The 21st Century Church: The Worship Service

This is the fifth post in the series “The 21st Century Church” here on BeDeviant.com. You can read the rest of the posts here.

As we’ve explored in the past few posts in this series, “the times they are a-changin’“. Not just culturally, but also in the Church.

ChurchCrunch.com just featured an interview with über-blogger and Christian, Darren Rowse. This is what he said:

From what I know of the development of the Printing Press (a technology that changed the world) – Christians were at the forefront in using this tool to print Scripture. Many futurists believe that what’s happening online at the moment is as significant as what happened with the Printing Press – the world is changing. I guess my question is – are we as the Church embracing and using this new technology – or are we being left behind?

No where do I see more potential for the 21st Century Church to change, adapt, and excel than in our worship services. Most of our services (or for my PoMo brothers and sisters, “gatherings”) are based in rich cultural tradition that brings the worshiper into the service. The pastor leads the congregation in a communal worship experience where everyone plays a part: Singing; tithes & offerings; reading Scripture; receiving Communion.

In a gentle critique, some of our services have gotten off-track and have become more of a “spectator sport” than a communal worship experience. You can “sit” through the entire experience–not just physically, but mentally “sit”, spiritually “sit”, financially “sit”. Simply put, there’s no intertia coming from you in response to God’s Spirit being present.

Partly this is to blame on the consumer culture we in the West are saturated in. But part of the blame rests on those of us who plan worship services. There’s something to be said about structure and having a set format to follow every week, but when does “structure” become an excuse for laziness or lack of innovation?

My mind is still reeling from a conversation I had with a friend of mine who creates spiritual video games. He built an interactive video element for the services at our church this past weekend that left my jaw on the floor. We got to talking about what our services would look like if we could build interactive elements into them? Leverage technology to draw us closer to the heart of God in worship? Make it impossible for people to “sit” (not just physically, mind you) during the service?

What if….

  • Twitter and interactive messaging became standard issue in our worship services? Not to add more “clutter” to our already congested lives, but to provide a communal worship experience?
  • Imagine bringing your Wii controller to church and interacting with a live on-screen “video game” that allowed worshipers to control video elements to the rhythym of the worship music.
  • We set time limits on sermons? Much like Q, the communicator gets 15 minutes to deliver their message. No more, but less if needed.
  • Worship experiences were not limited to the physical space of a church sanctuary? How would that happen? (Here’s looking at you, LifeChurch.tv)
  • Churches had large communal worship gatherings quarterly, with a weekly worship component happening in homes and businesses with groups of no more than 12?
  • We never had another worship service ever? Would people miss it? Would your surrounding community notice?

What do you think? How’s this all going to shake down?

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Contributor: Justin Wise

I am a religious deviant who enjoys coffee, collared shirts, spending time with my wife and son, learning about quantum physics and creatively exploring the riches of the Spirit of Christ. Find more here: JustinWise.me
  • brianfalexander
    Linked to this series on my blog via a post.
  • jason kramme
    Instead, their personal day to day lives are changed. They feed hungry people, give water to thirsty people, and serve. Being a disciple of Jesus in your day to day life makes both a qualitative and quantitative difference in the lives of others (and yourself). The God who's plan for the world is the impetus for someone feeding me when i'm starving is worthy of praise. The God who's plan i'm carrying out by feeding a hungry person, thereby changing their life, is worthy of praise.

    Folks need to have a stake in what's happening at a worship service, and i dont think that we are going to do that by trying to out-culture culture. The church ought to leverage media and communications when it can, but it isnt the solution to the problem.
  • In Niebuhr terms, what you're suggesting is Christ transforming Culture instead of Christ of Culture or Christ and Culture.

    (For the record, I agree with you. My hope was to shine on a light on what could be strictly in the worship service itself.)

    Great thoughts, Jason!
  • jason kramme
    Thanks man, yeah, on the Niebuhr scale I'm a blend of Christ transforming culture and Christ and culture in paradox [which shows my Lutheran stripes ; ) ].
  • i'm following you jason. i think it centers around building disciples as well.
  • jason kramme
    Heya,

    To some extent the solutions that you've suggested are means of engaging apathetic/passive people who come to church. I think that instead of treating symptoms we need to treat the problem. To do that, I think that we need to improve our discipleship programs, which, in theory, make passive Christians non-passive Christians. A disciple of Christ is a person who does the things laid out in Matthew 25 or Mark 10. These are people who are engaging the hurts and injustices in the world; realizing the Kingdom of God in the here and now. I'm not saying that they are simply Christianizing social structures, business structures, or politics like advocates of the Social Gospel did at the begining of the 20th century.
  • We're having a similar conversation in our church right now, as we begin a new service in the fall. I think our original intention was to break all of the rules and see what happens, but like your post on boundaries being helpful for creativity, we found that a wide-open spread left us all over the place, but a few limitations have helped our ideas flourish. For instance, simply having an order of service helped us to make each element go deeper. And while we have a different order of service than our morning services, it's not to be different. Rather, it's because based on our goals we believe it will serve us best.

    I think that's what I want from the 21st Century Church. Not throwing out the rules for the sake of throwing out the rules, but rather re-examining the rules and infusing them with new life and new meaning.

    PS - I love this conversation, and I love how you're thinking about using technology in your services. Do you have a video archive of what you did last week? I'd love to see it in action.
  • I love the idea of pushing the limits of our worship services by adding interactive elements to them. I've been thinking a lot about this lately. Not just about how to use technology in worship but for the church in general. One big barrier to that in my church is the sheer diversity. We are a congregation of about 6000 in Silicon Valley. You'd think we'd be on the forefront of technology use but our challenge is that the congregation is all over the place as far as ethnicity (about 35% black and then a mix of white, hispanic, asian, and other ethnicities), age, as well as socio-economic standing. It's not uncommon to see somebody who was just released from prison worshiping next to a C-level exec or one of the players from the 49ers or Raiders. With that diversity it's tricky when it comes to integrating technology because it needs to be done in a way that doesn't cause division. Not everybody has access to the internet, let alone know what Twitter is. I love pushing the boundaries, though. Not just for the sake of pushing boundaries but for the sake of offering the ability for people to experience God in new and fresh ways.

    I'd love to hear your thoughts. Is anybody in a similar situation?
  • Reggie - for sure, there's definitely a "digital divide" that needs to be navigated well.

    Case-in-point: Churches in the remotest parts of Africa could give two rips about what Twitter is (or what the internet is, for that matter). But it's not a part of the African culture. It IS part of our culture.... So how do we educate and utilize without marginalizing?

    Great thoughts... How is your community doing it?
  • Makella
    Justin, as someone who responds to music and can feel the holy spirit's goodness through it, I would definitely miss worship services if they didn't happen... and at the church I interned at, the surrounding community would definitely notice if it didn't happen anymore.
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