In the future, blended services may not be so common
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QSG (quick start guide):
- Church leaders often blend worship services in hopes of creating unity.
- Younger generations see blended services as creating more conflict than unity, as well as ignoring marginalized cultures.
- A church futurist suggests because worship is not about human-ward fellowship, but heavenward communion:
- a church host multiple services, as it is able,
- along with semi-regular blended events to build unity,
- and run the church together, study the Bible together, pray together, serve one another and fellowship together to create better avenues for building unity that blending cultural aesthetics.
"I'm not coming back. This ends over 30 years in this church." The gray-haired matron had just walked out of the one-year anniversary of her church's blended service. Her church had decided to reach out to a younger culture by blending their one Sunday morning service. In the parking lot I asked her to explain. "Before the change (to blended style), we sang the hymns I grew up with and love singing," she replied. "But now you only play one song I know or sometimes maybe two. What's wrong with my style of music?"
Many church leaders have heard similar critiques and respond that they are blending musical styles to create unity while reaching out to different age cultures. Here is how a doctoral student put it: "… I understand the difficulties related to blended worship styles; I also believe that we need the generations together for the main gathering point of the body each week... older folks need to have contact with young people."
In response, I wondered if a weekly worship service is the best place to create unity. As I study the future of the Church, I've conducted hundreds of focus groups. And I've heard several reasons why young people do not see unity as the byproduct of our blended worship services.
#1 Sanctuaries are laid out to support human-ward teaching and heavenward worship.
I asked one young lady why there wasn't more fellowship taking place in the sanctuary. She replied briskly, "The seats are facing the wrong direction!" She went on to explain the lobby was small, didn't encourage people to stop and talk, and mostly funneled people outside. Standing outside after a service I saw she was right! Few people stopped to talk in the lobby or sat in the chairs there. Since the lobby was less than 1/4 the size of the sanctuary, people were quickly funneled outside. Churches who are renovating their building should consider creating more community-building spaces that can be accessed immediately before/after a worship service.
#2 Blended services may not offer enough of any one style of worship for people to enter into deep worship.
As seen in the story of the matron churchgoer, a weekly blended service often doesn't allow any one culture to enter into worship before a different culture starts in with its worship style. I've observed it often takes people at least three songs to enter a period of deep worship. Therefore, providing space for congregations to communicate to God in their preferred artistic expressions seems missionally helpful.
3. Running the church together, studying the Bible together, praying together, serving one another, and fellowshipping together may be better avenues for building unity.
These are activities that require personal sharing, compromise, understanding others, etc. These seem to be better avenues for creating unity, than by simply listening to one another's artistic and liturgical expressions.
Perhaps we try to make worship a unifying event because we seek to make the weekly church service "the event" for which a church is known, at least since The Reformation. But is it missionally helpful to try to jam everything into one service including worship, teaching, prayer, fellowship, and unity building? From what I hear from tomorrow's leaders, they may be moving away from a focus on excellence as the feature for which a church is known, toward fostering a deeper "beloved community."
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Bob Whitesel (D.Min., Ph.D.) is a foresight coach, professor, and award-winning author of 14 books. For over 30 years, he has guided leaders and churches to pivot and engage what’s next. He holds two earned doctorates from Fuller Theological Seminary and teaches on leadership foresight, church health, and organizational change. His website is www.ChurchForesight.com. Learn More » |
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