Evaluating Services

Whether we recognize it or not, anything we do regularly becomes formative. This is also includes our weekly corporate worship gathering as the people of God. As we walk the long obedience in the same direction our desires are reshaped, our affections are aimed, our minds are renewed, our priorities realigned. This is why I believe it is imperative that we evaluate our gatherings weekly - because they are formative. That we ask questions that expose and reform the way our gatherings are forming the people. Anything that forms us without regular evaluation and intention will ultimately deform and malform our hearts, minds, and lives. But merely evaluating our services will be insufficient for correct formation. The metrics and measurements against which we evaluate are essential to helping us move in a direction of deep life and soul formation.

What Are The Measurements?

There are standards that the world would give us by which to evaluate the ‘success’ of a gathering such as, how many people were in the room? Did people sing, and seem engaged in corporate worship? Did the band execute musically what you had planned and practiced in rehearsal? Was the production (lights, sound, lyrics, and visuals) fluid and seamless throughout the gathering? Did people have a good experience? Were people uplifted?

Is there anything wrong with these kinds of questions? In and of themselves, no. But what I am suggesting is that we must aim higher and deeper than questions about how well a service was executed. And the truth is what we are attempting to measure is our faithfulness in sowing seeds that will bear fruit over six months, and sixty years, not six days. This means we need to ask questions that not only assess the practical details of how well we have executed a gathering, but ask questions that enable us to constantly be bringing ourselves back to the center of why we gather, and what we are seeking to accomplish as we build set lists and services.

Questions like:

How does our corporate gathering fit within the specific mission of our local Church? What about the Global Church?

Are we speaking to the breadth of the human experience in our gathering - joy and sorrow, apathy and zeal, abundance and poverty, hope and fear, faith and unbelief?

How is our gathering helping people make sense of their lives, their work, their relationships, and world outside these walls?

How are we helping people see that all of life is worship?

Are people growing in their understanding of the heart and character of Christ through our gathered time?

There is a three-fold metric the church were I serve uses as a plumb line during our weekly service evaluation meetings that we lifted from Bryan Chapell’s book ‘Christ-Centered Worship,’

‘Church leaders designed their order of worship to communicate the truths of Scripture, touch the hearts of worshipers with the implications of those truths, and then equip believers to live faithfully in the world as witnesses to those truths.’

These are the truths we hope will mark our corporate gathering weekly and over time.

A Warning

Pride will seek to tip the scales in either direction as you seek to evaluate services. Pride will say: ‘Wow, we are doing an amazing job at accomplishing all of the things in our weekly gathering we have set out to accomplish. We are so thoughtful, intentional, and skilled in executing these goals.’ And on the other side pride will say: ‘Wow, we are terrible at this. We do not have a larger vision for our gathering, and do not have the skills to execute all of the beautiful things God may want to do in our unique context. We are awful, why even bother?’

When I feel myself slipping down the slope of pride on either side, I try to remind myself - these are God’s people, not mine. This is Christ’s Church, not mine. I am not nearly as powerful as I think, nor am I as insignificant as I feel. It is the Holy Spirit who does the work of transformation. It is the Father who does the work of conforming people to the image of His Son. God does not need our feeble efforts to accomplish His purpose, but He invites us into His story, and His work in the lives of His people in His world.

Evaluating services will require humility and intention. This is hard work, but work that is worth the effort.

Becoming A Liturgist

Worship is formative - we become what we behold. This is a weighty responsibility for those of us choosing songs, creating setlists, and leading worship. What are we putting before the eyes, hearts, and in the mouths of the people we lead and serve?

If worship is indeed formative, we need to think long-term about how our choices are forming and discipling the people we lead. Our vision must be larger than 20 minutes once a week. Selecting a handful of songs for the weekend may get the job done in the short term, but it will create malformed disciples in the long run.

So how do we shape our perspective? How do we attempt the deep work of formation and discipleship if we are responsible for such a small sliver of people’s time? My proposal: become a liturgist.

Liturgy means work of the people.

Although we often associate liturgy with ‘high church’ services (think, incense, robes, and scripted prayers), every church has a liturgy. So even a loose structure of songs and service order for churches who have never followed the Church calendar or cracked a prayer book are still liturgical.

The first step in becoming a liturgist is realizing, you already are. If liturgy is the work of the people, we all contribute to the corporate gathering. But those of us who carry responsibility for what happens as we gather have a unique opportunity to intentionally form our liturgy to form intentional disciples.

As liturgists, we must hold a bigger picture in mind in our planning, preparation, and decisions. Liturgy is no silver bullet or secret weapon, it is a helpful framework for thinking and working toward greater formation among those we lead and serve.

Next week I’ll write about some of the ways we can begin to be more thoughtful and intentional in crafting our liturgies.