovations
Patrick Keifert
Easum Bandy & Associates
Bill Easum, Tom Bandy, Bill Tenny-Brittian
See also this reputable look at doing church self-assessment: Studying Congregations: A New Handbook by Nancy Tatom Ammerman, Jackson W. Carroll, Carl S. Dudley, and William McKinney (1998)
Andy Rowell
Th.D. Student
Duke Divinity School
Blog: Church Leadership Conversations
Posted By: Andy Rowell | December 8, 2008 6:15 PM
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