We are living in a time where traditional worship no longer reaches EVERYBODY! Please understand, I enjoy the Dr. Watts however, if your place of worship is flowing with youth and young adults, they probably don’t know who or what Dr. Watts is. Yea, responsive reading is alright but chile, have you even explained what it is? See, I’ve learned that you have to meet people where they are. Everybody can’t handle the meat of God’s word so you have to give them little by little until their spiritual stomach can handle it. Everybody didn’t come out of their mother’s womb being a bible scholar, a sanctified servant and Holy Ghost filled; you need to meet them at their need. And sometimes, you need to take worship to where they are. This may be on the gym floor of the community center, in the middle of the mall, school auditorium during lunch or in the neighborhoods on Saturday morning. Because whether you believe this or not, everybody isn’t coming inside the four walls of the church.
And as a pastor and governing board of your respective worship places, you have to ask yourself the following:
1. Is service meeting the needs of the majority?
2. Are the youth and young adults covered?
3. Am I speaking King James to a Message Bible relating congregation?
4. Am I teaching and preaching on the level of the members?
And if the majority of your members have their head down, during the entire service, they either don’t understand you, are more intrigued by their phone or asleep. This is when you need to rethink your approach. Everything is not meant to stay the same and what used to work may not work anymore. Poll your congregation but in the midst, you have to be open to constructive criticism, really hearing them out and willing to change from the 50-year-old traditions. And members, you need to be active enough to give constructive criticism. Stop showing, after two years, requesting change when no one barely recognizes you. We’ve got to do better Saints of God. It’s mandatory that we do, now!
“Don’t let anyone capture you with empty philosophies and high-sounding nonsense that come from human thinking and from the spiritual powers of this world, rather than from Christ.” — Colossians 2:8
Lakisha, the Author 