Blended Worship or Separate Worship Services

I talked to two Baptist Directors of Mission today. I told them I would be in Dallas this weekend, and asked if they would recommend a church to visit that had a successful blended service, one that was running 600 to 1000 members, or slightly more, in worship. They could not think of a single one. They knew of some smaller congregations that were trying to do a blended service, but were not having much success.

Both of these men agreed that it would be a step backward to join our two a.m. services (traditional and contemporary) into one that is blended. They said our culture demands that we have choices. Ultimately, they thought that people would not be happy with that arrangement because of their varying musical preferences.

I have talked with members of our church who have different opinions as to whether we should try to put our two very different services together. Some say that because of our two Bible Studies that happen concurrently with these two services, our church actually feels like two churches meeting in the same location. These folks complain that they don't know everyone in the church anymore.

Then there are others who, like the directors of mission I mentioned above, say that it would be a mistake to join the two services, and that it would possibly stunt the growth of our church. At the same time, they emphasized that music style is just one component among others that have to work together, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, to produce numerical growth.

I have tried to remain neutral on this subject, but it's becoming more difficult. Right now we have a 10:30 service that was very traditional at one time, but is slowly becoming more blended in style. We also offer a contemporary service. As far as the number of people who actually attend these a.m. services, they are about the same in each service. This arrangement seems to be working well at the present time.

As for wanting to know everyone in the church, one director of missions told me that studies have shown that you really can't get to know more than 30 or 40 people anyway. So if we want to grow, we need to stop being concerned about knowing everyone. And is that really a prerequisite of church life, that we all know each other? What is the largest Baptist church you can think of? Now is there any possible way the members could all know each other?

To address this concern, we should probably offer more opportunities for fellowship in which everyone can participate, while still maintaining separate services. Maybe a "dinner on the grounds" every now and then would be nice, or a picnic away from the church some Sunday. It would be interesting to see what happens. I'll bet that people in general would go to the people they already know; i.e. the people who attend their worship service! Oops. I probably should tone it down a bit.

A long time ago I came to the conclusion that people just have different musical tastes. This is not a bad thing at all. We should celebrate our diversity. But to blend traditional and contemporary music into one service, all the while expecting everyone to like the two different kinds of music may not be very realistic. Some seniors, long time members of our church, already feel our traditional service is getting too contemporary for their tastes. And someof those who attend our contemporary service probably wish it were more "edgy" in the music. So I have to ask, why in the world we would want to try and meld these groups together.

I love all of these people who prefer one musical style over another. And I don't think they're being narrow minded just because they don't like certain types of music. I simply recognize that they are individuals who are more comfortable in their worship of Almighty God when they are surrounded with music that moves them, be it contemporary, traditional, or any other style you could imagine.

Finally, let me say that we need to see ourselves as one local church, regardless of the different kinds of worship services we have. Second Baptist Church in Houston is huge, offering 4 or 5 different styles of worship, meeting on multiple sites, and no one thinks of them as being more than one church. Let us just be thankful that we have different kinds of people in our church, and that we have the ability to offer a "palate" of styles when it comes to worshiping the Lord through music.

So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus (Galatians 3:26-28, TNIV).

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