In Search of the "Americanized" Worship Service

If we planted a church in Denmark, we'd hold the services in Danish (Denmarkese?).  The sermons illustrations might include Danish cultural references instead of American ones (although my Danish friend tells me that all they watch are American TV shows).  In other words, we would contextualize the Gospel message for them - although we would never change it.

Oddly, the only culture we seem unwilling to contextualize for is our own.  I have read many church leaders complaining that Americans lack the attentional span of Christians just a generation ago.  Officially, Americans' average attention span is now shorter than a goldfish's.  Americans today demand flashy production qualities and a fast-paced service.  They would never sit for a 90 minute service.

If we know all that, why don't we give it to them?

Is there anything super-spiritual about a long, boring worship service?  Do we have to teach people to follow Jesus and sit politely through a painful liturgy? 

As a new church, we are able to experiment with some new solutions to the question of how to contextualize our services to reach the new American.

(What we can't do is topical sermons.  I can only preach from a Scripture text.  Not to be fussy or anything.)

First, we tried to do what every church plant does:  We used flashy lights and dressed-down attire to be cool.  No dice.  I'm just not that cool.

God brought us a lot of empty-nesters, divorcees, seniors and a couple of young families.   So we stopped trying to be cool.  I was tired of dressing like a teenager anyway, and the lights were a lot of work to set up every Sunday.  Looking back, I wasn't actually hip at 23, so I'm not fooling anyone trying to be hip at 43.  The church has grown much more quickly since I returned to being myself.

(Not that being someone you're not isn't biblical.  Read 1 Corinthians 9:19-23.)

Twice we've tried something else:  We have music throughout our service, interspersed with short messages and an even shorter video.

The standard American liturgy is 3 to 5 songs followed by a 30 to 45 minute sermon.  This doesn't match American television cycles.  Small packets might work better.  Less is more.

The first time we tried our "Americanized" format, we had too much going on.  We had 4 mini-messages, plus communion and a video, all packed into one service.  There were songs between each element.  It was too much standing up and sitting down, and it wasn't smooth.

Last Sunday, we tried again.  We opened the service with 2 songs, then had 3 short messages from 2 different speakers with a song between each one.  We then closed with a song.  There was no video and no communion (because we do communion just once a month).

The service was tight, smooth and impactful, I thought.  It helped that our worship team was absolutely killing it.  I haven't gotten a lot of feedback yet, but we're going to keep innovating.

So if you're a church planter, be open to shaking up the ancient singing-preaching-done format.