I’m going to post more about this tomorrow or Tuesday but let me just say that the first step in the public launch of our new “connection process” was a massive success. Massive. Making the changes that we made for this Sunday are going to have big implications in the spiritual growth of our church. I am already very, very excited for next Sunday.

So we’re making some changes to Sunday morning that I’m excited about. We are still going to be focusing on gathering together to worship, to hear from God’s word and to encourage one another but the structure of Sunday morning is going to be changing a little bit for a few reasons.

To start, let me talk about what is typical for us right now. Our services run about 75-85 minutes and we do two identical services on Sunday morning. On a normal Sunday, this is what our service would look like - 

15 minutes – Opening/Gathering worship – call to worship, upbeat songs, scripture
10 minutes – Community – Announcements, offering, Q&A, congregational prayer
10 minutes – Worship continued – leading towards the message
40 minutes – Message – applicational preaching as part of a series of Sundays usually focused on a book or specific theme of scripture
10 minutes – Worship response – typically one or two songs, maybe some sort of interactive response 

If you’re part of a “typical” evangelical church then your service probably looks something like that too. We might change things around – add some time to one section or another, break the message in to sections with some worship response in between, etc – but as a general rule that’s a pretty good template for what Sunday morning looks like for us.

Over the past few months we’ve been talking about some stuff behind the scenes which started out as a discussion about how we help people move further along in their walk with Christ. As a church our mission is “to glorify God by making disciples who love God completely and others sacrificially.” That is the reason we exist. If we’re not doing that then we are wasting a whole lot of time. We are not called to be a social club, a counselling agency or a catalog of programs or services – we are called to make disciples of Christ who are increasing in their love for God and in their love for people. Because of that calling, we have to do everything we can to help people along in that journey – including on Sunday morning.

I won’t explain our new “connections process” in this post but let’s just say it’s having lots of impact in places that we weren’t anticipating – including in the design of Sunday morning. Starting this week we will be changing the layout of a typical service and it will look more like this - 

30 minutes – Worship – call to worship, creative expressions of worship, scripture
40 minutes – Message – applicational preaching
10 minutes – Response – this will include our “community” aspects – offering, prayer, Q&A – as well as a very focused opportunity for everyone to commit to taking a “next step” in their walk with Christ

Personally, I am super excited about this but there are three things in particular that I think are worth mentioning - 

1. 30 minutes of worship – This will not be easy for our people at first but I am PUMPED about this. This will give us the opportunity to move away from a “music is worship, worship is music” mentality on Sunday morning. Having this much time to fill will give us the freedom to be much more expressive in terms of the artistic presentation of our times of worship on Sunday morning. 
2. “Next Steps” – By being intentional about communicating the importance for all of us (not just spiritual seekers or new Christians) to be taking steps in our walk with Christ we again communicate the mission of the church as well as the need for worship to continue out of Sunday morning.
3. Implications – Don’t think that this doesn’t change things. There are lots of things to consider when making a change like this (even though it seems very simple) so we have had to make sure that we can clearly communicate the HOW and WHY and not just the WHAT of this change.

My pastor, Earl Marshall, wrote some good stuff on his blog today -

It seems that church planting is a hot topic these days.  There is ongoing discussion as to whether or not we need more churches (which may be a statement based on form rather than function).  There can be no doubt, however, that we need more churches that are making a difference.  I see making a difference revolving around gospel ministry.

In the 2 1/2 years I have worked for Earl, I have learned one thing* – Earl is very intentional with his communication. If Earl tells you something, it’s because Earl wants you to learn something :) He has done this in subtle and not-so-subtle ways in our time together! I’m glad it didn’t take me long to learn this about Earl because I’m not the sharpest knife in the drawer and sometimes I need things spelled out for me very c-l-e-a-r-l-y! Ha.

Anyways. I’m not sure how many folks from our congregation actually read Earl’s blog (we don’t promote blogs or drive people there for content very often) but if they understand his philosophy of communication and what he is saying in that post I’m sure that we are in for some very interesting discussions in the coming days.

So here is my question:

100 new Canadian churches making a difference, who’s in?

P.S. The book he’s referring to is written by Bob Robert of Northwood Church, home of the one and only Jordan at WorshipTrench.com – if you haven’t checked out his site you really need to.

*I’ve actually learned lots of things in my time working with Earl but this is the one thing that is relevant to this discussion :)

I had the chance to spend a couple of days with the worship team members of First Baptist Church of Columbia, IL at a beautiful little spot called Camp Wartburg. We spent time together in worship and prayer, just hanging out with each other, spending time talking through some good worship philosophy stuff and looking at some practical ideas to make it easier for our congregations to respond in worship to God on Sunday morning. They’ve got a good thing going with their worship pastor, Mark Warnock, and it was a real honour to be able to spend time with them.

Any of you guys got some pictures from our time together??

Got some time and want to read a pretty interesting story about a church going through some amazing changes in a very short period of time? Connexus Community Church is the newest extension (I’m not even sure if that’s the right word) of North Point. Connexus will be launching in a couple of weeks as a multi-site church in Barrie and Orillia and has plans to expand to other locations within the next year.

I know some of the guys on their leadership team (including Pat, whose blog is linked over there ->) and I know they’re excited about the next steps. This is a story worth reading – start here and follow along.