(dramatic music) - Tony, the missionary task of church planting emphasizes if we wanna plant churches like the Apostles did in the first century, the first thing we start with is not a church service. Now, while we want to get everything in the right missiological order, engage the city with the gospel, make disciples, and then plant the church, we don't want to downplay that Sunday gathering. We can do it.
So what kind of biblical vision should a planter have and cast for Sunday services? - Yeah, for one, I think we want to emphasize just the wonder and privilege of the gathering. And I mean, you don't know how soon you're gonna be gathering, right?
Sometimes that early phase that you talked about, engaged in the city, making disciples, man, you're in that for a long time. Other times, you know, the Lord is gracious. And boom, you're meeting relatively soon.
And I think back to a moment, we had a church planter that we were supporting in Frankfurt, Germany. And he came to our church. We had visited him and spent some time in his church.
And we were very busy. And at the time our church had three services and we didn't get to really do a lot of stuff in the city. And I was like apologizing to him because I had taken him back to the airport.
I was like, "Stefan, I wish we had had more time together. I could have shown you this and this and this. " And he said, "Tony, I got to worship with the Saints at Imago Dei Church.
I got to enjoy the end for which we were created. There's nothing greater you could have taken me to than a corporate gathering with the church. " And I was like, well, that's a direct hit.
You know? I appreciate that corrective. A lot of people don't think like that about the gathering, you know, in American culture and other places, you know, the gathering is okay if you don't have anything else to do on a Sunday, if you're not playing travel sports or whatever, you have some, I call 'em church ninjas.
They just pop in and out and you don't know where they went. You know, "Hey, I saw somebody here that was new, I think, but I didn't get to talk to them. " And so I think one of the things we have to constantly do is teach what the New Testament says about the gathering, because we're very influenced by our experience.
We're very influenced by our opinions, our preferences. But I think when we lead with the scriptures on the gathering, we see it in a whole new light. And I would just say a couple of passages come to mind.
Hebrews 12, which I won't read, but is just a marvelous passage about how we're joining a heavenly worship service when we gather together. - Yeah. - And then Hebrews 10 is more practical, where the writer is talking about the work of Christ giving us access into the most holy place.
And you know, in the Old Testament, no one had the right to enter the most holy place except the high priest. And that once a year. But now because of Jesus, he has authorized us to enter the holy place.
And so the writer says, "Let us draw near to God," and we should just never get over the wonder of the fact that we can draw near to God, that we can commune with God and worship him. If I could use a silly illustration, a great movie, "Fast and the Furious 9. " Have you seen it?
- I haven't. - You know, it's just all the plot lines are ridiculous. But I love these films.
But there's this one scene where Tej and Roman, they have a souped up Fiero, and they take it into space, and they're up there and they're like, "What are we doing up here? " And when I watched that, I thought about, well, we should feel like that. - Wow, - When it comes to worship, you are more likely to go to space than the holy place.
- Wow. - Like, it's only because of Jesus that we get to draw near. And we have to keep telling people that, that when we're worshiping God in a corporate gathering, truly worshiping him, it's a wonder, you know?
And then the writer goes on to say, "Let us hold fast to our confession. " You know, like one of, our confession of hope, one of the things we do when we gather is we're holding on to hope. Life is hard.
The week has been hard. And I tell our church when you hear the phrase that we often use, Sunday's coming, we've often used that for preachers who feel the pressure, I want you to hear encouragement's coming, like hope is coming. And I think that's that picture of let us hold fast to this confession of hope.
When we gather together, we're together confessing our hope that it's in Jesus. And then one of the most interesting things he says in Hebrews 10 is, "Let us consider how we might stir up one another to love in good deeds. Not neglecting to meet together as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another all the more as you see the day drawing near.
" I love this aspect of participation. When you come to worship, you are not coming as an observer. You're not coming as a critic, you're not coming as a consumer.
You are coming as an active participant to stir up your brothers and sisters. Right, and I love how he says, "Consider how you might do that. " Like, you need to give real thought to how you might encourage this brother, this sister as they see the day drawing near.
So I've got work to do when I gather with my faith family. - Wow. - Even when I'm not a pastor, you know, I'm thinking about somebody, how might I stir them up this week?
And it's gonna be different for everybody. It's sort of like gift giving, like good gift givers don't just give generic gifts. - Yeah.
- They're thoughtful. And I think that's the ministry of encouragement that we have when we assemble together. So I would just say overall, like have some passages that are go-to passages when you teach your church, this young church plant, the privilege and wonder of church planting.
Teach them these responsibilities and just keep reteaching. It's like most discipleship. We just have to constantly drip our instruction to them.
- So this big biblical vision of the Sunday gathering, the presence of God, participation, but it takes elements to accomplish this. What are the elements when a church planter thinks about planting that Sunday gathering? What elements should they include to get to that vision?
- Yeah, there's a lot we could say here. And there are different philosophies of corporate worship, of what you include. How much freedom do you have to select certain elements of worship?
I'll just mention some of the more basic obvious things. One is we gather together to sing together. Ephesians five, that we were actually singing not just to the Lord, but actually to one another.
And I would just say for me that that is one of the things I look most forward to, especially when I've had a hard week. Or a hard year. I've had a hard year and there've been moments this year, for example, where we've sung the song, I still got joy in chaos.
I got peace that makes no sense. I won't be going under, I'm not held by my own strength. 'Cause I've built my life on Jesus.
He's never let me down. He's faithful in every season. So why would he fail now?
And he won't. And that has just hit me so hard. There have been moments where I have wept uncontrollably.
- Wow. - And there's been more than one occasion where one of my best friends, Walter Strickland, has come over and put his arm around me as we've been singing this song. And that's just me.
And I'm the pastor, you know, I'm supposed to have it together. Can you imagine that people carry stuff in with them? There's a hurting heart in every row.
And one of the things we do when we sing is we sing to our brothers and sisters and we try to sing ourselves happy. We try to celebrate the hope we have. And so I would just not underestimate singing.
I will not underestimate corporate reading, which is really powerful. In addition to the sermon. Prayer, something we emphasize here at Send is corporate prayer.
Don't make that just a place where you're transitioning from one element of worship to the next, but build in some real deliberate focused times of prayer. You know, bathed in the scriptures, led by the spirit. Think creatively how you might do that.
You know, the older I get in ministry, the more I look forward to that pastoral prayer, corporate prayer time, even than the sermon some weeks, and I think we're doing a lot, when we're leading people in prayer, we're teaching them our theology as we pray. We're teaching them how to pray. It helps people feel loved.
I often think about the kids that we have in our church. They're not gonna remember a lot of my sermons, but what I hope they remember is a pastor who prayed for them on a Sunday. And I think you can say you love people, and we should, but I think praying for people is a way to really express pastoral care.
That's really, really powerful. I think prayer corporately addresses unbelievers in a very unique way and experiential way that I think can be powerful. I've written a few things about preaching, so I obviously believe in that.
And I would direct people there that that is an act of worship. This is a moment where we're saying, thus says the Lord. And we get to hear the voice of God.
Our church says the Lord's Supper every week. I know that's not a practice for every church, but for us, it's been a huge blessing. It's a way for us to land the plane in the sermon, to focus it on the gospel.
It's a natural God-given way to do self-examination. Confession, reconcile with relationships. It also, we fence the table so that unbelievers can really think about their own standing with God, giving them then an opportunity to respond.
You know, a practical way to say, Hey, if you're not a Christian, this is your next step. It's not this, it's this. So those have been some really, some of the key features of our worship service.
- Seems like there's a lot of intentionality there. What does planning look like, both in maybe a macro and a micro scale for all this? - Yeah, I think there are some things that we want to be the same every week.
I think there's something special about a common liturgy. What I didn't mention just now is like, we also recite a confession of faith out loud together. So we have a little bit of liturgy in the service that's a little unique.
You know, we read the scripture, this is God's word. Thanks be to God. I like the normal elements of liturgy.
I think it's something that's comforting to people. I think it builds community, builds kind of a culture. Then I think there's some varied aspects.
Obviously your sermon schedule, you know, your song selection. So for us, that means fall retreat. We're looking ahead at a whole year of sermon planning, a Google sheet with, you know, our texts, our preachers, kind of the other elements of that week that's significant.
Is it Mother's Day, Father's Day, President's Day? You know, like, what's the day? What else do we need to be mindful of?
That's a really good time. We spend a lot of time in the text just thinking through the year ahead. And then the weekly rhythm is a little bit more administrative of interacting with, for me, our worship director, our worship leader, song selections that they've usually planned out in advance, because we have the sermon mapped out in advance.
But we'll talk through some stuff. If there's ever a question mark about a song, like, hey, there's this line. What do you think about this?
You know, we work through that. We work through the transitions, trying to be smooth. I wanna be excellent, but I also don't wanna be overly scripted.
I think there's real power in being kind of off script sometimes, you gotta watch yourself, don't get in trouble. But I think people like the realness of laughing at yourself or again, kind of being able to talk on your feet and capture the moment. One of the things I encourage guys to do in corporate worship, and this was hard to plan for, but you can plan a little bit.
I call it warming up the room. So we do the welcome time, we welcome guests, and I'd like to do a little bit of banter of some kind. And honestly, I don't plan much in advance for this unless something that weak hits me.
But it might be as simple as turning to my worship pastor and asking him a question. - Yeah. - You know, or the weather's great, you know, and I'm asking people what they did this week.
There's something, you know, you're excellent at that as one of our standard MCs at Send. But I think it's important in that early part of the service- - Warm up the room. - To warm up the room.
- That's really good, you know, in every worship service we could say there's a few different audiences. How do we help make sure that church planters know how to address all those audiences, God, the fellow believers there, but also evangelizing the loss that surely God's gonna bring into that room. - Yeah, hopefully what I've just said is God word and edifying to believers.
I think maybe that latter part is where I could just talk for a minute. I think when you prepare a sermon, and even when you prepare a worship service, I think you want to think about your old self. I think about my old 22-year-old newly converted college student.
I didn't know much, but I was eager to know, I was eager to learn. I was ignorance on fire, and I wanted someone to help me along. You know, to explain elements.
So, and especially in a church plant, this is huge. Like, we're about to sing this song for this reason, or we're about to do this bit of liturgy for this reason, or we're gonna study this book of the Bible. If you're not familiar with the Bible, this is where that's at.
You can go to the table of contents, we'll have it on the screen. It's just being mindful that not everybody's part of the Christian subculture, and making sure what we do is accessible. You know, you don't have to dumb things down.
You just have to explain it. We often underestimate what unbelievers can handle, I think, where they're able to hang with us. If we can actually communicate in a way that connects with them.
And so I think that that's been helpful to me. I think it may have been (indistinct) where I read he had that phrase like, preaching to your old self. Because the older I get, the more I preach to my peers, the more I think about, you know, that audience and they're not there, or that's not who I'm aiming at.
- You're right. - And so I want to anticipate people coming to the worship service, even though I think it's primarily for believers, but they've never been to church. So are the welcome signs clear?
Are the bathroom signs clear? I like to name things what they really are, you know, so if the youth building is where the youth meet, call it the youth building, not refuge, you know, like, or whatever, like, call the women's bathroom, the women's bathroom. So I just think our signage, just, it's kind of hospitality.
If someone comes over to your house, you wanna explain to them, here's the meal, here's what we're doing, here's where you can find the restrooms and that sort of thing. So I think we're gonna be asking these questions. Do they understand what's happening?
Are they being invited to things after the service? I think that's an important bit, is that they feel welcome. Not just at our event, but give them some avenues where they can connect with people outside of that.
And then beyond that, I think what they need to see is passion and love from the church. Joy, passion, love. That's contagious, that's evangelistic when they see people really caring for each other, when they see people singing passionately, when they see joy.
(dramatic music) - Yeah. - You know, I think those are incredibly powerful evangelistic moments. - Man.
So good, Tony.
