I’m both excited and apprehensive about visiting our area’s largest church, a megachurch.
Consider these four discussion questions about Church #51:
1. A sign at their drive tells first-time visitors to turn on their four-way flashers—because they want to give us VIP treatment. I don’t bother and follow the flow of cars, but it’s a nice touch.
What can you do to give visitors VIP treatment?
2. After the opening set, one of the co-pastors explains that it’s nametag Sunday, something new they’re trying to facilitate better connections with one another.
How can you help people connect with each other?
3. After the service I turn in our visitor card and they offer a tour of the facility. Our guide wraps up with a challenge to come back for three months to see how our faith grows. “You can’t evaluate a church on just one visit.”
How can you encourage others on their faith journey?
4. While making connection was a concern at Church #50, forming meaningful friendships would be even harder here at this megachurch. But they do offer opportunities to meet people and form deeper relationships on Sunday nights and throughout the week.
Peter DeHaan writes about biblical Christianity to confront status quo religion and live a life that matters. He seeks a fresh approach to following Jesus through the lens of Scripture, without the baggage of made-up traditions and meaningless practices. Read more in his books, blog, and weekly email updates.
Consider these four discussion questions about Church #49:
1. I wonder if I’ll find a space in their packed parking lot and fight off the urge to flee in panic. Large churches need parking attendants.
What can you do to help people find a place to park and not drive away?
2. The large lobby has hundreds of people milling about. Just inside, a man approaches us. He’s wearing an ear mic. I wonder if he’s the pastor, but he simply introduces himself as John. Unfortunately, he’s the only one to talk to us.
What can you do to greet visitors?
3. Candy spots a coat rack and we head toward it. It’s full, and so is the next one. The third one has room. Just as it’s hospitable to leave spaces for visitors to park near the entrance, leave space in the coat racks too.
How can you make room for guests?
4. During his message, John instructed members to look for visitors to greet. But no one makes any effort, not even the man sitting in front of us who wears a deacon nametag. He looks past us.
What can you do next Sunday to better greet people you don’t know?
This was a large and anonymous church, were people can show up for church, sit through a service, and leave without ever talking with anyone.
Peter DeHaan writes about biblical Christianity to confront status quo religion and live a life that matters. He seeks a fresh approach to following Jesus through the lens of Scripture, without the baggage of made-up traditions and meaningless practices. Read more in his books, blog, and weekly email updates.
The church’s pastor is out of town, and the laity leads the entire service. One thing they do is “prayers for the people.”
Consider these four discussion questions about Church #48:
1. Someone asks us to sign their guestbook but then scrambles to find a pen. Though once common, guestbooks now seem archaic and carry privacy concerns.
What practices do you need to change because they no longer fit today’s culture?
2. A friend invites us to sit with her and her husband. The leader gives some announcements and then asks for more. After others share, our friend stands and introduces us to the crowd. It’s a nice gesture.
How can you introduce new people to others and thereby reduce their discomfort?
3. After a song they offer “prayers for the people.” The leader opens and then pauses. After a bit of silence, someone else prays, and a few more follow. I like their approach, effectively sharing with each other as they talk to God.
How can you make group prayer more meaningful and less awkward?
4. Afterward we stay for coffee and cookies. We linger for forty-five minutes before heading home, happy for our time at church today.
What should you change so that people want to tarry and enjoy Christian community?
Peter DeHaan writes about biblical Christianity to confront status quo religion and live a life that matters. He seeks a fresh approach to following Jesus through the lens of Scripture, without the baggage of made-up traditions and meaningless practices. Read more in his books, blog, and weekly email updates.
Experiencing a Traditional Service and a Contemporary One
Today we’ll enjoy two services, another doubleheader: a traditional service followed by a contemporary one.
Consider these four discussion questions about Church #45:
1. As we wander inside, several people acknowledge our presence, thanking us for visiting. But beyond that no one says anything more, so we meander into the sanctuary.
Acknowledging a person is a great start, but what more can you do to connect with them and show you care?
2. At one point, the minister invites people to come forward to the altar. Doing this in the middle of the service is unusual, and I don’t catch the purpose.
When you do something people don’t expect, how can you make your intentions clear?
3. Between services is a pastor’s breakfast for guests. It’s a great chance to learn more and experience community. They say it’s in the library but fail to explain how to get there. Eventually someone gives us directions.
How can you help people better navigate your facility?
4. The crowd is lethargic at the contemporary service. It’s as though they just crawled out of bed and rolled into church—and many rolled in late.
What must you do to engage in worship? How can you help others in their worship?
The two services gave us completely different experiences.
Peter DeHaan writes about biblical Christianity to confront status quo religion and live a life that matters. He seeks a fresh approach to following Jesus through the lens of Scripture, without the baggage of made-up traditions and meaningless practices. Read more in his books, blog, and weekly email updates.
As we wind up this phase of our journey, our experiences are starting to blur. Yes, I still notice kindnesses offered and innovations presented, but I worry I’m now more apt to notice the negative. I pray against that.
Consider these two discussion questions about the third leg of our journey:
1. I’ve noted the importance of community. Some churches excel at it, a few fail, and most fall in-between.
How can your church do better at providing community?
2, Integral to the importance of community is greeting. Greeting well fosters community. It happens before the service, during any official greeting time within the service, and afterward.
Peter DeHaan writes about biblical Christianity to confront status quo religion and live a life that matters. He seeks a fresh approach to following Jesus through the lens of Scripture, without the baggage of made-up traditions and meaningless practices. Read more in his books, blog, and weekly email updates.
With Sunday falling between Christmas and New Year’s Day, I have low expectations for their year end service.
Consider these four discussion questions about Church #39:
1. Yet inside, friendly faces and hearty handshakes greet us. People acknowledge us as first-timers, without fawning over us.
How can you better embrace newcomers without making them uncomfortable?
2. We slide into the fifth row, which is also the back row. I’m dismayed over the pews’ lack of lumbar support. I squirm throughout the service and soon have a terrible backache.
What can you do to make sure your seating doesn’t distract people from encountering God?
3. The congregation recites this week’s memory verse in unison. The pastor then challenges them to recall last week’s verse, which he leads them in saying.
What can you do to help people hide God’s word in their hearts (Psalm 119:11)?
4. They invite us to a fast food restaurant after church. When we sit, no one joins us. It’s awkward until a lady moves to our booth midway through the meal. It only takes one person to make the difference between feeling seen or ignored.
Peter DeHaan writes about biblical Christianity to confront status quo religion and live a life that matters. He seeks a fresh approach to following Jesus through the lens of Scripture, without the baggage of made-up traditions and meaningless practices. Read more in his books, blog, and weekly email updates.
The Church of Jesus Needs to Focus on Three Things and Master Them All
In our normal usage, church is a building, a place we go to—often on Sunday mornings. I’ll be there later today. Other definitions for church include a religious service, organized religion, and professional clergy.
Yet a more correct understanding is that we are church, both individually and collectively. We, the church, are an organic body, not an institution, religious service, or profession. If we are the church, we can’t go there; we take church with us everywhere we go—or at least we should.
As the people who comprise the church of Jesus—his followers—I see three things we ought to be about, three things that warrant our focus:
Worship
Life isn’t about us; it’s all about him. Or at least it should be. As individuals and as a group we should worship him, our reason for being. Though God doesn’t need our praise and adoration, we should need to give it to him. We worship God by thanking him for who he is and what he does.
We worship him by praising him for his omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent greatness. This can happen in word, in attitude, in action—and in song.
Singing to God about him is a common form of worship. Yet at too many church services this musical expression of faith has turned into a concert. While this is not necessarily bad if the concert connects us with God, it is bad if all it seeks to do is entertain us.
By the way, when we say we don’t like the music at church, we’ve just turned the focus away from God and back to us, to our desire for entertainment over worship.
Beyond this we can also worship God in silence and through solitude, two pursuits that most people in our culture fail to comprehend. In fact, in our always on, always connected existence, even a few seconds of silence makes most people squirm, whereas solitude drives them crazy.
Yet we can worship God in both.
In addition we also worship God by getting along with other believers and serving those outside our group.
The church as a group of people should major on community, on getting along and experiencing life together. Community should happen during our Sunday gatherings, as well as before and after, just hanging out.
Community is following all of the Bible’s one another commands, which teach us how to get along in a God-honoring way.
At some church services people scurry in at the exact starting time (or a few minutes late) and flee with intention at the final “amen.” They miss the community part of church; they miss a key reason for going. Remember, it’s not about us.
If we don’t like spending time with the people we see for an hour each Sunday morning, then something’s wrong: not with them, but with us. So, before we point fingers at others, we need to realize that the problem of why we shun spiritual community lies within.
Help Others
Worship is about God, and community is about our fellow believers. What about others? If we only focus on God and our local faith gathering, we stop too soon and fail to function as the church Jesus intended.
Jesus served others, so should we. And we shouldn’t serve with any motives other than the pure intent to show them the love of Jesus. Loving others through our actions may be the most powerful witness we can offer.
History is full of examples where this indeed happened, when the world saw Jesus through the tangible love of his followers.
A church body that looks only to God and at each other is selfish. A church that only gazes heavenward or internally is a church that is dying. We need to let our light shine so that the world can see (Matthew 5:14-16 and Luke 11:33).
The world watches us; they hope we’ll come through; they want to see Jesus in us.
That’s what church is. We worship and we build community so we can love others in his name.
Read more about this in Peter’s new book, Jesus’s Broken Church, available in e-book, audiobook, paperback, and hardcover.
Peter DeHaan writes about biblical Christianity to confront status quo religion and live a life that matters. He seeks a fresh approach to following Jesus through the lens of Scripture, without the baggage of made-up traditions and meaningless practices. Read more in his books, blog, and weekly email updates.
Follow Jesus’s Example to Live in Community and Be Missional
I often talk about the importance of being in a spiritual community. Though this community can happen anywhere, when it comes to church, forming meaningful spiritual connections is more important than the music or message of the Sunday service.
Another critical element of our faith practice is being missional. These two pursuits can work well together; they should work well together. We can best be missional through community, a missional community, if you will.
Missional Community
One church understood this idea well, at least in concept. They called their small group program, Missional Community. The groups did a reasonable job at accomplishing the community aspect of their assignment, but they fell short on the missional portion.
Their community operated with an internal mindset, either largely or exclusively so. And if they did anything with an outward focus, they usually directed these efforts at the church and its attendees, not the greater public on the outside.
I suspect the premise was to form community first and hope missional activity would flow from it. Yet a small group with an inward focus seldom lasts more than a couple of years. The long-lasting groups do so when they have an external focus, an outward mission. They then become missional through community.
A better approach, however, is to start with a missional effort first. Then form community around it. This makes sense.
If you take ten people and ask them to identify an initiative they want to pursue, you’ll get ten answers. Consensus will elude you. And even if people agree for the sake of harmony, nine of them will lack a full-on commitment to the cause.
Instead, look at those already committed to the activity. Then pull them together as a group to form connection around their common initiative. In this way, the missional community will pursue its calling with complete commitment and form a spiritual kinship that endures.
Missional Church
Like small groups, most churches also have an internal focus. They continue to exist in their self-centered pursuit of spirituality and persist to meet for the long-term—unlike small groups. These churches, however, render themselves ineffective in making a significant impact for the kingdom of God.
If a church is to be truly missional, bake the missional mindset into its DNA. Those who agree with the mission will stay and become connected. And those who don’t buy into the mission will soon leave.
In Jesus’s Broken Church I wrote, “As you meet, be sure to keep your focus on Jesus and his Holy Spirit. They will guide you in ways to look beyond your group, to be missional (Matthew 10:42).”
Though I didn’t spell it out, the concluding prescription of the entire book is to be missional through community, to form a gathering of like-minded Jesus followers to pursue mission and develop a missional community. Better yet, start with the mission and the community will follow.
You don’t need a large group to start being missional through community. It only takes two or three (Matthew 18:20). Build on that. Trust God to bless the outcome.
Read more about this in Peter’s new book, Jesus’s Broken Church, available in e-book, audiobook, paperback, and hardcover.
Peter DeHaan writes about biblical Christianity to confront status quo religion and live a life that matters. He seeks a fresh approach to following Jesus through the lens of Scripture, without the baggage of made-up traditions and meaningless practices. Read more in his books, blog, and weekly email updates.
We Can’t Witness for Jesus When We Sequester Ourselves on Sunday Mornings
Just before Jesus leaves this world to return to heaven, he instructs his followers to go into the world and make disciples (Matthew 28:19). In an expanded version of this incident, Jesus tells his followers to wait for Holy Spirit power and then be his witness, both near and far (Acts 1:4-9).
Witness and Make Disciples
The church of Jesus doesn’t do a good job of being witnesses and making disciples. To do so requires an outward perspective, yet most all churches have an inward focus: they care for their own to the peril of outsiders, with many churches excelling in doing so.
Yes, God values community and wants us to meet together (Hebrews 10:25). And the Bible is packed with commands and examples of worshiping God, with Jesus noting that “true worshipers” will worship God in the Spirit and in truth (John 4:23-24).
Meeting Together and Worship
Most churches do the meeting together part reasonably well, albeit with varying degrees of success. Many of those churches have a time of worship as they meet together, though perhaps not always “in the Spirit” or even “in truth.”
Yet few churches look outside their walls in order to go into their community to witness and make disciples. Though Jesus said to wait for the Holy Spirit, he didn’t say to wait for people to come to us, to come to our churches so we could witness and disciple them.
No, we are supposed to leave our church buildings to take this work to them. We can’t do that at church on Sunday morning, safely snug behind closed doors.
Yes there is a time to come together and a time to worship, but there is also a time to go. And we need to give more attention to the going part.
I know of two churches that have sent their congregations out into their community on Sunday mornings, foregoing the church service in order to be a church that serves. One church did it a few times and stopped after they saw little results and received much grumbling.
The other church regularly plans this a few times each year and garners a positive influence on their community.
Shouldn’t every church make a positive impact on their community? Yet so few do. They are too busy meeting together and worshiping.
Read more about this in Peter’s new book, Jesus’s Broken Church, available in e-book, audiobook, paperback, and hardcover.
Peter DeHaan writes about biblical Christianity to confront status quo religion and live a life that matters. He seeks a fresh approach to following Jesus through the lens of Scripture, without the baggage of made-up traditions and meaningless practices. Read more in his books, blog, and weekly email updates.
This church offers a mix of old with new, contemporary with traditional, and public friendliness with personal indifference. As a bonus, they also talk about having a Thanksgiving potluck.
Consider these four discussion questions about Church #31:
1. At one point, the leader asks everyone who is able, to kneel. It hurts when I kneel. So focused on my pain, I miss the prayer.
What practices in your church may get in the way of people encountering God?
2. Two girls read about the Good Samaritan: the first in Spanish and the second in English. But this is the only bilingual part of the service.
What changes can you make to your service so it’s more accessible to people of other languages or cultures?
3. Afterward is a Thanksgiving potluck. Publicly, they invite all to join them, but no one personally does. “If we walk slowly,” Candy says, “maybe someone will ask us to stay.” No one does, so we leave.
What can you do to personally invite someone to do something?
4. Aside from the two greeters at the door, no one talks to us. After the service I try to make eye contact with many people, but fail each time. I don’t matter and want to cry.
How can you let people know you care?
Though this church had much going for it, the lack of personal connection is my lasting memory.
Peter DeHaan writes about biblical Christianity to confront status quo religion and live a life that matters. He seeks a fresh approach to following Jesus through the lens of Scripture, without the baggage of made-up traditions and meaningless practices. Read more in his books, blog, and weekly email updates.
