Classics from the archives: Better church

Following on from Rory Shiner’s “Ten tips for leading church well”, we thought it might be helpful to revisit one of Tony Payne’s classic Briefing articles on a similar subject: “Better church: the why and how of running Sunday meetings”. In it, he shares some helpful principles to keep in mind when planning your church service, as well as some useful tips:

If you’ve been going to Sunday church services for as long as I have, you will no doubt have a list of things that you don’t find very edifying (or to put it in a slightly less edifying way, things that drive you nuts). For example, has something like this ever happened in your church?

The person leading the meeting announces that it is time for the Bible reading. And even though the person doing the reading has been told in advance exactly when the reading will take place, he waits till the announcement is made, and then gets up out of his chair, which is in the middle of a row, two-thirds of the way towards the back of the building, and makes his way ponderously to the front. He arrives at the lectern after what seems like 15 minutes, takes his glasses from his pocket, puts them on, and then announces where the reading is from. No-one hears him though, because the guy on the sound desk hasn’t pushed up the slider to activate that particular microphone—even though he has watched the entire slow-motion tableau unfold to this point. And so the Bible reader looks up at the guy on the sound desk, who thus being startled out of his reverie, pushes up the slider. The reader taps the microphone with his finger a couple of times—toof, toof, toof—smiles a slightly bashful smile, and finally starts his reading with the words I badly need to hear: “Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another”.

Or perhaps the thing that gets to you is the lack of apparent logic or flow within your church meetings. The meeting starts with a song, and then a prayer, and then a Bible reading, and then an interview with a visiting missionary, and then a song, and then some announcements, and then a break to say hello to the person next to you, then another song, then the sermon, then some prayers, then another song, and then a closing benediction (in the form of “please stay for morning tea”). And you’re left at the end feeling slightly flat, and wondering whether the pastor has gone back to using RandomChurchServiceGenerator.com.

You no doubt have your own pet peeves. And there is no shortage of things to be peeved about in church meetings: sloppiness, incompetence, paucity of imagination, poor planning, incoherence, lack of awareness of visitors/newcomers… and so the list goes on.

What should we do about this all-too-common lack of quality in our church gatherings?

The first thing we must do is repent for having such a selfish and critical spirit. It is really beyond irony to be spending our Sunday mornings in a funk because the church meeting is not edifying. The whole point of that marvelous passage in 1 Corinthians 14 about the importance of ‘edification’ is that we need to stop focusing on ourselves and start loving other people. My role in church is not to be a critic who assesses the different aspects of the meeting, but a lover who cares more about other people and their growth than my own preferences or needs. My role is to listen to God’s word and respond with a soft and humble heart; to pray that God’s Spirit would be at work in my heart and those around me; and to encourage and build those around me by everything I say and do.

However, if I am the person responsible for organizing and running the meeting, or one of the people who contribute in some way, then the same spirit of love and selflessness should lead me to make my contribution in a way that actually helps and builds up other people. Out of basic kindness and generosity I should do what I can to improve the quality and ‘edification-factor’ of our Sunday gatherings.

But this leads us to another thought: surely it is the power of God’s word and Spirit that makes our meetings ‘better’ or not. So why not simply read the Bible a lot, preach a lot, pray a lot, and then go home? Does it really matter, in the end, how high-quality everything is, or in what order we do things?

And if we say that it does matter, and we devise really clever meetings with lots of bells and whistles and videos and interviews and slick music and who knows what else, are we starting to doubt the power of the Word? Might we get into a situation where we are manipulating people’s affections and emotions in order to make them feel closer to God?

So is there a good reason—a good biblical and theological reason—to bother working hard to make our church meetings ‘better’?

Read the full article at The Briefing site.