10 Marks of a GREAT Worship Service

Nearly every Sunday afternoon, and definitely by midday on Mondays, I will have someone ask me. “How was your church service?” or “Did you have a good service yesterday?”

As I think about these questions (and others like it), I decided that I would write a few thoughts from my perspective on what constitutes not just a “Good” worship service rather a “Great” worship service.

1. People who attend feel genuinely welcomed from the time they arrive until they leave.
2. Volunteers know their actions are significant to helping people feel genuinely welcomed.
3. Volunteers don’t see what they do as “work”, rather they see it as an exciting & fun way to serve Jesus… by serving others.
4. We see smiles and hear laughter as people fellowship with one another.
5. We hear the audience singing and interacting with each other and with the worship team as they participate in worshiping God… in other words, we don’t worship God by OBSERVATION…we worship together by PARTICIPATION.
6. Songs, prayers, and messages that point people to Jesus’ love for them.
7. We see people following along in their Bibles and taking notes during the sermon.
8. People taking the next step of commitment to Jesus.
   (Each person comes into the worship service from different places of commitment in their belief or relationship with Jesus. Each person’s response is based on there starting point when they arrived at church that morning. We don’t want to leave them where we found them that morning.)
9. People feeling led to join in with one of our LifeGroups, or to help volunteer in some capacity in the weeks that will follow….and they feel comfortable enough to sign up or to get more information about each one.
10. People speaking to me/others by email, text, facebook, or in person the rest of the week about the things that they took away from the worship service on Sunday Morning.

Do you find it interesting that I said nothing about the number in attendance that day…the amount in the offering plate… the number of baptisms…the number of new members taken in…

You see, I have found that the more successful we are in doing the 10 things listed above, well, the other things will take care of themselves.

"People were bringing little children to Jesus to have him touch them, but the disciples rebuked them. When Jesus saw this, he was indignant. He said to them, "Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. I tell you the truth, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it." And he took the children in his arms, put his hands on them and blessed them."

Mark 10:13-16