The Goal of the Worship Service

Dear Pastor Lawyer,

I’ve been reading your BLOG for several months now and I can’t figure out why anyone would want to come to your church. Do you have any suggestions?

Concerned Friend


Dear Concerned,

I would say people come to our church because we view the worship service on Sundays as a time when the body of Christ gathers together and worships God. We don’t have a snazzy band that plays loud and “relevant” music or work to entertain people. Our goal is to please God. This means we sing Psalms and hymns (old hymns) appropriate to being in the presence of the most high. Besides this, we have these really long times during our services where people praise God by reading scripture and prayer. Nothing is done “off the cuff”. We believe God is a God of order and he hates chaos. Most people, who are looking to be entertained, would be bored out of their minds in our services. On the other hand, we love God and we stand in his presence on Sunday morning.

We don’t have a peppy youth group where the kids can play paint ball and have dances and go to swell “missionary trips”. We do have youth, but they enjoy learning about God and how to grow up to be strong, godly s. We also don’t have a hip youth pastor with an earring and wild hair (so he can relate to the kids). The parents in our church lead their children in their spiritual lives. In addition, we put a premium on leading the kids by our hands on approach to leading by example. This means that during our worship service the kids sit with their families. The kids who visit sit with someone they know and their family.

You may think that I am pretty proud of what we’re building here, but you’d be wrong. I’m simply trying with all of my might to do what is pleasing to God. At Christ Church we believe that we need to do what God desires rather than what people want. We aren’t concerned with church growth of the kind where we have thousands of mindless audience members, we want to grow as Christians and non-Christians begin to realize that we are not here to be blessed by God but instead to bless God.

In short, the worship service, in fact all of life, is about God, who he is, what he desires from us, his glory, majesty, and fame. He is God and we are not.

I hope this helps,

Pastor Lawyer