At first glance, it seems like “relevancy” should top the charts (great music, practical application, entertainment) if we are to attract people to our church. However, I recently read some research that may indicate differently.
According to some recent stats about 50% of people choose a church for relational reasons. Those being friendliness, family relationships or personal invitations. The interesting thing about these stats are that only around 10% of people choose a church for its relevancy (e.g. - worship/music style). To me this begs the question I want to pose to pastors and staff leaders:
How “relational” is your worship experience vs. how “relevant”?
This morning I wrote some thoughts down. Feel free to share these with your staff this week. If you feel like this would benefit other pastors you know, pass it along.
How to Create a Relational Worship Experience
- Make your worship experience personal.
Do everything you can to create a culture of invitation. People are more likely to invite others to a church where they are relationally connected and people are more likely to attend the church of someone they know. This creates a nice synergy. So, spend marketing dollars internally for a change, invest back into your members. Give them tools and, most important, reasons to invite others. - Do everything you can to provide an interactive dialogue.
Treat every guest as though they have unspoken questions that need to be answered. In other words, everything you do during the worship service should try to answer questions you think someone might have. Provide questionnaires, feedback forms, FAQ desk, etc. Laden sermons with answers to questions you think people might have. Don’t just have a welcome team, appoint a worship service “concierge” to assist people with whatever they need. - Offer shared values.
Quickly connect with what’s important to people. Connect with their kids, don’t monopolize their time and constantly communicate your values as a church. People can quickly determine if they line up with you or not, so try to help them find a common ground. - Offer genuine expressions.
A lot of people find worship experiences to be contrived, kind of a “going through the motions” thing. People immediately pick up on disingenuousness, however, find it refreshing when they experience genuine expressions like a smile. The quickest way to express genuineness is to have someone give their personal story during worship. People respond to real life! - Offer something that is inspirational or motivational.
Do people walk away saying, “I want to be around that!” I’m not saying that it has to be Joel Osteen “happy” all the time. I believe that even “conviction” can be inspirational. Plug a book, web site, or just print some quotes in your worship guide. - Don’t just wait for them to come back, ask them to come back before the leave.
It took a personal invitation to get them there, it will take a personal invitation to get them back. Come up with some creative way to invite your guest back next weekend. When asking for a guest card, don’t just receive their info. Print a nice invitation on nice paper with an envelope that reads, “You’re invited back to attend another great weekend at Grace Church!” Or, add some kind of signage to your welcome area that reads, “Before you go, we have a gift for you.” Give away a gift card, etc. - Make an emotional connection.
Are people emotionally connected to your worship experience? Establishing a relationship must take emotional connection into account. I’m not saying to “work up” false emotions. What I am saying is that you should tap into a genuine emotion during the service whether it be anger, sadness, joy or thankfulness.
Obviously, making the worship experience as relevant as it can be is also important. I’m not advocating that you throw out your efforts to connect with the culture. I just wanted to simply challenge you to review your weekend worship experience through a different lens. So, this week, ask your staff, “how relational is our worship experience?”
One of the things that I’ve been grappling with is that it’s so hard to create space for people to interact relationally when a church gets bigger than a few hundred.
And honestly, I’ve always felt strangely at odds with the fact that most church experiences revolve around a select few people.
Most churches I’ve been to (including the one I’m a part of now) are audience-based where a bunch of spectators watch the worship team or the teaching pastor for an hour or two and head home without really offering anything of themselves.
I wonder what we could do to allow everyone who comes (even first time visitors) to offer something of themselves- even when the church gets enormous- even when there doesn’t seem to be time for everyone to get up and offer a song, or exhortation, or prayer.
Yes, I think that a quick answer would be that small groups are where these intimate relational conversations and interactions happen, but I think we’re missing out on a lot of relational health in our “Sunday Gatherings” if we can’t create some sort of interactive experience where everyone contributes.