I have been a pastor in the local church since 2010. In my years of experience as both an associate and lead pastor, the process of creating worship has never included discussion grounded in the reality that worship should be, fundamentally, an environment in which we eagerly expect the transforming power of the Holy Spirit to recalibrate our hearts, reform our desires, and rehabituate our lives.[1] Instead, conversation about worship has focused on the quality of the sermon, worship music, and announcements, etc. The conversations have encompassed debates regarding the effectiveness of traditional versus contemporary worship music, the volume level of the music, the lighting ambiance of the room, and sermon series topics. There have been endless discussions about temperature, bulletins, graphics, and videos. And, though these are not unimportant components within the worship environment, the discussions concerning these issues, and worship in general, in my experience, have failed to recognize the bigger issues at play.

 

In the best of these, admittedly, well-intentioned conversations, the topics of discussion have been utilized as means of intentionality – assessing the overall experience of those who come to worship – similar to the ways in which a retail store might evaluate the shopping experience of their patrons. Fluctuations in attendance, giving, and participation in small groups and serve teams are measured as indicators of success or failure analogous to the ways in which businesses use comparable numbers as a means of systems evaluation. Unfortunately, these discussions have unintentionally reflected and reinforced the values of culture instead of seeking a path of evaluation that reflects the God’s goal of transformation.

 

While not all churches share these habits, the anecdotal experiences of my colleagues indicate that my own encounters are more standard than they are atypical. Further, the research highlighted in Chapter 1 describing the declining nature of the church also points to the reality that process of worship formation and evaluation reflects the secular business culture more than it reflects the image of God.

 

Experience in ministry proves that practitioners within the church want to get it right and are, more often than not, doing the best that they can with what they have. What I have witnessed in my time of ministry is a group of people who desperately want to be obedient to God and want to help people experience the transforming power of the Holy Spirit in their lives. Yet, at the end of the day, our combined fruit as co-laborers in Christ has not resulted in the kind of transformation that is possible in Spirit. Instead of the world being transformed to better reflect the image of God, the world continues to be, mainly, a reflection of secular culture.

 

Addressing the fundamental theological problem necessitates, at the very least, the following elements: the ability to acknowledge the existence of an underlying issue, the dedicated time to study and research potential theological solutions, the skill to transform scholarly findings into practical ministry applications, and the determination to effect changes within a system that allows for continuous real-time reflection and adaptation. Not even one of these tasks is something that is easily added into the weekly life of the typical local pastor. In fact, each task alone could be its own full-time job. It is in answer to this problem that I offer the Critical Application Method.

[1] Smith, You Are What You Love, 77.