Valley Praise makes ordinary extraordinary during worship service

By Aaron Saenz
Pastor of Valley Praise, Harlingen
As pastors usually do—or at least are supposed to do—I picked out a good book to do some ministry research on. I didn’t pick up a book from the Christian bestsellers list, though. I ended up with The Starbucks Experience by Joseph A. Michelli, the man behind the enterprise. As I started reading, all I could think about was how the Starbucks story relates to the Valley Praise story.
The introduction summed up much of what we envision Valley Praise to become. Starbucks took a common product known worldwide and refashioned the way it offered coffee to customers.
‘’Starbucks could transform the traditional American coffee experience from the ordinary to the extraordinary,” Michelli wrote.
If you restate this quote and replace “Starbucks” with “Valley Praise” and replace “American coffee” with “worship,” you would have a quote that reads: “Valley Praise could transform the traditional worship experience from the ordinary to the extraordinary.”
At Valley Praise we have placed the concept of worship into the context of a relaxed and comfortable environment. That is what Starbucks did with coffee. Starbucks incorporated the “concept of serving gourmet coffee in a relaxed and comfortable environment” into their worldwide stores. That is the same idea behind Valley Praise’s worship environment.
Now I know you may be confused about why I am comparing worship to a secular business concept, and that is fair. After all, church isn’t like a business. Right?
Well, no. It is not a “business,” but we do have a “product” to offer to our worshipers. That “product” is far more valuable than a hot cup of coffee.
We can all relate that in worship we serve Christ each time we gather. You see, our methods are different from traditional methods, but the reason is still the same. We serve Christ first, and we present the gospel above all else. We just serve Christ in a different environment that seems to reach people where they are.
Acts 4 talks about exponential growth in the church: “But many who heard the message believed, and the number of men grew to about five thousand” (NIV).
The goal of the church should be this: to expand and to grow exponentially by offering Christ and converting the lost to be strong believers in the Christian walk.
Through the ministry of Valley Praise, we believe that God will provide the “customers.” All we have to do is provide an environment to serve Christ best in this day and age. Join us in prayer as we continue to believe that God will increase the kingdom of believers through Valley Praise, a ministry of First UMC, Harlingen.
In the end, the goal is to make disciples of Christ. So what will we do with what God has entrusted us? The Starbucks story shows the necessity of turning the traditional, ordinary approach into a contemporary, extraordinary one.