How can future worship help us offer Christ to all?

My View

One of the recent concerns of our annual conference has been the decline of membership and worship attendance after many years of increase. Those years of increase were years that we lifted up our faithfulness as an example to the entire church and gave God thanks for what was happening in our midst.
What might our future be?
Let us remind one another that worship and our congregational life must be friendly. For visitors to come to worship and return, they must feel welcomed and invited. That means we accept and love people and invite them to share in what we think is valuable. We must smile, shake hands, hug, welcome, offer encouraging words.
Our worship needs to be unified. Acts of the Apostles tells us that those early disciples were spending time together, that they had all things in common. They were unified in their prayers and in their concern for one another. They were more focused upon finding things in common than finding things to disagree upon.
Worship must be thematic. Our worship experiences must begin, develop, grow, climax and send us forth with one common theme. Yes, I know that the heart of worship is God, but let our hymns, prayers, anthems, sermon and scripture flow from the theme that God places upon our heart. If we follow the lectionary, then prayerfully find the theme that comes forth in the scripture and build upon it.
Our worship must be understandable. That means not only what is said in worship but what is not said. If bulletins are used, make them visitor friendly. If multimedia are used, make sure that all can read the projection screens and that the slides are aesthetically pleasing.
Sometimes what we do in worship needs to be explained to make sense of it. Don’t hesitate to introduce a hymn if that introduction will help the congregant have a better appreciation for the thought behind the hymn.
Worship must be relevant. People want to come to worship to encounter an experience that speaks to their heart and their need. Our relevant worship can be both traditional and contemporary. What is at issue is not the format but the foundation underneath the format. No style of worship can be owned by the participant unless it is pertinent to our need to worship God.
Worship must be evangelistic. David Bosch defines evangelism as “the proclamation of salvation in Christ to those who do not believe in him, calling them to repentance and conversion, announcing forgiveness of sin, and inviting them to become living members of Christ’s earthly community and to begin a life of service to others in the power of the Holy Spirit.” Can we truly say that our worship experience is evangelistic? Are we offering Christ for the salvation of souls? Are we inviting people into a new relationship that leads them to change?
As you can see, I have tried to be creative with the acronym FUTURE. There is much more to be said, and there are some very concrete business model steps we must follow to ensure that our worship and membership increase.
Yes, there is much more to our vitality than numbers, but they are a strong indicator of activity. Remember that all revival movements in the life of the church began with a strong foundation of prayer. The same is true within our congregations today.
Revival begins with prayer, and it flourishes when we take proactive steps to ensure our future. What will your future hold?