Worship... A Great Question

I recieved this in an email and wanted to share it with you. This is a great question about our fourth worship service. What do you think?

In regard to offering an extra service, I came across this church website and find their services very interesting, focused on the needs/interests of the people they seek to serve. What do you think of this? www.northcoastchurch.com/north_coast_melrose/Can we/should we do something like this for our new service? Do you think we might reach more new people this way?


Northcoast is one of the churches whose ministry I read about often and follow closely. They are extremely creative and very outward focused. The idea of offering various forms of worship has been around a while. Community Church of Joy in Arizona was one of the first to do this with excellence. (It's hard to find this on their site. Click on their calendar and select a Saturday or Sunday and you'll see their worship styles. They've backed off some since their lead pastor went into semi-retirement and and attendance decreased) An alternative idea is that of Community Christian Church in Chicago. They have 8 locations in Chicago and do one style of worship in each. The two exceptions are their site in a retirement community and their site in a Hispanic community. Even still, they write one sermon for all preachers to preach. They only change the personal stories to fit their individual experience. It's all outlined in the book "Big Idea." We have a copy in our bookstore if you're interested.

The two most important considerations for us to not do a completely different service are as follows:
1) Our research shows that our current service is reaching the people who make up the largest demographic in our community. While niche marketing has merit, and I hope to explore that in the future, there are still roughly 36,000 homes that are not participating in a place of worship in our drawing area. It makes sense that the numbers are still there to take our current style to an alternative time to reach the predominate demographic.
2) We are currently averaging 470 in worship. Our musical resources are better than most churches, but still limited. To me it makes sense that our first niche would be country music, and second would be a Spanish speaking service. First, though, we would need the people who have a heart and ability in that genre. We could also go to a more "praise" style of music, and this may one day happen, but we need to go with our strengths first.

I don't know how many we need to average in worship before we start to move to a new niche. That is more a function of the talent we attract than the number in worship. Dean and Marsha have undertaken a Saturday ministry of a jam session that is both fun and cultivates new musicians. This is the direction that many churches are going to provide the resources needed.

I'm glad you're asking the question. I'm also impressed that you did the research. Keep searching for ideas and keep me on my toes.

In Christ's Love,
David