THOUGHTS ON NEW WORSHIP SERVICES

Many New Lifers have been aware for some time that we have been praying about adding new worship services. We want to create more opportunities for people to hear and believe the Gospel. This summer we will start to preview one new service with the intention that this service will become a weekly event in the Fall 2006.

WHY WE PLAN TO DO IT

1. To produce new disciples - New Life is on a mission to produce more disciples – it’s at the heart of our vision as a church. (How can we read the New Testament and not be convinced that is the most burning desire of God’s?). New services open new opportunities for people to encounter God.

- Of the 330,000 people living in our tri-county area at best only one out of three has any meaningful connection with a church. This means 2 out of 3 people you see at Kroger or work with in your office are separated from God and lost, or is a Christian who is backslidden or wounded.

- Tazewell and Peoria counties are among the least churched counties in Illinois (out of 102 Ill. Counties Peoria ranks 74^th and Tazewell 83^rd).

We want to continually find ways to reach more people with the gospel.

2. To “Make Room”

New services are really an expression of “Making Room”. “Making Room” was the slogan from our recent campaign for enlarging the facility but more than a slogan, it reflects a value that we hold at New Life. We want to constantly “make room”:

- room for more people to hear the gospel

- room for more people to serve and use their gifts

- room for new leaders to rise up and lead

and adding worship services allows for all three to happen.

A practical reason for creating new worship services is due to the fact that it is getting harder to find empty seats in our current services. However, even if the current services were not crowded, we would still be leading the church to create new services because new services create new opportunities for making more disciples and more opportunities for believers to use their spiritual gifts in ministry.

WHY DIFFERENT FORMATS?

We intend to add services that have formats and styles that differ with our current services. This is about being missionaries to our culture. When Harriet and I were missionaries in Japan, we had to grapple with how to communicate about Jesus to Japanese people in a way they could understand. Not only did we have to learn the Japanese language, we also had to consider how Japanese people thought and what values they held – values that might differ from Americans. We had to understand how college-aged Japanese differed from middle-aged Japanese in the way they thought and felt. All of our language and culture study was to enable us to communicate Jesus Christ in a manner that was understandable and compelling to the Japanese heart.

The same principles hold true here in central Illinois. Our current services effectively communicate to the hearts of many people. However, there are other people who say that our current services aren’t so impactful for them, that they aren’t connecting very deeply through them. So just like missionaries who strive to preach the gospel effectively in another culture, we want to add new styles and formats that can reach people who aren’t being reached effectively through our current services. This is not a rejection of how we do our current services – it’s an expansion of New Life’s ministry into new areas of our culture. It’s casting a wider net.

New Life certainly is a church that can understand this idea. After all, a main reason for the launch of New Life some 20 years ago was the desire of those original families for a worship style and format that was more meaningful to them, a desire to break away from a worship style that wasn’t effectively engaging them and to adopt a style that enabled them to encounter God in a way that communicated to their hearts.

WHAT YOU CAN DO

First, please pray specifically for the new service, that God guides everyone involved in the planning and participation. Pray that God uses this service to win the lost, reactivate those who have strayed, and bring out the gifts and service of many people. And pray for NL leadership for wisdom in navigating all the changes and details involved in this kind of new initiative.

Second, attend the service in order to understand what is happening. In this way you can decide if this is a service you want to take part in or if this is a service that you can leverage in inviting friends and family to church.