Phil Cooke

I think what we are legitimately missing is letting the Holy Spirit do what He does. There are a LOT of churches out there that get wrapped up in the music, the lighting, the video, the HYPE, thinking that THAT's what draws people, but it's not.  It's the POWER of the Holy Spirit working in His people.

I'm a bass player, and when I lived in Tulsa, there was this push towards contemporary services, which meant I was in high demand. I used to joke that if a bassist could form the word "Jesus" in his mouth, he could get a church gig in Tulsa! But what I found was that churches wanted the (Pentecostal) experience without the (Pentecostal) Holy Spirit Himself!

That's where we're missing it. I've been to several of the relevance churches, and I feel the same way about most of them. I'm not saying "be Pentecostal," but I am saying, without reservation, that the ONLY way to capture the hearts of those in attendance is to let the Holy Spirit do His thing.

You want mystery? Let the Holy Spirit work, and you'll have it by the bucketloads. 

Great posts…..Richard, Christian, Breaklight, Walrus, Dominique…..and insight!

"When we move aside and let the Holy Spirit have free reign."
Sounds like the upper room of Acts. 

"Churches want the look and the feel without the Holy Spirit, himself."  Good point, Richard.

Ever been to a Catholic charismatic service?   They have the liturgy with the Holy Spirit.

God "inhabits the praises of His people."  Spiritual hunger is what pulls at the heart of God…maybe we're too content and not hungry enough to pay the price to be in and experience His presence.  He "will draw nigh to us, if we will draw nigh to Him."  Perhaps that is what they did in the Welsh revival and now, Florida.  Visions of Heaven by H.A. Baker showed what hungry little boys in a China orphanage experienced when they set their sights on "seeking God."

Unfortunately we have the same issues in Australian churches.  I say unfortunately because we seem to spend so much time arguing over the music/clothes/style/etc that we are distracted from our calling.

The casualisation of church is partly a reflection of Western society.  I remember when I started working in corporations over 20 years ago there were very strict rules about business attire – one US firm I worked for even prohibited women wearing pant suits to work.  Now we see people wearing collared tshirts with suits and having casual attire policies for days depending on client meetings.

Recently I have been having conversations with various people from many church backgrounds about issues surrounding how much we appeal to the unchurched through our services' music and structure.  There is a wide spread of opinions matching this blog.  More and more I am convinced that we should not be matching the unchurched but showing them something different – even sacred.  This does not mean incense and robes but a real connection and reconciliation to God through Christ.  Too often I find the reason churches are becoming more casual is their belief they need to appeal to unchurched people.  Where is the room for God to work in them?

Also can we all try to stop copying each other?   As someone said earlier there should be a church for everyone.

I support and back both staements made by Gaspard and Christian on this. The Holy Spirit is the Person that makes Church alive after all He is the One Who gave life to Christ Jesus and without Him Jesus could do no ministry work. He was sent to help us and yet we neglect Him to our own detriment. Until we submit and surrender to the Leadership of the Holy Spirit we will never have true freedom and expression of love towards God and man in our churches in whatever capacity it is we have church [2 Corinthians 3:17-18]. I believe the reason why we are so reluctant to letting the Holy Spirit lead, is the nasty abuse we have seen of others and yet He is more than just speaking in tongues – so much more than that – He is friend that the believer has been given to by God to comfort us and strengthen us in our walk with God. Another reason is pride and arrogance in that we think we know it all, we know so much yet look around us what has it achieved for us, more pain and sorrow especially to others and ourselves. Unless we know all there is to know about God and ourselves it is high time we let the Holy Spirit lead us and we follow Him. This action may make a lot of current leaders (and some believers/Christians) in the Body of Christ feel insecure and unwanted but the abuse will go away and the falling into sin lifestyles will become almost a thing of the past. I can say this because I am experiencing Him everyday and life is so much more interesting – but there is a labour in prayer and surrendering one must do to yield to Him. My marriage is better because of Him – and yes even the…

What we're all looking for is an experience with a real God. The problem we're running into is that neither liturgy nor casual, seeker friendly services can provide that. Our frustration is probably a good thing. Maybe it means that God is bringing us to a place where we are fed up with singing about Him, and talking about Him without experiencing Him. 

I've heard over and over, and I believe it, that in the next decade or so we will see a revival, great awakening or whatever you want to call it that will radically change how we do church. Nobody seems to know exactly what that will look like, but most seem to agree that what it will most radically affect is our experience of God in the worship service.

I'm not so sure that people are looking for mystery in their experience of God as much as they want reality in their experience of God. And power point presentations, kicking worship bands (which I enjoy very much), incense, the dramatics of the preacher, or lack thereof, are cheap imitations and often distractions of what we want the most out of our worship service, which is an experience of Him. 

I would suspect that no marketing campaign, no conference of church leaders to address the problem, or no new strategy will solve this dilemma. It probably won't be very pretty either. What kind of branding strategy does this guy in Florida have with his arms and neck covered with tattoos, and his eyebrows pierced? But if you watch those meetings, the people in the congregation appear to be enjoying the worship service because they are connecting with the presence of God, and for all of us, that's what we're after in our heart of hearts. Maybe change will look like that. Maybe it will come in a form offensive to our normal church paradigm but will provide us with that connection to His presence that we are so hungry for. 

Obviously, God can work through the medium of television, whether live, recorded, real-time or delayed.  For us to think otherwise is placing limits on Him.  I think what you're referring to has a simpler explanation.  Like it or not, it's more a matter of copyright law and what a church can and cannot record and broadcast.  It's safer and easier to broadcast only a sermon, rather than music/worship as well.

Dear t-hype,

Great post!  As for what would knock a church’s socks off?  I’ve wondered if we tried, well, truth.

What if a pastor came into a two-thousand member church and said, “How many of you… know the ‘how many of you’ question is used to control a crowd, to control YOU!”  We pastors have to stop that.  If I ask how many of you have been sick with a disease, then I say, ‘I’m here to tell you, GOD IS GOOD!”  This litany, dear congregation, can be repeated as a wile to gain audience control.  Pastors use it when they don’t have a sermon.  You can see Paula White do it on TV.  We have to repent of that cheap trick.

And what if I say, ‘Say Amen!’  And then you reply, and I say, ‘You can do better than that!”  That also, dear congregation, is an audience control trick.  Then if I make you look up a dozen scriptures; if I say, ‘Turn to your neighbor and say such and such.’  It won’t be long before I’ve got complete control of your body, soul and spirit.  All these are cheap audience control tricks.  We need to repent of that, we leaders. 

And we leaders learn a lot from TV ministries.  They teach us audience control techniques done big time at gatherings of 10,000 or even half a million.  We learn reality deception field projection from them!  We need to repent of that.

Then, watch my spirit.  If I am strident, if my voice is weak, if I seem unconvincing of spirit…then, maybe my truth is out of line with the Bible.  If I speak with a weak spirit, a weak voice and a weak truth… then I dull the spiritual ears and eyes of you, the congregation.  We leaders have been doing this for, say, fifty years.  We need to repent of that.

And we bring in fear every time we talk about eschatology, rapture and end times insanity.  It’s all fear based.  But fear sells well, so we use it.  But fear is not of God.  So we need to repent of that!

Then, if something unusual happens.  Say the power goes out.  Is God in this?  We ALWAYS teach to never check on God real time.  NEVER!  If my wife locks the baby in her car parked right out front, we never check to see if God is telling us something.  NEVER!  Never do we practice that God is, well actually alive.  But God is alive!  So we need to repent of that also – of teaching by way of example, that we really believe God is dead and doesn’t speak to us through animal, mineral, plant, person and happening.  We REALLY need to repent of that.

And then, dear congregation, occasionally we will tell you about a prophet.  We bring him in.  We use him or her for entertainment.  Only entertaining prophets will do.  Tell us the future!  That’s entertaining!  But it’s not biblical.  Prophets rebuke dummy leaders like me.  So we keep them away, FAR AWAY from church leadership!  Yup, we teach you, the congregation, to disbelieve all rebuking prophets.  Of course, in the bible that about all the REAL prophets did… was rebuke dummies like me, your leader.  So I REALLY need to repent of that.

This list of repentance is quite long, actually.  But would God honor such humility in honoring truth?  If we awoke, would God awake in us?