WORSHIP SHIFT: Your Best Worship Now [Part I]

Thanks to those of you who have been following this Worship SHIFT series of blogs. I hope its been helpful to you. I may be on my last one (split into two parts), unless someone poses me some new question, so feel free to email me yours at [mark@sunriseaustin.org].

This blog entry will be large-scoped and far-reaching - more philosophical, big picture stuff. Many of you know that my main gifts are in administration and the creation of systems in the area of worship has been a great part of the success of the worship transitions I've been a part of. Worship transitions often fail because people have no idea what they are working toward. You may not like everything on this list - but I'm fairly certain that, if you do each of the things, they'll cause your worship ministry to flourish. I think that if you do some of them, it might help - but I recommend all.Hopefully this list helps.

• Permanent Teams: There was a time in my life in ministry where I thought the creation of permanent worship teams was just a nice thing, but the longer I do this, the more I feel it is essential - the most essential piece of transitioning a worship ministry, in fact. Perhaps the best reason for this is the chaos that not doing it creates. I talk to so many worship people who are drowning in their positions because they have to recruit new teams of people every week, teach them new songs, create on the fly and have no sort of debriefing or evaluative mechanism. The critics will say, of course, that creating permanent teams is exclusionary and doesn't allow for maximum participation in worship. But, last I checked not everyone is gifted for participation in worship - probably not even 40% of people. Why put people on stage just to put them on stage? Additionally, creation of permanent teams is almost always accompanied by the creation of a system for team entrance, be it auditions or whatever. The pros to permanent teams are immense. First of all, creating permanent teams creates community - a small group atmosphere - where people can live in purposeful relationship with eachother. This has a spiritual benefit, but also a musical one. Most live bands practice for hours upon hours before ever playing a song in public - they need to know the other musicians, know the songs inside and out and understand the direction of the band. Why would we think worship teams are any different? Every church that I've seen build a team structure has benefited in the long run through cohesiveness, quality elevation and overall experience of the musicians. Rotating your teams also creates weeks off for band members - an essential to stopping the all-too-common problem of musician burnout in churches. I always set as a goal that NO ONE plays every week. The end result of this is two or three or more solid bands that grow together and support eachother - if you do no other thing on my list, please consider this one.
• Identify Permanent Team Leaders: The next step after creating your teams is identifying team leaders for each team. Some people are opposed to having a "worship leader", but let me tell you that the benefits are immense. At my church, my worship leaders conduct the entire service, other than specified announcements and the message. Worship leaders are primarily concerned with flow. Flow is the key to quality worship in the modern environment and without someone directing the show, flow won't happen, I promise you - make awkwardness your enemy because it will chase away any guests that venture into your worship service. So where do I look for leaders? Sometimes its obvious and sometimes its not. And, in the interest of full disclosure, sometimes those who seem obvious for the job are the worst ones. Never hire anyone who is self-interested. Look at sports - selfish players ruin teams. I would sacrifice musical quality for selflessness any day of the week. If you have a piano player who wants control, do not give it to them. The best leaders are often those who don't want control, but are willing to lead. Once you have your leaders, make it obvious on stage - have them stand in front of the backup singers. Let them take the entrances so the congregation knows when to sing. Let them pick the songs. Let them develop the program. Support them, because they will feel like absolute crap on Sunday afternoons - we all do. Elevate them as leaders in the church. Make sure that when the band practices, the worship leaders ALONE are in charge of the sound, the order of verses/choruses/etc., prayer and every other aspect of practice. Worship leaders must be in the band - I've been in churches where someone on the worship committee, etc. picks the songs, directs practice but isn't actually on the team - its a recipe for disaster, folks. Your worship will only be as good as your worship leaders, trust me.
• Midweek Practice: If you're trying to do worship transition and aren't willing to make your band practice midweek - give up now. If musicians won't commit to midweek practice, let them find another place in the church to serve. Any time a change occurs anywhere in the church, if you want that change to stick, it needs quality. If you need another reason, we're doing it for God - its our firstfruits - so why give him our half-best? Please promise me right now you won't try to do modern worship in your church without a minimum of two one-hour practices for each service (we do Tuesday nights and Sunday mornings and both are longer than 1 hour). Your midweek service is the time to try stuff out - to fail. Your Sunday morning practice is strictly a dress rehearsal.
• Fill Your Band: Here is a revelation some of you need: 15 singers is not a band, its a choir. Choirs do not sing modern worship songs, bands do. Modern worship is written for modern worship bands, which consist, at the minimum, of a rhythm guitar, a lead guitar, a drummer, a bass guitar and vocalists. Keyboards are nice, but are optional. Some of you just got a queasy feeling. If you're wondering why your worship doesn't sound good, start with the band. If all you have is a keyboard and singers, please don't try to sing Hillsong. Please? - it just makes all of us look bad. Making sub-par music in a transitioning church is the #1 sure way to ensure people will fight you. Making quality music in a transitioning environment is the #1 to ensure your transition will happen. But I don't have musicians! (I heard you whining that just now). You can find them and there's advice in my previous posts about what rocks to look under. Stop whining - whiners seldom make good worship leaders.
• Debrief: One of the number one ways to improve your worship is to use some form of debriefing - and some way of evaluating. The best way I've found is to do a simple recording of the worship service and make everyone in the band watch the video, through YouTube and at practice - and then identify ways we can improve. But, if you lack that technology, you can have one team evaluate the other - honestly. The best way, however, is to make people watch themselves, listen to themselves and critique themselves. Unless they're people of low integrity (who shouldn't be on your team in the first place), they'll be horrified the first time. Being horrified is okay, if it puts you on a trajectory for improvement. Some people might quit after hearing themselves and, they might need to. Improvement always involves front-end quality checks and back-end quality checks. Make sure you pay attention to both.

Hopefully these get you rolling.........I'll have about 8 more next week. Until then, enjoy.

WORSHIP SHIFT: The No-Band Band

I'm currently watching USA's "Burn Notice", where spy Michael Weston reveals how spies do the things they do - the secrets, if you will. Well, one of the main problems churches come to me with is lack of pieces for their band. Its a common moan and groan - one I've had myself at times. But, like most problems, there are multiple solutions.

The one thing you do not want to do in any worship transition is transition to something that is not done well. I've seen far too many churches switch to blended, contemporary or modern worship from traditional worship only to trend backwards again because the musical quality of the new style was poor. The poor quality can come from a variety of places - such as inexperience or congregational uncomfortability - but more often it comes from the band being incomplete.

Really, band incompleteness is no one's fault, but it seems to be a problem for most transitioning churches and the reasons are fairly obvious. Churches that are transitioning are transitioning FROM something - probably something most musicians (other than organists) are not attracted to. Second, many transitioning churches still fall into a quandary - paying organists/pianists while not paying band members who often do more and more complex work. Whatever the reason, the end result is that guitarists, drummers, bass players and pop vocalists are not prevalent in transitioning churches unless you're willing to pay for them to be there. But, attempting to play modern worship without the key instruments (rhythm guitar, lead guitar, bass, drums) is unwise.

So what then? Find it or fake it.

Find It

If you take this option, there's a few rocks that are always good to look under. For instance, even though you might not have any electric bass players in the church, you might have high schooler who plays cello in the orchestra - the principles are almost exactly the same. Other good places to look for bass players: people who can sort of play a 6-string guitar and anyone who plays a band/orchestra instrument in the bass clef - trombone, tuba, etc. In fact, almost any band instrumentalist will be able to pick up electric bass with some time and a YouTube account. [Best bass player I've found: former bassoon player]

How about a drummer? Drummers are everywhere - they just need to be found. The only non-negotiable for possible drummers: lack of rhythm. Just don't start new drummers on a full trapset. Start them on a shaker (egg shakers are about $3). Then, move them on to a djembe or bongos (djembes have a nicer sound). Then, let them play with the trapset, but use a clicktrack in your monitors to help train them (easy to create through GarageBand or with drum machine listed below). [Best drummers I found: teenager in pep band at local high school who couldn't play at his Catholic church and 50-year-old drummer I found on BandMix.com who used to open for Alice In Chains]

Guitar players are more difficult, but the same rule from above apples - no one who can't keep a rhythm, which excludes more people than you think - rhythm is rarely learned. Can they clap on the beat - even complex beats? Start there. Check your local college for guitar players - find local teenage bands - kids are often just looking for a place to play. Good drummers often make the best guitarist, by the way - challenge them to make the progression if you have enough drummers. [Best guitar player I found: lead guitarist for local teenage death metal band who would play Sunday mornings after raves on Saturday nights].

Fake It

One of the most impressive things I've ever seen was a young man who was the self-described "solo musician" at his church. He played a kick drum with his foot, played bass with his left hand and piano with his right hand. What's funny is that it sounded better than many "full" church bands I've seen. And, while I realize most of us can't pull this off, it illustrates a couple points: 1)DO NOT compromise the rhythm section, whatever you do. Keep in mind the modern worship team hierarchy (above). 2)Less on each instrument still sounds like more when you have more instruments, or three instruments playing less is better sounding than one instrument playing three times as much.

Let me assert that I think you can pull off a modern worship band with one person. You have two, you say? Well then just insert your creativity and make it happen. How can I make this claim? Because I've done it. Here's how I run my solo rig:

Guitar: This one's hard to fake, so I play a rhythm guitar. What you CAN do is make playing guitar easier. Using a cut capo (right), you can turn any regular chord in the key of "E" into a one or two finger chord. Add a regular capo and you can now play any regular chord in any key with one or two fingers. What this means for the player is less concentration, less dedication needed on the guitar alone. And, since many worship artists like Chris Tomlin and Billy Foote write for the key of E, it works (trust me!).

Bass: This is also hard to fake and you could probably go without it, if you have to, but what's easy to do is pick up an octave pedal, which simultaneously doubles low notes an octave lower, in bass range. I use a Boss OC-3. You can also play on your low strings only during bass-driven parts of the song to create the same effect.

Drums: Many people hate the sound of drum machines, but they're not the worst thing in the world. As one of my vocalists said to me this week: "Wow, that thing never screwed up!" And he was right. But even if you don't like the mechanical nature of it - drum machines are better than no drummer (not to mention better than many real drummers). My drum machine is an Alesis SR-16 with two pedals - one for tap tempo (so I start the guitar, tap the tempo and it comes in at that tempo) and the other for on/off. I can also put in fills with the tap pedal.

Keyboard: Although keyboard isn't essential to the modern worship band (see my previous posting), it helps, especially in this setup, to have some smoothing ambient sounds. But where is your favorite 80's synthesizer rocker? Nowhere....and that's just fine. Grab your laptop, download ambient pads for free in every key from this website [http://www.soundclick.com/bands/default.cfm?bandID=1006691], open iTunes and turn on the repeat-2 function. Suddenly, you've got yourself the best keyboardist you've ever played with. Run that signal through a volume pedal and suddenly you've also got yourself fade in/fade outs.

Other Options: There's many directions you can go with this - many things can be done with loops that you can download online that will essentially work like full background tracks, which allow you to add and subtract instruments as you need them. Get yourself a program like Reason, Cakewalk or even GarageBand on your Mac and you can produce an entire band sound without the band. You might also try a loop pedal, which allows you to make live loops (ie, smack your guitar for percussion, loop it, play the rhythm part, loop it, play the lead part, etc.). I've seen guitar geniuses do this and imitate full bands, as well - but you have to know what you're doing.

Whatever you do, do it well. And please, please repeat after me: "I will never allow my church to sing songs to a CD." There, we just made the world a better place.

Worship SHIFT: Piano As the Golden Calf

I’ve consulted on worship to what’s going on a hundred churches now from all different areas of the country and with all different issues, but there seems to be one commonality between most of them. If they say they have issues with their worship, the first thing I ask for is what the keyboardist is doing. Most issues can be traced back to a wrong role for the piano – trying to play Hillsong or Tomlin with piano leadership because the keyboardist won’t back down or because the church thinks it needs a piano leading to sing. It struck me in watching the “Hillsong Creative Training” DVD the other day, that modern worship has found a creative place for the piano on the stage: nowhere.

A little history lesson on worship as it relates to keyboards throughout history. For the first few years of the Church’s history, instrumentation wasn’t a key issue with singing, since much of it happened through chant or through basic accompaniment. However, with the advent of the pipe organ, the European church fell in love with four part hymn singing to that sound and it migrated with the immigrants to North America. Worship music was largely written for piano and organ for years, except for a few pockets of Great Awakening hymns drummed up by mandolin players in the Kentucky hills. But, a worship revolution coincided with a church revolution in the 1970’s-1990’s. Although groups like the Gaithers had been using popular instrumentation, churches across the country started to use guitars and rhythm instruments in worship. This change should not be taken lightly as many a “worship war” split churches and people. Around the year 2000, a more significant change for our discussion happened. Worship music became more of an industry, more mainstream and more focused on a few key centers of output with a few key leaders setting the tone. Worship leaders Chris Tomlin and Hillsong United emerged as the key leaders of today.

There is one other note that should be made. Many people equivocate “contemporary” with “modern” worship. I argue for a difference between the two, and the difference is key in understanding changes in the use of the keyboard. This difference can be seen very evidently between contemporary leaders, such as Michael W. Smith and Darlene Zscech versus their national successors – Chris Tomlin and Hillsong United (led by Joel Houston rather than Zscech). Whereas Smith and Zschech’s music makes heavy use of keyboard as a lead instrument, Tomlin and Houston’s use the keyboard only as an accent/support instrument, if at all. In many cases, especially in live performances, laptops are subbed for keyboards altogether for ambient effects. This change is laid out in great detail by both Hillsong Church, who replaced Zscech with Houston in the 2000’s to change their style and Smith, whose live worship CD released in the 2000’s, “A New Hallelujah” features virtually no original songs after his 1990’s releases “Worship” and “Worship Again” featured mostly original content. Smith’s songs have mostly dropped out of the CCLI Top 25 (most used music in the worldwide Church), while Houston/Hillsong’s music dominates it.

This leaves churches in a bind. The first thing to realize as a church is that you must diagnose what stage you are currently in and not try to jump two stages at once. If you are traditional, the jump to modern could kill your base if you don’t move to contemporary first. The move to modern must be done, as all changes must, well. If your church does not have a strong rhythm section (rhythm guitar, bass guitar, drums), attempting to shift to modern worship is an almost impossible task. There is a reason the worldwide Church went through contemporary worship on the way to modern worship – it is a bridge style with some traditional elements, including logical versifications and piano-based leadership, in many cases.

In modern worship, however, the keyboardist is asked to step to the back and simply serve as a support or accent instrument. Even keyboardists for major leaders in the industry such as Hillsong United rarely use two hands on the keyboard – often playing one or two notes at a time or laying down ambient pads to undergird the sound.

This change in the keyboard’s role will, obviously, be felt the most by the keyboard player. For churches who are transitioning, recognize that all keyboard players will not be happy with the change. Traditional piano players are used to playing with both hands, laying down bass, treble, alto and soprano lines, setting the rhythm and leading the congregation. To shift from that to simply playing accent notes and laying down ambient chords is not only difficult to swallow, it can be downright insulting (not to mention many churches pay organists/piano players and modern worship means their paycheck goes away).

Recognize that you may have keyboardists that may quit and that isn’t the end of the world. In some ways, training new keyboardists for the new style is optimal compared to trying to fit traditional keyboardists into a modern keyboardist role. It is important to realize, however, that keyboardists are artists and, when pushed aside or asked to do something limiting, will react harshly unless they are blessed with a high degree of humility. I cannot tell you how many churches this scenario repeats itself in. At conferences, I’ll often mention the “piano Nazi” and someone jumps into everyone’s mind because the experience is so common to all of us.

The key is to approach worship change as necessary and with love. If you love too much and let the keyboardist run you over, they will. If you are too adamant about their role, you could run off a very good potential band member. Do not be afraid, however, to move forward if your keyboardist will not come with you. Find someone else (you can fake keyboard in a modern band with very limited knowledge if you have good rhythm and knowledge of notes, using the right keyboard patches) or simply download some ambient mp3 sounds from the internet and use a laptop in the keyboardist’s place. Often, it sounds better.

Make sure everyone realizes that, in this style of music, keyboard is not lead. That needs to be said and said again. If your band and church isn’t comfortable with that – play some 80’s/90’s music that’s written for piano leadership. Muddying the waters will only hurt you in the long run.

Worship SHIFT: Why the Word “Blended” Scares Me as a Worship Style

Churches suffer for many reasons. In some cases, they are subject to moral failure, to stubbornness or to attacks from the devil. But, nothing kills a church or ministry faster than the greatest devil of them all: ambiguity. When people don’t know what the boundaries or definitions of terms everyone’s throwing around are, other people get hurt. When words like “blended” enable everyone to attach their own particular meaning, people fight.

The ironic thing is that many churches strive for ambiguity under the guise of “freedom” or “inclusivism”. What’s interesting is that we fail to take into account our theological perspective on human depravity – that, given ultimate freedom with no boundaries, we fail every time. Boundaries don’t necessarily limit freedom so much as they provide an open space within which to create. You spend less time worrying about what is “acceptable” and more time focusing on continued innovation on the norm, which is key to worship in any style or context.

I’ve seen far too many churches choose “blended” for the wrong reason. You’ve generally got the traditional camp thinking to themselves “how much are we willing to give up to appease the contemporary side?” and the contemporary camp asking themselves “how far can we push the limits before the traditionalists bite back?” Of course, the problem with all of this is that no one is thinking about the bigger issues – how does God want to be worshipped? How does our immediate neighborhood/target demographic want to worship and what sort of music to they listen to?

Really, it brings out the selfishness in everyone – each side determining to themselves that they’ll define what sort of blend we’ll have – 80/20 instead of 50/50, for instance. Both are blended – but both include concessions from one side or the other. You can call my latte a blended drink regardless of the percentage of milk, espresso or flavoring.

So what’s the positive solution? There could be many, but I’ll propose one. If you truly want a mix of traditional, contemporary and modern elements – try on this word: eclectic. Unlike “blended” which simply implies the presence of two elements (99/1 is still blended), eclectic has qualitative degrees. For instance, something with 10 elements is more eclectic than something with 2. To be eclectic is to notice when the presence of a particular element is under-represented or simply missing.

How would you describe your church’s worship?

Worship SHIFT

Some of you may have noticed I haven't blogged in a while - some you definitely have not. Well, one of my 2010 professional goals is to take up blogging once again, now that I'm settled in the Republic of Texas.

For the upcoming months, I'm going to do something people have been asking me to do for a while - espouse a little on the topic of shifting worship in a traditional, established church towards a more contemporary or modern style. I'm calling it Worship SHIFT and they'll start coming hot and heavy since I get passionate about this stuff. This blog will feature topics that are more philosophical in nature. If you are looking for more nuts and bolts type advice, feel free to email me [mark@sunriseaustin.org] or join us on the new CRC Network, if you're CRC, of course. Post questions in the Worship forum and I'll be happy to take it from there and we'll have the luxury of hearing more voices. But here, you only get mine. Lucky you.

Let My People Go!

So, yesterday I attended a conference put on by Feeding America to address food shortages in poverty-stricken areas in West Michigan. These are generally pretty good events and I like seeing the different ways in which needs are being met across the area. But as I looked around the room, I noticed something I hadn't before: every one of the volunteers were very blue collar and the youngest person there besides me was 30 years older.

This got me to thinking: I represent two demographics in America - white collar professionals and 20-somethings. Unfortunately, these are not two demographics that are keen on serving in areas like food distribution or poverty alleviation. Maybe its because we graduate from college, get married and are so focused on our careers, buying houses and starting families that we just forget to help the poor? Or maybe its that we're willing to volunteer, just not help organize? Or maybe its what an older pastor said to me once (and it made me throw up a little in my mouth): Well, you're in your 20's....you need to focus on you now and you can start giving when you're 30.

Now, I'm not saying all white collar 20-somethings need to go out and sell all their possessions and give the money to the poor (although Jesus did to a rich young man), I'm just saying - lets lend our financial resources and expertise to help do poverty alleviation better. Have you ever volunteered at a soup kitchen or food pantry and thought to yourself, wow - this could be run MUCH more efficiently? I know I have. Have you ever thought, why is this place only open from 10 AM-noon on weekdays when those who are actually working need to be at work? I know I have. Have you ever walked into a massive mega-church and wondered how much good they could do if they even threw 10% of their personnel/ministry resources at poverty as well as money. I know I have.

Of course its easier to give money than volunteer your time, but think about this - how much farther would everyone's money go if a few of us with organizational talents helped out just a little - making programs more efficient, using technology to make processes easier. Perhaps it is the case that those who have been closer to poverty in their own lives feel more of an obligation to the poor, but denying your expertise and skills to an organization simply because you can throw money at it just ensures that the cycle of poverty will grow larger and larger until, eventually, it rolls us all over.

And the Oscar Goes To....

So, I'm watching the Oscars on TV and it strikes me - movies and churches have a lot in common. Bare with me here. You ever notice how all these no-name tech people and foreign film directors get awards for the first 2/3 of the night and nobody really cares? In fact, if those people happen to thank too many people, the Oscar producers look for a chance to start the into-commercial music and shoo off the recipients.

For many people, church is the worship service - never mind the Bible studies, the pastoral care, the committee meetings, the Wednesday night programming and everything else going on at the church throughout the week. For "up-front" personnel at worship services (speakers, worship leaders, liturgists, worship bands, etc.), this means that what you do reflects on your entire staff and, for visitors, on your entire church.

My wife will often wonder why I feel so emotionally burned after a Sunday morning, but it follows a pretty easy logic trail: if there's a sound malfunction or a PowerPoint faux pas, it reflects on the worship leader (nobody thinks to blame the sound booth). If the speaker delivers a poor message, it reflects poorly on the church's council and on the church as a whole - as if this is the best speaker our church can produce. Similarly, one bad acting role can ruin an entire movie - ruin a perfect soundtrack or ruin great wardrobe/makeup.

Of course, all this is accentuated by a consumer-driven church culture, but despite all the church "purists" defamating consumer-driven church, the fact is that we live in a consumer-driven (or "seeker sensitive") church world. And, quite frankly, rather than just complaining, we as churches should try and make ourselves better because God asks for our firstfruits - firstfruits in daily life and firstfruits in ecclesiology. For churches, that means good speakers and good worship. Whether you preach from the lectionary or very practically - whether you have traditional worship or modern worship - do what you do and do it well. Why? Not for the consumer, but for God.

On Location

Fair warning: I'm re-reading the book "The Shaping of Things to Come", one of my favorites, and many of the concepts of these posts will be mental nuggets, agreement or argument with that book, even though I may not directly reference it.

Today I got to thinking about what it means for the church to physically be where people are. There's a few different directions this concept can go. The first is perhaps the simplest. We've had a rash of churches moving out of our city limits for the grassy knolls of the countryside where new buildings can be built without regulation and where signs are not distractions to passing motorists. Another added benefit/problem of moving out of town is the ability to handselect attenders. Let's face it, most people new to a community or seeking a church family are not first going to check out a church in the countryside. Of course, this isn't a hard and fast rule, but it would seem to make the most logical sense (and, since I'm Reformed, I'm allowed to tie logic to faith). For many churches, this ability to handpick congregants could be a big plus. After all, those with vehicles and the will to drive to church are also those most likely to tithe. People who walk to church could have any variety of issues - homelessness, lack of transportation, low commitment, etc. So I guess the real issue is deciding who your target group is, determining what your vision is and adjusting your location likewise.

Many churches are guilty of the we-got-given-a-property-so-we're-building-there syndrome. Maybe its not a reality where you are (although I bet it is if you look for it), but in every community in which I've lived (South Dakota, Iowa, New York, Kentucky, Michigan), churches love to set themselves up just outside of town or on the outskirts of town. You really have to ask yourself why. Some churches move to these locations because they can. Given our economy and the regulatory practice of many municipal boards, that might be a reality. Some churches deem their current buildings unable to meet their current ministry needs, for whatever reason (age of building, size of building, etc.). This seems more legitimate, but leaving town should be a last resort, as far as I'm concerned. Some churches, particularly in the Midwest, sit where communities used to sit - that is, they are the only building left in "town", or the families who built the church simply thought the current location would be some sort of half-way point. This is a harder reality, but it seems to me that the latter discussion should still be pertinent. Some churches move there so as not to offend the elderly person donating the plot of land. This seems somewhat short-sighted. Some churches move simply because they don't think through the situation logically (and get caught up in the excitement of something new). That seems undiscerning at best - dumb at worst. The final option for a church moving out of town is that they particularly decide they would rather minister to those who have the means to come to where they are. That seems simply contrary to the Gospel.

What I'm not saying is that the location of the church determines its missional nature. I truly believe that a downtown or neighborhood location throws open the doors of possibility and stands as a continual reminder to the missional reality of what we must do, but many churches have put themselves on the outskirts of town ideologically. This point, to me, is far more important than where a building is located. There are really two perspectives on the church, borrowed from Frost & Hirsch:

• CHURCH AS REFUGE FROM THE WORLD: The church building is seen as the gathering place of the saved at least once per week to escape the onslaught of modern society and the world around. There is a holiness to the building that is fundamentally different than the buildings of daily life.
• CHURCH AS LAUNCHPAD FOR MISSION: The church building is just another building in our community where we live our Christian lives. The difference of corporate worship or discipleship is that we gather at this central location to sharpen eachother's witness so that we may live our daily lives more consistently.

The idea that the church building is wholly other from the rest of society is the same logic that makes Sunday wholly other from the rest of the week or makes the words we speak in church wholly other than the words we speak in day-to-day affairs. It is dualistic and it is inconsistent.

For years, the church has asked people to come to it to get saved, come to it to grow in its faith, come to it to experience the full blessing of Christ. While Jesus did spend time in the synagogue, it was on hillsides, in homes and in Samaria where He taught His greatest lessons. For thousands of years, there have been great learned teachers in institutions or churches that have been willing to share their knowledge and understanding with anyone who would come to them. Consequently, hoardes of white collar, upper middle class students have gone through mega-church youth groups and attended Bible colleges. Jesus ministered to the prostitutes, tax collectors and the unclean. If He had set up shop in Nazareth and asked all these folks to come to Him, they would not have. Because He went to them and did "church" there, He gained the audience He desired.

Get your milkcrate - we're going street preaching!