Worship As Evangelism
Probably many of you have read Sally Morgenthaler’s book, Worship Evangelism. It was a thought-provoking study on how our Christian worship can reach the heart of unbelievers.
Then, recently, Sally recanted. (www.allelon.org/articles/article.cfm?id=402). All should read her re-engineered view of worship. She is a brave soul and a blessing to all of us. It takes guts to re-evaluate what you have promoted for years and then confess you have been wrong. More than that, Sally presents some incredible challenges for a more biblical way of worship.
I’ve been concerned with what is considered worship around our location. It isn’t evangelistic at all, unless one is trying to evangelize dollar bills from the already convinced. Unbelievers are seldom at these worship services and when they are present they are not impressed - on the whole.
Far too much effort and money is being diverted from helping the growing numbers of the poor and unashamedly poured into facilities, programs and attention riveting worship services.
I recently had a conversation about the quality of our educational institutions. I is my belief that a university should lose their accreditation if they have not measurably bettered the community that surrounds them. Such a policy would close down many schools including some very wealthy and heady places. How can we trust an educational institution to correctly lead young minds to be useful citizens when they can’t even find solutions for the problems surrounding their own schools?
I think a similar action should be taken with churches. I believe that tax exemption should be conditional upon having met specific goals in uplifting the surrounding community not only from its spiritual impoverishment, but also its crime, poverty, etc. Why should a church take up taxable property if it isn’t even meeting its own mission goals within a square block of its building?
When we call ourselves worshippers of God, it should be evident in our life 24/7. I’ll be the first to acknowledge that I’ve used religion selfishly. It has been my opium rather than an inspirations to acts of compassion for those most needy right around me. I’m working on changing all that in my life.
We need church. We need to come together for an awe-inspiring time of corporate worship. But if we are not set on fire to make real, lasting and useful changes in the world around us - then our worship becomes nauseating to heaven. Jesus, as Sally wrote, spent far more time out healing the people than in the synagogues preaching to believers who refuse to be God’s helping hands in the community.
