America’s most common gathering

Gallup reports that around 40% of Americans surveyed reported attending a house of worship in the previous seven days. Barna Research studies in 2005 reported that 45% of adults said they attended worship in the previous week. Many feel that figure is inflated, the more accurate number being closer to 25%. Using that range, we know that at least 75 millions and perhaps as many as 120 million Americans attend worship each week, more than the total combined annual attendance at sports events!

Mega-churches get most of the TV exposure, leading us to believe that people go to church for big, expensive programs, great preaching, and concert quality music. Wrong! The large majority of those millions of worshippers are attending neighborhood churches with an average attendance less than 100 people where the preaching is often mediocre and the music something less than superb! And yet we go – again and again – week after week!

While people think they go to church for a program, in actuality they go for a Person!

Eugene Peterson points out three factors that pull people to worship.
1. Worship gives life a working structure.
2. Worship nurtures our need for a relationship with God.
3. Worship centers our attention on the wisdom of God. – Life at Its Best, Zondervan, 2006

When we pause from the commerce of daily life, we have the opportunity to regain a sense of what/who we were created to be. Regardless of the style of our church’s liturgy – from rigidly formal to charismatically chaotic – behind it all is the Spirit reminding us that we are small and He is big! Worship gives us a language for loving God. When we worship our heart expresses our sometimes unconscious longing to know Him. The very act of gathering with others for the purpose of worship says, “I’m reaching out to You.” Worship includes hearing the Word of God. The Bible is read, the preacher opens the Text and speaks from it. That very Word shapes us – from the inside out – and comforts us too.

If a church abandons the pursuit of God and becomes a gathering focused on anything or anyone other than the Lord, it will die for the real, if unconscious, needs of the worshippers will not be nurtured. If the Word is stripped from worship, replaced by poetry or prose of man, the worshippers will starve and that church will die. The upward focus on the Eternal, Unfathomable, Transcendent God is what sets worship gatherings apart from all other human events!

Make gathering for worship a consistent part of each week! The very act will improve your life, perhaps not the first week, but most certainly over time. Deal with the consumer expectations that can poison your worship experience. Instead of focusing on how you feel, what you think you need, or who spoke kindly to you – just go to present yourself to God! Show up a few minutes early and let your soul catch up with your body so you can fully worship. Attend with your heart and mind as well as your body! In other words, pay attention and participate. Sing! Pray! Listen! Respond!

And like the Psalmist, you too will sing, “I rejoiced with those who said to me, “Let us go to the house of the Lord." (Psalm 122:1, NIV)

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Light of the world You stepped down into darkness,
opened my eyes, let me see;
Beauty that made this heart adore You,
Hope of a life spent with You.

King of all days, oh so highly exalted.
glorious in Heaven above!
Humbly You came to earth You created,
All for love's sake became poor.

Here I am to worship! Here I am to bow down!
Here I am to say that You're my God.
You're altogether lovely, altogether worthy,
Altogether wonderful to me.


Here I Am To WorshipTim Hughes © 2000 Kingsway Music
CCLI License No. 810055