Modern Delusion Part 2: Worship As Evangelism

Issue 12

A shift occurred in the church during the time of the second great awakening surrounding the fundamental purpose of congregational worship. From the time of Moses, churches have for the most part adhered to the old testament order and principles of corporate worship. But a shift occurred in the 1800s.

We can largely thank men such as Charles Finney for this. Finney was of the opinion that generally speaking, people were rational and good at the bottom of their hearts. This opposed the biblical idea that men are evil and born to trouble as the sparks fly upward. When the idea takes hold that sinful people have simply wandered astray from their originally good and upright paths, it follows that if one can simply convince them to repent of their ways, they will do it. If they aren’t convinced or if argumentation didn’t work to show them the light, the fault lay with the method and the strategy of the argument, not in the fact that the person was born sinful and would remain fallen in his sin until the Holy Spirit convicted him of such things.

Notwithstanding, Finney is known for holding seemingly successful revival meetings, generally in camps and tents large enough to host the hundreds of people he attracted. His method was to get the crowds emotionally stirred up so that they became accepting to the idea that they could, right then and there, repent of their sins and turn over a new leaf to follow Christ. On the surface, the method seems good—it got results. But the long-term consequences have been rather devastating.

It is evident that Finney was less concerned about long-term faithfulness and discipleship of his converts. Like Billy Graham, Finney didn’t have the capability as one man to stay behind and disciple even one of the tent meetings he gathered. No one does, in fact. For that you need elders at the very least. Wise congregants in an established church would be an excellent addition as well. But mass follow up letters or text messages are poor replacements for real discipleship.

The more long-term consequences of this style of evangelism have manifested themselves in many ways which are visible today. We have already covered the emotionalism that is now present in the church today, which largely began with the revival style of tent meeting. Many hymns of the time period were made popular because of their ability to get congregations riled up, and they are still sung today as quaint “old hymns” in place of the Psalms that the church used to sing.

Another effect from Finney’s method that is now evident today is an unorthodox view of what occurs on Sunday mornings during corporate worship. Imagine what a large group of people who just got saved from a Finney revival meeting would seek to do in establishing a new church. Is it any wonder that the Sunday morning gatherings simply looked like repetitions of the revival meetings which brought them to Christ?

Thus we find ourselves today with the impression (largely within independent fundamentalist baptist churches, but also within the broader modern evangelical world) that Sunday morning worship is a time specifically set apart as the week’s penultimate opportunity for evangelism. Consider the old-fashioned baptist church, with the drawn-out weekly alter calls. Or think of the sermons whose main goal it is to convince the congregation to repent and believe, leading up to the altar call…as if perhaps the church was made up of unbelievers. Or recall in our modern-day style present everywhere from newly reformed churches to mega churches the worship songs which begin quietly and build up to a crescendo of emotion. Or even think of our standard go-to attempt at evangelism today: simply invite others to church and hope that they will likewise get caught up in the performance. Megachurches greatly facilitate this idea by modeling their shows in as attractive and provocative a manner as they can, though they are less concerned about the state of their congregation’s souls.

Inviting people to church is not a bad thing, but I think it should be presented as an opportunity to watch how Christians meet with their God. Taken in this light, I would be immediately hesitant to invite non-Christians to many churches I have attended, because the disrespectful and flippant way in which they come to the Lord in their worship would be a harmful witness to the visitor.

Even if a church does come before the Lord with rightly ordered worship and the proper respect due His name, it would still be a mistake to turn a covenantal gathering of God’s people into an evangelistic outreach. That said, maybe the pastor notices on one particular Sunday that more seats have been taken up with obvious visitors or people who don’t generally find themselves in a church building. Absolutely—take the opportunity and adjust the sermon accordingly. But to make this a weekly goal is to woefully neglect the discipleship that needs to occur in a healthy congregation.

How does this affect the song selections and the styles of worship music we choose? When evangelism is the goal, singing songs ceases to be an offering to God and it transitions to a tool used to afflict the emotions of the congregation in one way or another. I think the best example to point to is the movement away from Psalm singing and use of really old hymns toward the contemporary styles of hymns used at the time. These sound old to us today, but in the late 1800s they were found to be particularly effective at emotionally manipulating a gathering. Now, more than a hundred years later, we have discovered (with experience and the advent of digital technology) how to be even more emotionally manipulative with our modern styles.

This excludes a vast repertoire of Psalms and hymns which we could be edified by singing. Evangelism encompasses one small part of one’s life, while continued sanctification is a lifelong process. Furthermore, this strategy of corporate worship as evangelism encourages the singing of an emotive style designed for capturing the outsider which is comparatively useless and actually rather harmful to the congregation as a whole. And if we’re honest, the pagans who are actually interested in dealing with their sin will often see that in this area, not even the playacting church takes itself seriously—and so they seek truth in other places.

To conclude, corporate worship is not an evangelistic event. Evangelism might occur, and people might get saved. But that is not the sole purpose of our gatherings on Sunday morning, and it is not even a main purpose.

It is a true statement that God draws straight with crooked lines. While it is true that actual converts have come from the megachurch world, fundamentalist baptist evangelism sermons, Billy Graham’s meetings, or Finney’s revival meetings, it was in spite of the method that they were saved, not because of it. When this method is applied Sunday in and Sunday out, the congregation stagnates on Step 1, which is repent and believe. They hear this message for decades until they probably wonder what they’re doing in church—couldn’t they be more productive elsewhere? Thus the church is made irrelevant, but worse, it is made impotent in the fight for our culture.