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How long would you stand in line to go to your church? I made you chuckle, didn’t I?
Ramsay Customer Rule #7: All business is show business. Create unforgettable experiences. If a restaurant is to succeed it must provide diners with evocative, memorable, and unique food, atmosphere, and service. If they are uninspired, they won’t come back.
I’ve often heard my colleagues in ministry bemoan that worship is not entertainment. So many worship services degenerate into a theatrical performance (whether traditional or modern in style) and the worshippers into spectators. On the one hand, I agree that worshippers must be engaged and active participants in the liturgy—a word that means, quite literally, the work of the people. On the other hand, worship is entertainment. If it’s not interesting, relevant, enjoyable, passionate, and provoking, then people will not participle or engage.
Don’t believe me? Consider the day and age (about 50 years ago or so) when the church was the center of community life—it was where people worshipped, served, socialized, and dare I say had fun! Today, church is not the center of most people’s lives. There is a decline in worship attendance among mainline congregations; people give to the office holiday charity instead of church, we socialize at the mall, or the bar, or the country club, or the coffee shop; and compared to television, 3-D Imax, the Super Bowl or Disney World, church is as about as much fun as watching paint dry. But it doesn’t have to be.
Like it or not, congregations are in competition—with the secular world and with each other.
First, the secular world: We can no longer take for granted that people will attend their neighborhood church and be active participants in the congregation’s outreach and community life. Times have changed, and so has the world. Congregations now find themselves in competition with phenomena that are seemingly out of reach: video games, 3-D movies, golf courses, kids’ sports activities, teens working jobs, and so on. Church has diminished into one more producer trying to compete for consumers’ attention and loyalty. And we are failing. The truth is that we are in competition with entertainment and products that vie for our people’s attention and loyalty.
Our message and way of life is transformative and revolutionary. It is a way of being that challenges the status quo, the comfortable, the complacent, the uninterested and disengaged, the insiders and the outsiders. The good news is free, but requires a lot of work, and total commitment. The kingdom has no use for 10 or 20 or even 50%. Jesus said, ‘No one who puts their hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.’ It’s all or nothing, baby. If we stand for lukewarm Christianity, no wonder people are leaving in droves.
So how do we reach people who are drowning in a sea of noise and distraction? Knock their socks off. If the message we deliver and how we deliver it doesn’t make an impact on people’s lives, then why waste the time? Our goal is not to entertain, per se, but as one of my mentors so often reminded me, it is not a sin to be interesting. We must communicate in creative, passionate, and relevant ways.
(A word about relevance—an idea that gets batted around church talk with little meaning or understanding. Something is only relevant if it matters. Church matters. It matters because it changes and repairs the world by giving us a new way of life—a way of love and sharing and reconciliation and radical inclusion. If worship and education and outreach and evangelism and such and such a ministry don’t matter, then they are irrelevant. Make them matter.).
Like it or not, people are comparing their participation in church with other things that demand their time, attention, and resources. And sometimes, that includes other churches.
Congregations are also in competition with each other. Time was when neighborhoods attended the local parish church. Generations of families would fill the pews. Not today. People shop for churches like they shop for a fitness gym…they browse online, stop by for a visit and try it on for size, make a list of pros and cons. I’ve even had one visitor explain to me his criteria for joining a church, and let me know how my congregation was doing so far. I’m not surprised. We are a consumerist society and competition is the name of the game. Some congregations succeed. Some fail.
The only way to rise above it all is to understand that we are in show business. Jesus understood it. He attracted crowds of thousands, and it wasn’t because he droned from a pulpit on watered-down, touchy-feely, irrelevant faith topics that wouldn’t offend or send them and their wallets away. Quite the contrary—Jesus would heal a leper to demonstrate the intrusion of God’s kingdom into this world, shocking the crowd as he touched the untouchable. Jesus would feed the crowds with a handful of fish and bread, a sign of welcome table fellowship that includes insider and outsider. Jesus would proclaim a kingdom that so scandalized, so outraged, and so offended the peoples’ sensibilities that he was crucified…literally. With Jesus, it was all dinner and show.
The message we preach—of Jesus’ way of grace and mercy and abundance—is so revolutionary, it can’t help but change peoples’ lives. We must have the courage to proclaim it fearlessly in ways that will reach our people. If our worship is a museum piece devoid of modern meaning, if our choirs’ chants echo in the rafters of empty sanctuaries, if our praise bands play the greatest contemporary Christian hits that were contemporary 30 years ago, if our sermons are timid and lukewarm and fearful so as not to offend, if our people just sit there like zombies, disengaged, dispassionate, and dispirited, then we get what we deserve. No, the role of the pastor or worship leader is not to be an entertainer, comedian, or clown. But we must be passionate, relevant, and interesting. Otherwise, no one will listen or participate.
If a congregation is to succeed it must provide worshipers with evocative, memorable, and unique experiences, atmosphere, and service. If they are uninspired, they won’t come back. Holy business is still show business. Create unforgettable experiences.