Blended Service

Join This Conversation

Permalink Reply by Darin Wiebe on June 17, 2008 at 4:28pm

Hi Karissa,

Can you tell us a bit more about your church's version of traditional? What shape does your worship take? And what are the reactions to the Praise Band?

Darin

▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Richard Webb on June 17, 2008 at 7:21pm

Darin's questions are key.
Long before you decide on a strategy of traditional, blended, contemporary, emerging, whatever, you need to know your context--who attends your service, who doesn't and the musical and ritual tastes of both.

Speaking of strategies, can you talk a bit about why you want to do blended worship? What does that term mean for you and your congregation?

Blessings!

Richard Webb

▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Karissa Dennis on June 18, 2008 at 9:36am

Our church has the new Evangelical Lutheran Worship hymnal, in which we have used Settings 5, 8, and 10. We have 5 vocal choirs and 3 handbell choirs of varied ages. We use liturgy every Sunday, along with 3 hymns and one or two special music pieces. I play the grand piano and pipe organ each Sunday. We have one service each Sunday at 10:30am. The youth and children enjoy the Praise Band music, but many others do not. We have many people attending church ages 40 and up. We'd like to reach out to the younger adults. I'm not sure if a "blended service" is the answer or how to do it. Thank you very much for your replies.

▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Darin Wiebe on June 18, 2008 at 1:20pm

How about adding a new worship service altogether?

Often congregations add a worship service to their schedule that is a carbon copy of what is already happening there. In those cases they are adding for the convenience of worshippers who are already there. Conventional wisdom says to add a new format that is aimed at folks who are not there yet.

That notion seems to fit what you are looking for. That said, I'm not sure adding a worship service alone will do the trick. That's sort of a "build it and they will come" mentality.

There are other factors that you should consider for reaching out to your community. Your synod office might have resources for you.

The Lord be with you.
Darin

▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Justin Johnson on June 23, 2008 at 11:51pm

There is one thing that I have learned from life lessons as well as book studies and that is just because you change your music, does not mean you will have younger folks coming.
I am the pastor of a congregation whose average age is between 30+40 in a rural setting in Upstate NY. We are close to a college, but do not normally get a lot of college students due to distance and college guidelines.
The reason why I say the above statement is that we are almost as traditional service wise as it gets. Yes we call it spirited blended, but when it comes down to the brass tacks, we are traditional liturgy wise, yet we continue to get younger families in.
Why?
Well, we made a strategic move when I came on board to reach out to young families and make them feel welcome. We placed bags out for children to play with during the service, we hired a nursery care provider, we made youth part of our regular worship service, and made sure that parents knew that their children were welcome, outbursts and all.
The irony is that we do offer a contemporary worship service, but barely any young adults or youth attend it because trends are changing and a whole bunch of other reasons that I could write a book on (in fact many have already been written on it).
The point is, if you want to attract younger members, what are you doing to make sure that you have a place for them and that they can feel welcome.

▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Creative Worship Tour on June 24, 2008 at 12:55am

Karissa, thanks for asking the question. I know this is a big issue for many churches.

My first suggestion would be to take a good look at the service you have now. How can you make it more accessible to guests - especially young adults? Maybe consider sharing the context of a certain liturgical element (not explaining it but giving some background - make sense?) so everyone understands why you're doing it.

You should definitely check out this video where Richard Webb shares the 4 check points he uses to evaluate a service.

There are some things you can do - regardless of the style of worship to make guests feel welcome and valued. Like Justin was saying - providing child care, etc.

Secondly, I think it might be good to have a conversation in your church about balancing the needs of those gathered with those yet to come. Check out this video with Scott Hodge where he talks about that very issue.

You might also find some of the blog posts Linda Parriott added of notes she took at a breakout session on Trends in Worship at the Willow Creek Arts Conference helpful.

Finally, as a media production major and a HUGE advocate for using media to communicate the gospel in a language everyone can understand, I would suggest you start introducing media and visual elements into any of your services. Even if you only offered a traditional service, using graphics and videos in your service could help bridge the gap for young adults and start to break down some of the barriers they throw up to begin with at a traditional church. Because when we can break down those barriers we make room for God's spirit to work.

▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Lynn Wegner on April 6, 2009 at 2:56pm

Hi Karissa,
Our church does a blended format. A mix of both contemporary and traditional hymns each Sunday. Our band plays 2 Sundays a month. On those Sundays we use a contemporary liturgy. On other Sundays, we use a traditional organ liturgy.

One resource you might try is www.praisecharts.com. You can find quite a few contemporary arrangements of traditional hymns on this website. It might be a good resource for you.

Lynn Wegner

▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Nate Woodward on April 7, 2009 at 3:36pm

Hi Karissa,

I hear you saying you have young adults attending your church and you want to encourage their spiritual formation by what you do in your worship service. I think that's a good goal. (It's a subtly but very imporantly different goal from trying to get more young adults to come by playing music you think they'll like.) You imply that you're getting negative feedback about changing the format and music of the service from some (older) members of your congregation.

If I'm reading this right, the trouble is that the old people and the young people don't really know how to understand one another, which is a huge challenge facing the Church. As long as the traditionalists and the innovators are in their separate camps, everyone is at a logistical and spiritural stalemate.

I can suggest two possible ways forward. These are just examples, not detailed blueprints:

The first, which I much prefer, is to work on bringing people together to form what your worship identity will be as a church. Identify people who are respected by their fellow church-goers, who have good intentions, who are open to learning and willing to listen. Find a couple traditionalists and a couple of innovators. Help them start talking about worship: what is the purspose of worship, what elements speak to them specifically, where do they hope the church will be in two years, 5 years, 15 years? Maybe go on some field trips to other churches and discuss your reactions. As you, as a group, move from the vision to the logistics, start working in new elements or practices if possible, or, alternatively, pick one service per quarter to do differently, blended in the way the group lays out.

Here's the second way: Find the people who aren't getting anything from the current service and start an alternative gathering. In other words, do an end run around the resistance to change. I have more experience doing this, and not always with great success. This way can seem easier at first, but can be hard to sustain. One gathering I helped start stayed at about 10 regular attenders for about 2 years before it started to slowly grow larger this year (after I moved away--I hope coincidentally.)

Whether you find my suggestions helpful or useless, please let us know how you decide to move forward and how it goes.

▶ Reply to This

▶ Reply to This