God’s presence must be sensed in the service. More people are won to Christ by feeling God’s presence than by all of our apologetic arguments combined.
Few people, if any, are converted to Christ on purely intellectual grounds. It is the sense of God’s presence that melts hearts and explodes mental barriers. Worship without this yields few evangelistic results.
I believe there is an intimate connection between worship and evangelism.
In the first place, the goal of evangelism is to produce worshipers of God. The Bible tells us that “the Father seeks worshipers” (John 4:23). When we recruit worshipers, that’s called evangelism.
On the other hand, worship provides the motivation for evangelism. It produces a desire in us to tell others about Christ. The result of Isaiah’s powerful worship experience (Isaiah 6:1-8) was Isaiah saying, “Here am I, send me!”
True worship causes us to witness.
In genuine worship God’s presence is felt, God’s pardon is offered, God’s purposes are revealed and God’s power is displayed. That sounds to me like an ideal context for evangelism! I’ve noticed that when unbelievers watch believers relate to God in an intelligent, sincere manner it creates a desire to know God, too.
Worship with sensitivity
Because genuine worship can have such a profound impact on unbelievers, we need to be very sensitive to their fears, hang-ups and needs when they are present in our worship services.
This is the principle Paul taught in 1 Corinthians 14:23: Paul commanded that tongues be limited in public worship. His reasoning? Speaking in tongues seems like foolishness to unbelievers. Paul didn’t say tongues were foolish but only that they appear foolish to unbelievers.
“So if the whole church comes together and everyone speaks in tongues, and some who do not understand or some unbelievers come in, will they not say that you are out of your mind?” (1 Cor. 14:23)
I believe there is a larger principle behind this advice to the Corinthian church. The point Paul is making is that we must be willing to adjust our worship practices when unbelievers are present.
God tells us to be sensitive to the hang-ups of unbelievers in our services! Being sensitive to nonbelievers in our worship is a biblical command. I didn’t think up this concept; Paul did!
