The Church Answers Podcast

The Six Purposes of the Church: How They Really Play Out in a Local Congregation. Part 8 of 9: The Purpose of Worship

The purposes of the church originate with the early churches in the New Testament. When Rick Warren wrote "The Purpose Driven Church" in 1995, the purposes became commonplace in conversations in churches around the world. Thom takes a detailed journey about the purposes of the church through nine episodes. Keep all of them together to share with your church leaders and members.

Duration:: 11m
Broadcast on:: 31 Jul 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

Welcome to the Church Answers Podcast, presented by Chanian Associates. Chanian Associates are the accounting firm for the church. Now get ready for fast-paced insights on key issues affecting the local church today. We release three episodes each week, so make sure you've seen or heard them all. And now, here is the CEO of Church Answers, Tom Rayner. Welcome again to the Church Answers Podcast. My name is Tom Rayner. Oftentimes, I'm joined by Jess Rayner. This time, I'm doing a series of podcasts, nine total, three over one week, and then another week, and then another week, three, three, and three, makes nine. And it's all about this book, The Purpose Driven Church, a book that was written in 1995. I read the manuscript in 1994, when Rick asked me to do it, and Rick Warren, I think made an imprint upon the local church, this book, even more than he did with the 40 million seller purpose-driven life, because this changed the fabric of the church in a Biblical way for many churches. We've been talking about that. This is now the eighth episode. And what we're about to do is to go through the fifth of Rick's five purposes. We will come back and add a six-purpose prayer, but just simply to say, Rick Warren wrote an incredible treatise on why the church exists. These are her five purposes, and then, of course, our six was prayer, and we'll be talking about the purpose of worship. Hey, before we get to that, remember my good friends at Chania and Associates, the accounting firm for the church, have your taxes done by them. Your church finances, your bookkeeping, look, you are just going to be so relaxed about your finances, if you know that Chania and Associates is handling it. So that is my prayer, that you will give them a call, or you can go to chaniaassociates.com and set up an appointment and talk to them about them doing your bookkeeping. They're the accounting firm for the church. You can find other accounting firms. You can find bookkeepers. You will not find a firm with a quality that focuses just upon churches, eleven hundred of the churches, to be exact, and they've served for over 21 years local churches. Thank you Chania and Associates. Thank you, Steve Chaney, my friend, the founder and CEO of Chania and Associates. Let's get back to talking about the purpose driven church. We're on the fifth of six purposes, and Rick had five, so this would be his fifth purpose. Again, he actually put this as purpose number one in his book, so the order that I'm doing is not necessarily significant or meant to be in any way one priority over another. This is the priority and purpose of worship. Now as I've done with all of the other purposes, allow me to read a brief portion from his book, The Purpose Driven Church, and hear what he had to say about the purpose of worship. He said, "A purpose driven church is committed to fulfilling all five tasks that Christ ordained for his church to accomplish." The word that describes the purpose of loving the Lord with all your heart is the purpose of worship. The church exists to worship him. How do we love God with all our heart? By worship him. It doesn't matter for ourselves, with a small group, or even with a hundred thousand people. When we express our love to God, we're worshiping him. The Bible says worship the Lord, your God, and serve him only. Notice that the worship comes before service. Worshiping God is the church, as he puts it as the first purpose. Sometimes we can get so busy working for God. We don't have time to express our love to for him through scripture. It is amazing that he re-born talks about worship, and he's not talking about a worship service. He's not talking about worship style. He's not talking about contentious issues in worship. I remember many, many years ago when Elmer Town's wrote a book called Worship Wars. It was an app description of what was going on with churches, still is in many ways today. So he wrote this book, worship, he said, "Look, unless we are first as a church submitting ourselves to him, God totally and completely in prayer and in evangelism and discipleship and ministry and fellowship through worship, we can't do anything else." And certainly, corporate worship is a part of it, and usually when we think about worship, we think about worship services, and we shouldn't neglect worship services. I mean, that is the body coming together, those who identify with the local body, coming together to worship God and to worship alongside one another. So corporate worship is intrinsically important. It is biblically vital, but for reborn worship was what launched all the other purposes. We can't evangelize until we're worshiping God. We can't disciple until we are worshiping God. We can't do ministry unless we're worshiping God. We can't have biblical fellowship unless we're worshiping God. And to be clear, that does not mean it's impossible to do those things. It just means to say that our heart is not right and it is not effective if we are doing anything in the church without worshiping him first. But to be sure, worship began to take on more of the corporate worship function within the church. In fact, it's hard to talk about worship without, in a book called The Purpose of a Church without talking about corporate worship. Much of the controversy in the early days of Saddleback was about its worship style. Some of it was Rick and how he dressed in his Hawaiian shirt and his sandals and the relaxed nature of Saddleback Church in Southern California. Some of that petty stuff was about that. But a lot of it was just the worship style. This is a very contemporary worship style. In the early days, when more churches were traditional in style, if we can nuance those definitions at all and that were not contemporary. So a lot of the energy went toward critiquing Saddleback and the worship style that had or any contemporary worship. So we had the worship wars that were going on. Rick did not write about worship to talk about styles of worship. He would say that we need to be contextual. In other words, as we worship, we need to worship in a language that reflects the context of where we are. Sometimes we think we should be contextual, doing a worship style in another continent or another country that reflects that continent of country. And oftentimes we don't think about, okay, maybe we need to be contextual where we are that reflects the culture, the generations that are represented in our community. And Rick would say this, worship needs to be contextual. Guess what? In Southern California, in the 1990s, for the most part, there were exceptions. Every worship was highly contextual for that church. And so Saddleback began to grow, not because it had a contemporary worship service. Saddleback began to grow at an unprecedented pace because it recognized its five purposes. It certainly had a charismatic leader and Rick Warren. It certainly was very much of the forefront and evangelism. It certainly had a contextual and dynamic contemporary worship service. But I think above all, the incredible growth of Saddleback had to do with the fact that they understood why they existed. Through the leadership of their founding pastor, who recently and only the last couple of years had retired, through the leadership of Rick Warren, alongside with Kay Warren, his wife, that church recognized that we are not going to do anything unless we're going to do it on God's purpose. If you remember when kids would get into a fight and someone would say, "I remember it with my three sons," say, "I'm hitting me," say, "I would say." It was an accident. Jazz would say, "No, he did it on purpose." An art middle child would say, "They're both right, punish them." Well, the idea of he did an accident, he did it on purpose. Purpose means something that's highly intentional. Purpose means it is a part of who we are. Purpose means we do things because we have a plan of obedience and strategy in that obedience. In the context of Saddleback and what I've gone through with all of these purposes is that the church did its purpose. And even more so than that, through its pastor Rick Warren, they taught us how to be purpose-driven as well. Sure, any book, any church, you can critique it. You can say, "I can do it better." But I'll tell you this. This book has shaped churches as much as any other books outside the Bible in the last several decades. It has shaped us to be the kind of church we need to be. And even if we haven't changed because of it, we know that we should. And I will say this, when purpose-driven church came out in 1995, it made a thunderous clap across the ecclesiastical landscape that is still reverberating to this day. But although the material and purpose-driven church 30 years later seems a little bit old, it's really not. And as I've had a chance to go back and read the book again in preparation for the non-podcast I'm doing on it, I am reminded again what an incredible impact it made. Well, I want to take it one step further. Still be talking about the purpose-driven church, but I'm going to add the purpose of prayer, and we're going to finish up the series of the purpose-driven church book. I thank you for being here for all of them. If you're on the YouTube, give us a thumbs up, give us one of those, "Yeah, you did great." Or give us a subscribe to us. If you listen on your favorite podcasting out, take a moment to do a rating and review. Get the word out about it so we can get this to others. Chaining and Associates has helped us to do so. You can help as well. It has been my joy to share with you about the purpose-driven church. I'm not done. I have one more episode to kind of wrap it up, but I hope if you have not heard of this book, I have not read it, that it will at least give you a teaser about something that changed the shape of American and global churches even to this day. Thank you for being a part of this one more episode on the purpose-driven church to go. You have been listening to the Church Answers podcast presented by Chaining and Associates. Chaining and Associates are the accounting firm for the church. You need to focus on ministry. Chaining will focus on finances. Also please subscribe and give a review to the Church Answers podcast on YouTube and on your favorite podcasting app. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)