Is Your Sunday Service Vital?

3 Groups Who Contribute to Faithful Gatherings 

I love the word vital. It is a word brimming with meaning; indicating something of critical importance or describing something full of life. When you reflect on the character of your weekly worship gatherings, can you describe them as vital?

There is a sense in which most of our efforts have little to do with the level of vitality found in our worship services. God is the primary actor in our worship, revealing himself to us by his Word and graciously inviting us to respond. That said, our preparation and planning for corporate worship can be used by the Spirit to set the table for our people to respond to God’s initiative with enthusiasm, delight and joy.

There are three groups of people I would like to briefly consider as significant contributors to the vitality of the weekly worship service. The stewards, the people and the saints of old. 

The Stewards

Whether you are a pastor or a worship leader, if you have a role in the stewardship of the weekly worship service, you have been given a weighty task. Even the most casual preparation for a Christian gathering ought to be a humbling responsibility as you steward time, songs, prayers, readings and other elements of worship for the great joy of glorifying God and building up his people.

Dr. John Witvliet says it well, “As worship leaders, we have the important and terrifying task of placing words of prayer on people’s lips. It happens every time we choose a song and write a prayer. We also have the holy task of being stewards of God’s Word.”

Here are a few practical ways my own church has set out to steward and prepare for worship gatherings:

• We keep an ongoing list of the songs, calls to worship, creeds, prayers and sermon texts we have used in our services over time. This helps us watch over the “diet” of our congregation and clarifies where we may be deficient. For example, recently we added more songs and readings that touch on the theme of heaven, a theme that we felt needed more attention in our current season. 

• We regularly review and curate a master list of hymns and songs used in our corporate worship services. Every church has a different capacity and pace, but we are careful about how many songs we use in our regular rotation. We may sing a few songs more often than other churches, but over time it has strengthened our congregational singing and gives our team clarity in choosing the best songs for our people for the long term.

The People

The worship service is not merely a passive consumption event. Every effort should be made to encourage and invite the active participation of the whole congregation in corporate worship. If vitality seems diminished or waning in your worship services, giving time and attention to cultivating a vision for corporate worship that includes individual preparation during the week and active engagement in your services could help revive what may have become stale or routine.

Here are a few practical ways we have tried to encourage active participation of the whole congregation in corporate worship:

• We encourage our people from the pulpit and in our weekly communications to read the upcoming sermon text throughout the week.

• We recently started posting a list of the songs and hymns for the upcoming worship service on social media with a link to listen. 

• After each worship service we post a QR code that links to a list of all the songs, prayers and readings from that morning. 

• We often sing a song (or part of a song) unaccompanied to encourage singing in parts. This might include giving time in the service to teach harmony parts. This has served our church well, even for modern worship songs.

• We include several participatory readings throughout the worship service: call to worship, the Lord’s Prayer, confession of sin, a selection from a creed or catechism.

The Saints of Old

For those of us who are not a part of a theological tradition with a fixed liturgy we can easily miss the treasures of gospel truth from saints that have gone before us. We have much to learn from those who have traveled the way of Christ in different generations and seasons than our own. 

This would certainly include singing sturdy hymns from the past, but here are a few other ways we have included voices from Church history:

• We regularly invite the congregation to read aloud from faithful creeds and confessions. For example, each week one of our pastors will read a few questions from a source like the Heidelberg Catechism and the congregation will respond by reading the answers aloud. Sometimes we modify the text to make it simpler for public reading. 

• We regularly include written prayers from Christian voices throughout history, often with a brief overview of their life and ministry. There are innumerable resources that offer prayers appropriate for a worship service, but I might suggest starting with Jonathan Gibson’s, Be Thou My Vision.

• Our church regularly includes carefully curated quotes from pastors, theologians and Christian writers throughout many generations. Our generation is rarely the first to wrestle with some of the great questions of faith. Listening to the voices of those who have wrestled long before us will often lead to sturdier trust in and affection for Christ.

These three groups of people are really one group—those who were once dead and have been brought to life in Christ by the love of the Father and the power of the Holy Spirit. Let us then labor together in the work of responding to his great love towards us with a vitality rooted in the grace that brought us to life. May all our efforts be guided by, shaped by and bound up in the Word of God. Our weekly worship services need not be flashy or extraordinary, but that hour or two on Sunday morning should be the pinnacle of our week—a reorientation towards the life-giving treasure of Christ himself.