Change Your Worship Service without Drowning Your Ministry

Written by Rodger Russell

How can you transform a traditional church’s worship service without drowning your ministry, shaking your church’s stability, or losing your sanity?

Paul On Leadership: Servant Leadership in a Ministry of Transition

Here are seven recommendations from a pastor who's been there.

1. Know Why You Want to Change

• Do not change because you personally like contemporary music.
• Do not change because everyone else is doing it.
• Only change it if will help you reach more people for Christ and become more effective as a church.

2. Be Sure Your Church Family Is Onboard
Church members will say they want to reach people for the Lord, but many don’t want to put up with the mess or inconvenience that new believers bring. Healthy change begins when you’re sure your people are onboard with whom you’re trying to reach.

3. Sell the Change - and Keep Selling It

• Present the change as a part of the plan to reach people for Jesus Christ.
• Use every possible method of reminding your church body of the people they are trying to reach and how this change is helping to reach them.

4. Be Good at It
A contemporary service is far more than the music, although the music will always get the most attention. Worship leaders need to learn the basics of contemporary worship.

• Attend a church that’s doing contemporary worship well.
• Ask questions.
• Get ideas.
• Interview the worship leader.
• Enlist a worship team and practice with them.

Contemporary worship must be first-rate. If it’s done poorly, it will feed the idea that this is second-class worship. Our first worship team practiced for eight months at our Wednesday night Bible study before we started our Sunday morning contemporary worship service. When we began our Sunday morning contemporary worship we already had a contemporary congregation base.

5. Use Addition, Not Subtraction
The safest way to have contemporary worship is to keep the traditional service in place and simply begin a second service.  One of the most difficult things about change is the sense of loss experienced by those who really like the traditional style. That sense of loss is real; they’re losing something very fond and familiar. By continuing to offer an alternative, you’ll lessen the opposition.

6. Give the Change Every Chance

• Choose a starting time with care.
• Choose a start date that will take advantage of the excitement that’s already building.
• Let people know you’re going to have a contemporary worship service for the next three months, after which you’ll evaluate its effectiveness to determine if it should continue.
• After the trial period, make forecasted adjustments. The changes won’t rattle your church because they’ll be anticipating them.

7. Know the Final Score

• Keep good separate records of the traditional and contemporary services.
• Know the attendance, the giving patterns, the decisions, and the new members.
• If things go as planned, you can use the statistics to respond to critics.
• If the change proves to be ineffective in helping you reach your goals, you’ll want to know that as well.

Most congregations are yearning for greater effectiveness in the kingdom of God, and most pastors want to lead their church to become more effective. If you and your congregation communicate and navigate together, you can stay on course and make changes - without wrecking the ship.

Rodger Russell is pastor of Holladay Baptist Church, Salt Lake City, Utah.