Article
How to Design a Sunday Morning Service
Mason Ballard
I want to point you in four directions that will help you and your team determine the shape and content of your Sunday morning worship service.
When we started planting our church, I intuitively knew what the worship service would look like. We’ll sing, we’ll preach, and we’ll pray. What else would we do? We just had to figure out how many songs, what type of songs, when to do an offering, and how to transition from one thing to the next. I thought less about what we’d do in the service and more about how we’d do the things everyone expected to do.
I knew I did not want to plant a “seeker-friendly” church. I knew the worship service should not be designed around the preferences of religious seekers or long-time church members. Yet, I began to discern an uncomfortable truth. I did not know very much about worship. I had a stronger sense of what I did not want to do than what I actually wanted to do.
I grew dissatisfied with the work—more dissatisfied than anyone knew. Rather than quitting, I went back to the basics. I started asking more fundamental questions—questions I wish I had asked before our first service. Why do we do the things we do on Sunday mornings? How does the gospel shape Christian worship? How can I think about liturgy and worship as a Baptist?
The search for answers led me to a dissertation on the catholicity of the church and its implications for evangelical Baptist life. The fruit of this work, however, was not merely academic. Our church has developed a richer, more theological liturgy which is accessible to “normal” people. I am convinced that more God-centered worship helps form more God-centered Christians.
At Resurrection Church in West Virginia, we say that a worship service should be biblically saturated, historically informed, Spirit-led, and gospel-shaped. While I am thankful for the way our liturgy has developed, I don’t want to simply copy and paste it into your context. I want to write the sort of article I wish I had read in 2014. I want to help you think theologically, not just pragmatically or preferentially, about the Sunday morning worship service at your church. To that end, I want to point you in four directions that will help you and your team determine the shape and content of your Sunday morning worship service.
Look to the Bible
This sounds obvious, but it needs to be clearly stated. The quest for a more theological liturgy does not take us beyond the Bible but deeper into it. The Scriptures, which reveal the gospel to us, give us instructions for living in light of it.
The Bible defines the church. The Bible defines worship. The Bible gives us the aims and means of a church gathering. The first consideration when designing a worship service must be the commands and examples found in the Scriptures.
In this sense, every church should do the same things. We sing, we preach, we pray, and we gather around the Lord’s Table because we’re all reading the same book! This is not a lack of originality; it’s a manifestation of the church’s catholicity. Which leads to a second place I think you should look …
Look to the Church
Christian tradition does not have supreme authority in the local church. I think most evangelical Baptists understand that (even if some need reminding!). This does not, however, mean that it has no authority. The traditional practices of the church help us understand how Christians across time and space have understood the Bible’s commands. In this way, our study of history serves our commitment to the Bible.
Look to the early church. Consider Justin Martyr’s reflections on Christian worship in the second century. Look to the Reformation. Consider how this recovery of the gospel shaped Christian worship. Look to the church you grew up in. What liturgical practices shaped you before you even had language to articulate them? Look to the church you visited on a mission trip. What did their gatherings look like? What can you learn from them?
We do not design worship services alone. The historic church, the global church, and the church down the street help us make sense of our own worship services.
Look to Your People
There is nothing like the church. It is both a point of doctrine and a living organism. We believe in the church, and we live in the church. As you design your worship service, consider how God has uniquely gifted your local assembly. While we have the same Book, we all have different people.
Who is in your church? What can your people do? What kind of facility are you in? All these questions can help you discern the distinct style of your own service.
I coached basketball for several years. I used to tell my players: Don’t show me what you can’t do; show me what you can do. If you can shoot, shoot! If you can’t shoot, pass!
Discern what your church can do. You do not have to be a miniature megachurch. For example, if you do not have musical talent to lead from a stage, find a servant to stand up and lead the church in congregational singing. If you have talented instrumentalists, it may be appropriate to adorn that singing with instrumentation. You don’t need anything you don’t have. God has given your church everything He wants from it in worship. Embrace that reality.
Look to Your City
The seeker-friendly movement was right about one crucial thing. God is a missionary God. While your worship service should not be designed around the preferences of a non-believer, it should be accessible to the people who visit your church.
Our goal is not to impress people; our goal is to make the gospel clear. We should do everything we can to clearly communicate the good news of Jesus in word, form, and deed—to believer and nonbeliever alike. As we remember, rehearse, and proclaim the gospel in the liturgy, week in and week out, the Spirit of God shapes the people of God for the mission of God. Worship, then, plays a crucial role in shaping missionaries who engage the city with the gospel.
As you design your Sunday morning worship service, look to the Bible, look to the church, look to your people, and look to your city. You can do this.
