Monday, September 10, 2012

Worship Leading to Faith?

The Out of Ur blog posted a great article on worship today.  It warned of the 'mountain top' experience trap that many church leaders set up to fail.
 
I know and agree that science rightly sees many worship experiences as reproducable, emotive events.  I think worship leaders have known these things for years before the research was brought to light.  However, I do not believe that the 'experience' is therefore wrong; rather, it proves that a strong worship experience does impact human beings in profound ways in regard to mind, heart, and body.

Where the failure lies is the pastoral leadership to follow the 'mountain top' experience with a process of discipleship.  Worship CAN BE transformative, but that is not the norm.  Unfortunately, many churches plan like like it is always transformative.

The questions we must ask ourselves:
  1. What do I practice daily in regard to my faith?  How am I intentionally trying to grow my own faith?
  2. How do we connect small groups, mission, outreach, and other discipleship events to Sunday morning worship?  In other words, how do we bring the mountain top to the valley!?!
  3. Are we tracking or evaluating how we are moving people through the process?  Worship to Discipleship to Faith in Action?
  4. What do we not see that we could do better?

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