Home Worship & Creative Leaders Articles for Worship & Creative Is the Smartphone Killing Weekend Church Services?

Is the Smartphone Killing Weekend Church Services?

3. Movement

The church is not an institution or even an organization, it’s a movement.

And movements by nature gather people and make an impact.

You’re not really part of a movement when you’re listening while cycling down a road all by yourself.

If your church is gathering for the sake of gathering (you’ve lost the mission), there will be no sense of movement.

But the closer your church is to the mission of the original church, the greater the sense of movement will be.

The church at its best is a movement of saints and sinners, saved and unsaved—people from every walk of life and socio-economic background whose lives are being intersected by a saviour who rose from the dead.

The church at its best is an outward movement that changes families, cities and nations.

Leadership question: Is there any sense when we gather that we are part of the broader movement of the Kingdom of God?

4. Invitation

Perhaps the most exciting part of leading in the local church for me is that we never have a Sunday where only Christians gather.

We’re a church that we pray unchurched people will love to attend, and they do. It’s been a decade and a half since we had a service without an unchurched guest present.

The ministry of personal evangelism is important and a bit undernourished these days.

Even the person who’s best at personal evangelism ultimately wants to connect their friends to a wider circle of Christians.

It’s hard to invite your friend to a podcast. It’s easier to invite them to church.

And every Christian who feel insecure or ill equipped to talk to their friends about Christ (which is most) can still easily say “why don’t you come to church with me.”

The crisis in the church today is that most churches are not places anyone would want to bring their friends to.

Imagine if that changed.

Churches that facilitate gatherings that work for outsiders and insiders will be the most effective. If you want to know what that looks like, I think the best explanation is found in Andy Stanley’s Deep and Wide.

Leadership question: Are our services great experiences for the churched and the unchurched alike?