Spectator Worship

I’d guess nearly all American churches – mainline, orthodox, charismatic, evangelical… whatever – do worship as a group of professionals (paid or volunteer) leading a group of spectators, possibly with occasional guided crowd participation.

The kicker is, that’s not how Christians are supposed to worship.

New Testament worship was done is small cell groups (averaging around 35 people, I think).  It was done in homes.  Everyone participated using their spiritual gifts.  Several people read and interpreted scripture, and the group judged for themselves if it was good.

Sometimes the New Testament church gathered all the groups across a city for important matters, and sometimes they’d do big crowd spectator worship.  These were relatively rare, however, and primarily geared toward evangelism.

Weekly spectator worship conditions congregants to be passive, and supresses expressing spiritual gifts.  You can’t even see other worshippers’ faces without turning around!  No wonder members feel like volunteers instead of owners.

Modern churches can return to New Testament worship by focusing worship in small groups and promoting gifts discernment and use.  Read scripture, pray, sing, meditate… whatever works with each group’s makeup of personalities and gifts.  If you can, scale back crowd worship to monthly or bi-monthly and market themas large public evangelism events.