A Perfect Church Service

When I was in my church-planting role over twenty years ago, I had an opportunity to visit several churches to see what they were doing in their Sunday morning services. I went to large churches and small churches, contemporary and traditional, high church, low church, and everything-in-between church.

What I discovered was that the quality of my experience depended far more on the people who engaged me in the lobby than the people who led me from the stage. According to different studies by Lifeway Research, people decide if they will likely return to a church they visit within the first few minutes, even before entering the sanctuary or worship center.  

With all the churches I visited, once I did join in their worship service, again, the quality of my experience depended far more on the engagement of those sitting around me than those up front leading me. 

In other words, if people were worshiping, participating, studying, praying, and connecting, I began to desire to worship, participate, study, pray, and connect. At that point, the message, music, and ministry from up front became a resource to help me worship, participate, study, pray, and connect with those around me.

What is the perfect worship service for you? Is it traditional music, contemporary music, high church, low church, formal, informal, verse-by-verse or topical preaching? C. S. Lewis described the perfect service this way: “The perfect church service would be one we were almost unaware of. Our attention would have been on God” (Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer).

Here are three takeaways to help us help others wherever we may attend church:

• 1. Engage outside the church service as an act of worship. Welcome people. Go out of your way to help others feel at home. Make yourself “a servant to all, that [you] might win more…” (1 Corinthians 9:19).
• 2. Engage inside the church service as a model of worship. If you’re older, show the younger generations how to engage in worship, study, and prayer. Regardless of the music or quality of preaching, let others see that you are there for God and no one or nothing else. What people observe around them in a church service is as important (if not more important) than what they observe on stage. “Show yourself in all respects to be a model of good works” (Titus 2:7).
• 3. Engage completely with the Lord so that we are almost unaware of everything else. Though mindful of those around us, we become mind-full of the Lord’s presence among us. In so doing, even when “an unbeliever or outsider enters, he is convicted by all, he is called to account by all, the secrets of his heart are disclosed, and so, falling on his face, he will worship God and declare that God is really among you” (1 Corinthians 14:24-25).

That is what I would call a perfect church service. Amen.