At Saddleback we believe worship services can be deep, meaningful, and accessible to the unchurched. Your church members shouldn’t have to choose between whole-heartedly worshiping God and having a place where they can bring their unbelieving friends to have the Gospel presented to them.
When we speak of worship, we are talking about something only believers can do. Worship is from believers to God. We magnify God’s name in worship by expressing our love and commitment to him. And unbelievers simply cannot do this.
Here is the simple definition of worship that we operate on at Saddleback:
"Worship is expressing our love to God for who he is, what he’s said, and what he’s doing."
We believe there are many appropriate ways to express our love to God: by praying, singing, obeying, trusting, giving, testifying, listening and responding to his Word, thanking, and many other expressions.
God - not man - is the focus and center of our worship.
God is the consumer of worship
Although unbelievers cannot truly worship, they can watch believers worship. They can observe the joy that we feel. They can see how we value God’s Word and how we respond to it. They can hear how the Bible answers the problems and questions of life. They can notice how worship encourages, strengthens, and changes us. They can sense when God is supernaturally moving in a service, although they won’t be able to explain it.
When unbelievers watch genuine worship, it becomes a powerful witness. In Acts 2 – on the day of Pentecost – God’s presence was so evident in the disciples’ worship service that it attracted the attention of unbelievers throughout the entire city!
Acts 2:6 says, "... a crowd came together.” We know it was a big crowd because 3,000 people were saved that day.
Why were those 3,000 people converted? Because they felt God’s presence and they understood the message.
I believe both of these elements are essential for worship to be a witness.
God’s presence must be sensed in the service. More people are won to Christ by feeling God’s presence than by all of our apologetic arguments combined.
Few people, if any, are converted to Christ on purely intellectual grounds. It is the sense of God’s presence that melts hearts and explodes mental barriers. Worship without this yields few evangelistic results.
I believe there is an intimate connection between worship and evangelism.
In the first place, the goal of evangelism is to produce worshipers of God. The Bible tells us that "the Father seeks worshipers” (John 4:23). When we recruit worshipers, that’s called evangelism.
On the other hand, worship provides the motivation for evangelism. It produces a desire in us to tell others about Christ. The result of Isaiah’s powerful worship experience (Isaiah 6:1-8) was Isaiah saying, "Here am I, send me!” True worship causes us to witness.
In genuine worship God’s presence is felt, God’s pardon is offered, God’s purposes are revealed, and God’s power is displayed. That sounds to me like an ideal context for evangelism! I’ve noticed that when unbelievers watch believers relate to God in an intelligent, sincere manner it creates a desire to know God, too.
Worship with sensitivity
Because genuine worship can have such a profound impact on unbelievers, we need to be very mindful of their fears, hang-ups, and needs when they are present in our worship services.
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