Letter 6/24

June 24, 2010
Pastor Steve Mathewson
  

How are you doing at raising your sails? It’s time to re-evaluate your plan for engaging in spiritual disciplines. This year, our church family is on a quest to “raise our sails” (our image for engaging in spiritual disciplines) in order to grow together in love. To help us do this more effectively, I distributed a “Raising Our Sails” booklet at the beginning of the year and asked you to look at the year in quarters. It is time to look at the quarter which runs from July through September. You can continue the plan you have in place or make some adjustments. I took some time this morning to reflect on how well I am doing and to make some adjustments for the next 90 days. I encourage you to do the same. If you misplaced your booklet or never got one, you can pick one up at our Welcome Center. Make the last half of 2010 productive as you put yourself in position to catch the wind of God’s Spirit!

Recently, I’ve been meeting weekly with a couple of our musicians – Brian Herman and Dave VerLee – to read through Worship Matters by Bob Kauflin. We’ve had some great discussions together! I’m thankful that Allan Koetz recommended this book to us a few months ago. Yesterday, a great question seemed to leap off of the page as I was reading! Kauflin asks: “Are you attracting an audience, or are you building a worshiping community?” Wow, what a probing question! Our focus should be the building of a worshiping community which then sees itself on a mission to reach lost people for Christ. 

Sometimes, though, churches try to reach lost people through the strategy of attracting an audience. When this happens, the building of a worshiping community usually gets neglected. Now I am all for making our worship services intelligible to nonbelievers who show up on Sunday morning. After all, Paul tells the Corinthian church that nonbelievers who attend their worship gatherings should hear the truth so clearly that they “fall down and worship God, exclaiming, ‘God is really among you!’” (1 Corinthians 14:25). Tim Keller says that we need to talk in our worship services as if nonbelievers are present and that more of them will find their way to our worship services when we do this. But we must be careful to keep our focus on building a worshiping community and letting this be what attracts people to Christ and his gospel.

Last week, I heard a brief interview on K-Love radio with a pastor who was trying a unique way to reach men on Father’s Day. I listened with interest because this pastor was a classmate of mine in my seminary training. He genuinely loves Christ and the gospel. But I have to confess that I struggled with his method. His church was planning to attract men by having ESPN Sportscenter on the monitors in the lobby, by offering them hot wings, and by putting recliners in the worship center. Now I’m all for doing whatever it takes to build relationships with people so that we can win them to Christ (see 1 Corinthians 9:19-23). I try to use my interest in sports to build relationships with people in our community. But if we use ESPN Sportscenter and hot wings to attract someone to a worship service, we are really using the old “bait and switch” approach. Better that we invite someone over to our house or to Buffalo Wild Wings to watch the World Cup and build a relationship with them. At some point, when the relationship has been built, we share the gospel. Perhaps the person will attend a worship service with us. If they do, what God can use to bring them closer to accepting the gospel is experiencing a worshiping community!

I look forward to our worship service this Sunday. Remember that it is at 9:00 a.m. for the next few weeks – one service! As Bob Kaulfin says, “gathering together with Christians should be one of the highlights, if not the highlight, of my week.” This Sunday is a “Student Preaching Day.” Rick Schwartz, our pastoral intern, will preach James 2:1-13. He is a fine teacher of Scripture, and I know that God’s Spirit will use his message to encourage and challenge our worshiping community. Oh yes, Bob Kauflin defines a worshiping community. He says that it “is made up of individuals whose lives are centered around the Savior they worship together each week. A worshiping community expects to encounter God’s presence not only on Sunday morning but every day.” Amen! I’ll see you on Sunday!