Watching Church Growth

I have been a connoisseur of church services since I was a kid. In my youth, I was curious how people did things at churches besides my own. When my friend Steve Hunter got his driver’s license, we drove to visit the churches of kids we met from camp or Bible Bowl. The next year I got my license, and I could go anywhere I wanted to. And I did.

I love what I see churches doing today.

When I attended Bible college, visiting churches was not only a curiosity, it became a requirement. In one of my courses, I had the assignment of attending church services of five different denominations. My first stop was the Crystal Cathedral (Reformed Church). Then I hit the Methodist church, the Baptist church, and so on. Little did I know I was being prepared to be a serial church attendee. Now in my role at CDF, I have attended services at hundreds of different churches over the years.

Music in Harmony

Church services have certainly changed since I started my wanderings. The music has evolved with the generations. It’s a curiosity that the hymns we sang in the 1960s, which were discarded in the 1970s, are now being repurposed to be the contemporary music of the 2010s. I find myself leaning over to my daughter occasionally and saying, “We used to sing that song in church when I was a kid.” Today I can hardly sing “Amazing Grace” without Chris Tomlin’s addition of “My chains are gone, I’ve been set free.”

Just about every church uses image magnification (the fancy way of saying “projectors”). It’s convenient for the singing part of worship (no more, “Turn in your hymnals to page 162”). The harmonies we sang out of the songbook are now replaced by the harmonies of the worship band and worship team. The notes in the hymnal that taught me to read music as a youngster are long gone. (Do you remember singing “Wonderful Grace of Jesus?” The chorus of that song had some incredible melodies!) I’m not saying it’s bad; I’m just saying it’s different. Our offering of worship through singing is just as meaningful today as it was way back when. If you want, you can still hear harmonies knocked out of the park by dropping into your local a cappella Church of Christ some Sunday.

Reminder Through Communion

While most of my church attendance these days is limited to the Christian Church, I find myself occasionally wandering into denominational churches to see what’s going on. What I seem to have found is that in the Christian Church and the Evangelical world there’s not a whole lot of difference.

One of the things I love about the Christian Church is participation in communion every Sunday. The apostle Paul wrote, “For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes” (1 Corinthians 11:26). With that in mind, I don’t know why every church wouldn’t partake of the Lord’s Supper every week. The early church was “continually devoting themselves . . . to the breaking of bread” (Acts 2:42). I understand that a little cracker and a cup of juice isn’t the same as the meals the early church would share, but it’s still a “meal” we participate in that reminds us, week in week out, of the sacrifice our Lord made for us.

Pace of Change

I love what I see churches doing today. Sure, it can feel a little cookie cutter-ish at times, but the people who prepare to lead church services each week—whether it’s a small house church or a church of thousands—put their hearts and souls into it. I understand that it sometimes feels more like a show than a church service. But I also believe you get out of it what you put into it. My 80-something-year-old mother likes to sit in the back where it’s not so loud, but she also comes away each week feeling closer to Jesus than she did the week before.

What I have noticed the most as of late is the pace of change that is taking place in the church, not just in worship services, but in how churches are functioning overall. Think about what the church was like five years ago and what you’re seeing today. We’ll compare notes. Then you and I can see if we’re singing from the same page of the hymnal.