Better Worship Requires Better Theology: How to Increase Joy, Fidelity, and Intensity in Worship

by: Aaron Armstrong

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“How do I help people engage in worship?”

I know of few church leaders for whom this isn’t a concern on some level. Whether we’re small group leaders, playing in the praise band or the senior leaders, we all want to see the men and women in our churches increasingly engaged in worship (in every sense of the word).

So… how do we do that?

Is it through turning up the speakers? Singing songs with lots of participation, clapping and suggested actions in the lyrics?

D.A. Carson offers a pretty different suggestion in his recently released book, Jesus the Son of God: A Christological Title Often Overlooked, Sometimes Misunderstood, and Currently Disputed:

We increase the intensity, joy, and fidelity of our worship, not by including the verb “to worship” in every second line in our so-called “worship songs,” but by knowing more about God, and bringing our adoration to him, as he is.

Insofar as our conceptions of him diverge from what he has disclosed of himself, so far are we worshiping a false god, which is normally called idolatry. To study hard what holy Scripture says about the Son of God, who has most comprehensively revealed his heavenly Father, is to know more about God, and thus to begin to ground our worship in reality rather than slogans. (Kindle location 1204)

Carson’s point is simple: better worship requires better theology.

It seems counterintuitive. Indeed, some have suggested it’s simplicity, rather than complexity, that increases the intensity of worship. You often see this argument used in connection with battles over hymns in modern worship services.

The language is unfamiliar (unless the lyrics have been updated) and the theology expressed is too complex for the average Christian, or so go some arguments (never mind that the audience for many of the hymns we still widely sing today was illiterate farmers).

True, many (but certainly not all) of the hymns are anything but simple. But, then, neither are many of the preeminent examples of songs of worship found in the Psalms and throughout the rest of Scripture. They communicate profoundly deep—and often complex—truths about God.

At the risk of overstating, I would suggest the objection many have today about complexity in worship is not because “simple” is better. It’s that we are too ill-equipped to handle much more than the most basic truths of Scripture.

While we must always be careful that we don’t succumb to sinful intellectual elitism, we can’t ignore the way God appears to have wired the Christian faith—increased knowledge and understanding of God leads to increased worship.

Depth begets awe.

This is (at least in part) the desire that is to fuel our disciple-making, as Paul’s prayer for the Colossians makes clear. Maybe it should be our prayer, too:

And so, from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God. May you be strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy, giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share inthe inheritance of the saints in light. (Col 1:9-12)

Tags: Aaron Armstrong, Scripture, Theology, Worship

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Improve the Vibe: Take Advantage of All Senses in Preparing for Worship

by: Kim Fukai

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It’s Sunday morning.

What happens in those few minutes after your visitors take their seat in the auditorium/sanctuary/worship center and before service begins? I speak of visitors because, let’s be honest, they’re the ones who come early. Your regulars meander in because they know what to expect. It’s easy to forget about those few minutes, yet they matter when lost people find themselves in a seat at your house.

Your church’s approach to this time needs to fit your values. Whatever your worship environment, here are some things to think about that will help you become more intentional about what is being experienced in this time:

Listen.

• What do you want people hear? Maybe it’s music fitting your worship style, silence for a reverent room or the buzz from people sharing their life stories with each other.
• What potential distractions can be heard: A guitar tuning on stage, your pastor checking his microphone, kids running around the sanctuary?

See.

• Where are people looking: Up at giant screens with well-presented announcements, down at their carefully laid out bulletin or handouts, out at their physical surroundings?
• What could negatively impact some one’s visual experience: A stage cluttered with cables and random personal items, lack of personal space in the seats, a banner that is frayed or about to fall off?

Feel.

• Emotive and, at times, frustratingly subjective. So throw some adjectives out there! Joyful. Welcoming. Peaceful. Rockin’. What are you doing to express these things?
• What could be felt in your room that takes away from this: Fear of the unknown, anxiety over what’s expected, deep-seated guilt?

Improve the Vibe

Vibe. You know what I’m talking about. It’s the never seen, but always felt energy. It’s the groove you want everyone to feel. After all, you’re about to ask them to engage for next hour or more and you need a solid starting point. Vibe communicates a lot about your church. Vibe is found in the environment.

Listen, see and feel the vibe that visitors experience in those forgotten few minutes before your church service starts. Once you’re paying attention to that experience, you can start to improve it.

Read the full story here.

Read more from Kim here.

Tags: Kim Fukai, Worship, senses

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Three Implications of Understanding New Testament Worship

by: Aaron Armstrong

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What is worship?

More specifically, what does it mean to worship? Is there a right way or a wrong way to do it?

Is it singing, clapping and/or raising your hands at your local church on Sunday… or is there something more to it than that?

The question of what worship is is extremely important. Far too many arguments have been had over what is and is not a legitimate form of worship. Preferences can too easily become elevated to precepts if we’re not carefully grounding our understanding of worship in what we see in the Bible.

Worship is singing… but not only singing.

Many Christians today understand worship as singing. When we talk about Sunday morning, we refer to congregational singing as “worship.” When we say, “I really enjoyed the worship,” we almost always mean “I really enjoyed the music.”

This isn’t entirely wrong… it’s just incomplete. There are clear examples of singing as worship found in Scripture (see Ex. 15:1, 21; Num. 21:17; Judges 5:3; 2 Sam. 22:50; Psa. 5:11; 7:17; 9:2, 11; 18:49; 33:3; 1 Cor. 14:15, 26; Eph. 5:19; Col. 3:16). We’re admonished to sing to the Lord and to encourage one another with hymns and spiritual songs.

So singing, biblically, is a part of worship.

However, we must be careful not to equate worship with singing and music.

The word “worship” at its most basic level means to ascribe worth. This is helpful to keep in mind, especially when you consider the words translated as “worship.” The two most commonly used words in Hebrew and Greek that we often translate as “worship” (ḥā·wā[h] and proskyneō) refer to bowing or kneeling down, both to God and to men.

They describe an act of reverential deference.

This is the important thing to understand, then, about worship. It’s not merely about singing, it’s about reverence—it’s about having a biblical fear of the Lord.

At its most basic level, then, you could define worship as the humbling of yourself before the One who is your better.

This, naturally, has serious implications.

Worship is not primarily about how you feel.

First, if worship is about humbling yourself before God, we have to consider the place of our feelings. Many today seem to equate fired up feelings with genuine affection for the Lord. The louder the music, the higher the hands are raised, the more our hearts must be inclined toward God… right?

But this understanding places too much emphasis on feelings. We must always remember that while emotional expressiveness can be a sign of genuine affection, “Nothing can be certainly known of the nature of religious affections by this, that they much dispose persons with their mouths to praise and glorify God,” as Jonathan Edwards puts it so well in Religious Affections.

His point is simple: people can fervently praise God with their mouths and still be far off from Him. This is much the same warning Paul gives when he tells the Corinthians that you can have a great outward show, but without love, it’s worthless (cf. 1 Cor. 13:1-3).

Is it any wonder that Jeremiah reminds us not to put too much stock in our feelings (Jer. 17:9)?

Worship is what you do every moment of every day.

Second, in the Old Testament, particularly once the nation of Israel is established, there’s a definite connection between place and worship. God’s people were to worship in a specific place (first the Tabernacle, then the Temple). This was the meeting place between God and His people. At the Temple, God’s people would offer sacrifices for the forgiveness of sin, peace offerings to God, and numerous other offerings and acts of service.

It can be tempting to take the imagery of the Temple worship and place it upon the local church. However, the New Testament doesn’t allow for this. Instead, starting with Jesus, the New Testament presents a definite shift away from “place and time” worship to “every moment, everywhere” worship.

In his discussion with the woman at the well, Jesus tells her:

Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth. (John 4:21-24, emphasis added)

I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. (Romans 12:1)

Through him then let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name. Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God. (Hebrews 13:15-16)

While I’ve only included a few brief examples, the general thrust of the New Testament, while never neglecting the importance of believers gathering together in corporate worship (1 Cor. 14:25), drastically broadens our understanding of what worshipping God truly is. It’s not a matter of getting together on Sunday, singing songs, giving money, listening to a sermon and heading home for the rest of the week to do whatever we want.

Every moment of every day is to be an act of worship to God.

This brings us to the most serious implication of the New Testament understanding of worship: our need for the gospel.

The gospel perfects our worship.

On our best days, our efforts are half-hearted, our motives conflicted. The flesh is constantly at war with the spirit… it’s no wonder Martin Luther said that Christians are all simultaneously sinners and saints (see Rom 7). If our worship were up to us alone, we’d be utterly lost. None of it would be pleasing and acceptable to God.

But this is where the good news of the gospel aids us in our worship—Jesus is the perfect worshipper. In His incarnation, He obeyed every command of God without flaw or failure. His devotion is unwaivering.

He gives us His perfect worship to cover our imperfect offerings of songs, service and sacrifice.

The gospel gives us reason to stand before the throne of grace, imperfect as we are, because we have an Advocate there who has completed the work for us, one who appeals to us to rely on Him increasingly to purify our motives, and perfect our worship (cf. Heb. 4:16).

That’s what biblical worship looks like. Don’t settle for a substitute.

Tags: Aaron Armstrong, Gospel, Worship

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Spiritual Malnourishment: When the Sheep Won’t Feed Themselves

by: Steven Furtick

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One of the greatest critiques of the American Church today is that it’s malnourished. Some would even say it’s our most pressing problem.

When most people voice this complaint, the focus is on the worship experience. From people who leave these churches, you hear, “I wasn’t getting fed.” Or, “I just want some deeper teaching.” From people outside these churches you hear, “too much milk, not enough meat.”

In some cases, I’m sure this is true. But I really don’t think that’s the real problem. Yes, American Christians are malnourished. But I don’t believe it has anything to do with milk or meat.

Most American Christians aren’t malnourished because of what they’re getting fed on Sunday. They’re malnourished because they don’t feed themselves Monday through Saturday.

So you had filet mignon on Sunday and learned about the mystical union of Christ and the church as it relates to the rapture and the design of the tabernacle in relation to Levitical dietary laws as understood by the Council of Trent. Good for you. Have fun starving yourself the rest of the week and letting your pastor read the Bible so you don’t have to.

So you had some milk on Sunday and learned 37 ways to ________. Have fun having 37 new ways to not obey God during the coming week.

The crisis facing the church today isn’t what people are getting fed on Sundays. It’s what they’re not feeding themselves the rest of the days. Who really cares whether you consume meat or milk on Sunday if it’s the only meal you have all week?

I’m not saying this to get pastors and churches off the hook. It is the shepherd’s job to feed the sheep (John 21). And feed them well based on their needs and faith development. But it’s also the sheep’s job to eat:
13Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. 14But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.
Hebrews 5:13-14

Here’s the point. Churches: we have a responsibility. We should serve up the Word, hot and fresh every single Sunday. As church leaders, it is our job to create and sustain processes and systems that responsibly enable people to grow in their faith after receiving Christ.

People in our churches: you also have a responsibility. If you refuse to study the Word, apply it, pray some during the week, join a small group and dig deeper with others, there’s not much we can do to help you. Your malnourishment won’t be cured by anything we give you on Sunday.

So are you an infant and need milk? Drink it for now, but the only way you’re getting more mature and will be ready for meat is by training yourself. Constantly. Do you want meat? From these verses, it seems like meat is doing the milk. On your own. Constantly.

Not getting it served to you once a week.

Tags: Discipleship, Scripture, Steven Furtick, Worship

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Worship Leading Tips: 3 Questions You Must Answer in Every Worship Service

by: Steve Finkill

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Imagine going to a new friend’s home for dinner and experiencing this:

• your host simply opened the door and said, “Welcome! Come on in!” and then turned and walked away
• person after person in their family walked into the room and simply started a conversation without introducing themselves
• everyone in the host family seemed busy with tasks, but you were unsure of what you were supposed to do

You’d probably feel a little disoriented and vaguely uncomfortable. As a worship leader, you are usually the initial host for the worship service each weekend. I’m consistently astounded as I attend churches around the country that many worship leaders don’t consider these simple ways to make people feel at home in the worship service.

There are three basic questions people are subconsciously asking that you should answer within the first few minutes of worship.  They are:

• who are you?
• what’s going to happen?
• why are we here?

Let’s examine these questions together.

Who are you?

Please don’t just have the band kick in and start singing the first song. I know you don’t want the service to feel like it’s focused on you, but welcoming people and introducing yourself is really a way to serve the people, to make them feel at home.

Yes, I know that many people will know who you are—the people that come regularly. But the people that are new have no idea who you are and may not even understand your role. If your church uses IMAG (stands for image magnification where a camera projects your image onto the screen), you can use this to introduce yourself. No matter how you do it, you should welcome people, tell them your name, and give them some context for your role in the service.

What’s going to happen?

Give people just a sentence or two to give them a clue as to what’s going to happen next. Many people (myself included) find it hard to engage in any experience if I don’t have some understanding of where we’re going. It’s like asking people to board a train with you when you haven’t told them where the train is going.

Something as simple as: “Join us as we sing a few songs of worship to our Creator” can be all we need to engage for the next few minutes. Just tell me what’s going to happen.

Why are we here?

This question needs to be answered for both the guest and the regular attender. The guest needs to hear from you about the “why” behind what we’re doing. Why are we singing? The regular attender needs to be reminded about the “why” as well. Otherwise, they may engage in the service only at a surface level. A surface service will never be meaningful or transformative.

Here are some sample “why” statements that can inform guests and remind regular attenders about the purpose of our gathering … and of our worship.

“As we sing together, we will be reminded of how big God is, how good God is, and how strong God is. And the best thing for us to remember today … is how close God is. He is here, with us and in us. I don’t know about you, but there are many times that I forget that. Let’s remind each other as we sing.”

“For thousands of years, followers of Jesus have spent time praising Him in song. Something happens in our hearts through music that is right and good—we are reminded of God’s goodness and His faithfulness to us—giving us renewed strength for each day.”

“We’re going to spend time singing together this morning because God is worthy of our worship. We are tempted to give our time, attention, and honor to all sorts of things, but there is only One who is truly worthy of our worship. Let’s reset our hearts toward Him as we sing together.”

This is also a chance to connect the weekly worship experience to your church’s specific strategy. (Imagine that!) You could say something like this:

“As followers of Christ, we believe that we need to engage on a regular basis in 3 key environments—a place of worship, a place of belonging, and a place of service. (I’m guessing at what your strategy might be, of course.) These three environments work together to help us experience the fullness of life that Jesus offers to us. Let’s worship God together.”

However you do it, you must answer these three questions in every worship service. Get creative!  You don’t have to answer them the same way every time, but you should answer them. When you do, you’ll make people feel at home so that they can more fully engage in the entire worship experience. And isn’t that what you really want?

Tags: Steve Finkill, Worship, worship leaders

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How Churches and Grocery Stores Should Be Alike

by: Caryn Rivadeneria

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I have plenty of reasons not to love my neighborhood grocery store: it’s not as cheap as Wal-Mart or Aldi; the fruit’s not as fresh as that big fruit market; it’s not trendy or hip at all like Trader Joe’s or Whole Foods; there’s no little cafe; there’s not an over-abundance of organic or grass-fed or free-range or hyper-local; and, when I was little, my father worked for its parent company and got laid off. So I should maybe be bitter or judgmental or snobby or a better steward or something. And yet, I can’t.

I love that store – “the Jewel,” as we call our Jewel Food and Drug store. Amid the mocking from friends who can’t believe I still shop there and in this increasingly competitive world of supermarkets clamoring to meet our every wish and to beat each other’s prices, I cheer for it. Go Jewel!

Truth be told, of course, it’s not exactly the Jewel itself I’m cheering. And I get why my friends prefer other stores – based on price, on quality, on variety, on ethical concerns. I understand why other stores have successfully chipped away at the mighty market share the Jewel once enjoyed. As grocery-store analyst David Livingston has said, when chains like the Jewel sought to become more efficient, they “lost sight of what their customers wanted from them.” And when my friends wanted cheaper or organic or larger variety, the Jewel failed them.

Beyond that, Livingston said stores like the Jewel lost customers because, in seeking efficiencies above all, they got rid of the “human experience” element of grocery shopping. “[The supermarket chains] piled it high and sold it cheap,” Livingston told the Chicago Tribune, “…got rid of all the humanity. It’s food. It’s primal. Yes, we need it to live, but we love it.”

“Folks from all walks of life, from all backgrounds, coming to a place based on a deeply primal need: to seek the sustenance of grace, the Bread of Life”

Livingston makes an interesting point. But I respectfully disagree with his definition of “human experience.” I don’t know anything about supermarket efficiencies, but I do know about the “humanity” of which Livingston speaks. And to that end, it’s because of its humanity that the Jewel has kept me as a loyal customer through the years. This neighborhood store is nothing short of a human experience – the human experience in many ways.

It’s the place where I bump into and catch up with neighbors and kids and teachers from school. It’s the place where I chat with cashiers and bakers and deli ladies and baggers who have worked there for the decades that I’ve shopped there. It’s the place where the produce guy smiles every time he sees my youngest child’s chocolate-smeared face from the donut I let him eat (and pay for via an empty bag later).

It’s probably the most racially and economically and religiously diverse place in town. And yet, it’s a place where we all come based on a need steeped in our shared, created humanity: a primal need to eat and a creative need to make what we eat interesting. I love that we meet this primal need together, locally.

In many ways, I believe every trip to the local grocery store is what every trip to local church should be. Folks from all walks of life, from all backgrounds, carrying all sorts of stress and burdens with them, coming to a place based on a deeply primal need: to seek the sustenance of grace, the Bread of Life, and to meet a creative need to make our worship interesting. Like the supermarket, sometimes the “cost” of attending a certain church is a bit higher than we’d like, sometimes the “fruit” isn’t quite as fresh or the ambience quite as trendy. Too often we’re tempted to shop around, to find something better, something more likely to meet our every last whim.

But when we look at churches or grocery stores or whatever as part of our human experience – as part of collectively meeting our primal needs – somehow those tiny whims and fancy trends seem much less important. Certainly less important than neighbors gathering with neighbors, serving, seeking, meeting those needs – creatively and collectively.

This article originally appeared on ThinkChristian.net.

Tags: Caryn Rivadeneria, Physical space, Worship

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4 Simple Rules About Where Your Church Meets

by: Rick Warren

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Pastor Rick Warren loves to tell the “moving” story of Saddleback – about how they moved so often in the early years of the church it became a standing puzzle on Sundays to figure out where they would meet the following week. Here’s how he tells it:

If you’ve ever heard the story of Saddleback, you know we moved from one location to another for twelve years before moving onto our campus in 1992. We met in 67 locations in our first 15 years of existence — and broke every church-planting rule that says you must have a consistent meeting location! We grew to more than 10,000 in attendance before we had our first building.

So I’ve never believed that meeting locations are critical to a church fulfilling its mission.

But where you meet to worship is still an important ministry tool for your church. Here are four simple rules we’ve learned at Saddleback throughout the years.

• Don’t let the shoe tell the foot how big it can get – Never be afraid to think outside the box when it comes to making the most out of your worship space. When your meeting space begins to limit your growth, then it is time to think creatively. Add another service. Find a different venue. Do whatever it takes.

• Make sure you have enough space – When your service is 80 percent filled, you need to start another service. This is one of the reasons many churches plateau. They don’t believe they need to add another service because they have a few open seats available. When you run out of space, you experience what Pete Wagner calls “sociological strangulation!”

• Make sure you don’t have too much meeting space – On the other hand, you can have too much space. Many churches have built a building far too large for them to fill. Too much space can keep a church from growing. If you have 200 people sitting in an auditorium that seats 750, it’ll seem like no one is there. But if you have 90 people in a space that’ll hold 100, it will seem as if your church is the place to be. It’s almost impossible to create a feeling of warmth and intimacy when there are more empty chairs than people.

• The smaller the crowd, the closer the speaker should be to them – As your crowd grows larger, the lectern or pulpit can be moved farther back and raised on a higher stage. If you only have 50 people in a service, put a lectern just a few feet in front of your first row. Forget the stage.

Read more from Rick here.

Tags: Physical space, Rick Warren, Worship

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The Real Competition for Your Church

by: Steven Furtick

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One of the biggest dangers that any church faces when trying to reach people who are far from God is comparing itself to other churches.

How good your preaching is compared to them.
How good your worship experiences are compared to them.
How good your videos are compared to them.

This is dangerous. But probably not for the reasons you’re thinking. Yes, the dangers of jealousy and competition are there. But that’s not what I’m talking about.

It’s dangerous because if you want to reach other people for Christ, your competition isn’t other churches. It isn’t a matter of if you have better music than other churches. Better videos than other churches. Even better community than other churches. That’s not your standard of comparison.

Why? Because none of the people you’re trying to reach are going to those churches. When a lost person walks out your doors, their first thought probably isn’t going to be “man, that was better than that other church.” They haven’t been to that other church. Or possibly any church.

The point of comparison for lost people are things that lost people see. That lost people listen to. That lost people experience.

That’s your real competition. So for example, when we decorate for Christmas, I don’t want it to be as good or better than other churches in town. I want it to be as good or better than anything they’d see at the best mall in town. Because that is what every person who has never stepped foot inside of a church before is consciously or unconsciously comparing us to.

Now we do have something that is incomparable and unbeatable: Jesus Christ. I’m not saying we have to make Him look better because He’s not up to the job. And obviously the movement of the Holy Spirit is not dependent on how we measure up to the outside world.

However, we do have to communicate Jesus through certain mediums. I believe these mediums should actually live up to the message and person they’re communicating. And be something that people can relate to. So all of them have to be at their best.

Some people might think that this is shallow. And yes, it is shallow. But that’s where people are, and we have to meet them there. Or we might meet them nowhere.

I’d rather be considered shallow and be surrounded by people who have found life in Christ than be considered deep and be alone. Or surrounded only by people who knew Jesus long before they ever knew me. Lost people can’t become deep Christians until they first become Christians period.

And if part of making that happen means us raising our game and showing the world that the people of God can be just as creative and excellent in what they produce, why would we hesitate to do so?

Read more from Steven here.

Tags: Physical space, Steven Furtick, Worship

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Well Diggers vs. Temple Builders

by: Tim Cool

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“We are well diggers instead of temple builders” is a phrase I heard for the first time from Mel McGowan, president of Visioneering Studios.  The first time I heard it, I needed to have it explained….but once it was, it really resonated with me.

The concept is fairly simple and yet profound.  It is based on the John 4 passage about the Samaritan woman at the well. Most of us that have been around “church” for any length of time, know this story.  We know that Jesus goes to a well in the middle of the day and meets a women with a sorted past and shares life with her by getting a drink of H2O….physical water, and then offers and provides living water…a relationship with Jesus.  I have heard dozens of sermon applications about this story and I am sure you have as well. So how does it apply to church facility development?  This is where it really gets cool.

The concept is that we need to look for opportunities to develop “wells” on our campuses and within our communities and not just temples.  The well is representative of several attributes that I believe the church, as a whole, has not done a great job in providing to our communities.  We have been notorious in building temples…you know, buildings that are used one or two days a week.  Places that people in our community believe you have to act, look and smell a certain way to enter. A place with too many “thou shalt not”  rules, whether  they are real or perceived.

A well on the other hand is a part of the community.  It represents a place that was/is a vital part of  that culture.  People came there 7 days a week to get water…but also to see their neighbor, get caught up on what was going on in each others lives, share concerns and sometimes just hang.  They would do life together.  Not just on the weekend…but every day.

The well was “common place”. It was not a top-of-mind place that the community folk would think of when contemplating a place to “meet God.”  And yet, that is exactly what happened.  This common place become a destination were God meet a women in need of a savior…even though that is not what she was looking for that morning as she heading out to gather water.  They shared conversation.  Shared a drink of water.  Talked about the past, the present and what the future could be.  All of this happened in an environment that felt “common” to the women…just the normal place she went every day…but this was an intentional encounter by Jesus.  He knew he was going to have this encounter.  He used the common place for the extraordinary. Verse 4 of this passage tells us that Jesus “had to go through Samaria”. The fact is, from a physical perspective, there were other routes he could have taken to get to Galilee. But he was intentional about going to Samaria…to have this encounter…to change a life.

But the story of the well did not end there. In vs. 28  it says, “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?”  They came out of the town and made their way toward him.” The story continued…and the well was a drawing point for other people to come and hear from Jesus.  The women went and hold her neighbors that there was something cool happening at the well and that they needed to come check it out…and they did.  Do you not get excited to see how one “common place” experience…over a glass of water…in a non-temple setting, lead to life change for not only a woman, but for others in her community.

As you think about your church facilities and campus, think about what “wells” you are providing your community for these kinds of encounters and then be intentional to open yourself up to meet people to do life and start a conversation that could change the world.

Read more from Tim here.

Tags: Connect, Physical space, Serve, Tim Cool, Worship

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Creating a Great Experience at Your Church

by: Brad Lomenick

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It’s been a while since I last read Joe Pine and Jim Gilmore’s book The Experience Economy. If you haven’t read this book, trust me. Go buy it and start reading it right now. If you have a product or service that you offer (we all do, whether in business, church, entrepreneur, or the non profit arena), it is imperative that you grasp the context of the Experience Economy.

I am reminded of it because in a conversation recently someone asked me how I would recommend they keep their product from becoming a commodity. From just being lumped in with all the other similar products in their space, and being seen as just an option instead of the only option, the best option, and the option that is always recommended. Where price determines what the consumer chooses vs. other factors like emotion, connection, and memories.

In the book, Pine and Gilmore lay out the four levels of economic value : commodities, goods, services, and experiences. Progression happens by moving from commodity to experience. Think about coffee. Coffee beans are a commodity, ground coffee is a good, a cup of coffee at dinner is a service, and a latte at a trendy cafe in Manhattan is an experience.

Or about birthday parties for kids- a cake is a commodity, a customized cake is a good, a birthday party with friends is a service, and a full fledged laser tag birthday celebration is an experience. Think about Apple stores. Disney World. You get the point.

The question is how are you creating an experience with the product or service that you offer? How are you allowing your customer to be so engaged with your product that they connect emotionally? Does your product or service creates memories for your customer? Do they want to tell their friends? Is your tribe willing to purchase or buy from you above all others?

There is also a fifth level of economic value, which is transformation. Incredibly hard to reach this level, but our goal should be to get there. Which correlates to our personal and spiritual lives, where transformation and being conformed to the image of Christ should be our goal.

Read more from Brad here.

Tags: Brad Lomenick, Physical space, Worship

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