Musings on 25 Years of Ordained Ministry--5

Community Church of Joy: Worship

From the start I was involved in every aspect of the mission and ministry of Joy. Walt was a fantastic Senior Pastor to work for as he was very aware of his strengths and then hired others to shore up his areas of weakness. We both shared the same passion for reaching non-church going people. But we had some different gifts to compliment each other. So Walt had no problem letting me take the lead in certain areas. I've always told people his ego was big enough (healthy enough) to allow others to do their thing and get the credit. So while I was involved in many areas, the major through-line for most of my ministry at Joy centered around worship. And I don't mean worship from a worship leaders perspective, but worship from the perspective of evangelism.

When I first came to Joy we had 3 services. An ELCA Green Book Liturgical service (about 75 people--and it never grew in all the years we offered it) and two contemporary services (those were the ones that grew). The contemporary services by nature were geared to people who had not been to worship before so in many ways the messages were an "introduction" to the faith.

So, sensing the need for a service geared more to discipling those who were already committed to Jesus, I volunteered to start a new, Sunday evening service. The music was still contemporary, but the messages were more Bible-study oriented vs. the life-application orientation of Sunday mornings. We also included prayer time at the altar at the end of every service.

To get it started, I had to put together a band. So I asked my brother, Jeff, if he and his young family would be willing to move to Phoenix to help. I helped Jeff find a full-time job with Lutheran Brotherhood as Joy could only pay $150 per month. Jeff and his family moved down and in the fall of 1984 we launched the Sunday evening worship experience. It generally ran fall to spring with the summer off.

After about 5 years I started getting the itch to do something more radical in terms of shaping worship for non-church goers. Walt and I flew up to Willow Creek Church in the Chicago area to take in their "seeker" service. It was a service totally geared to those in the seeking mode of faith. The usual "worship" rituals Christians appreciate but non-Christians don't understand were removed from the service. The service was then rebuilt with newcomers in mind. The service downplayed congregation participation as newcomers didn't know how to participate. It up-played a contemporary presentation of the Gospel using performance music by a live band, drama, video, and a message geared to someone who had never heard the Gospel before. It was exactly the kind of service churning in my soul.

So we headed back to Joy and moved the Sunday night crew to a new, innovative, seeker service on Sunday morning held at the Mann Movie Theatre about a block from the Joy campus. Our first weekend we featured Phoenix Cardinals Ron Wolfley. The Cards were to play their first game as the Phoenix Cardinals on Monday night. We had almost 300 people in attendance. But...most of them were Joy people coming to check us out with no intention of actually moving to the theatre. Within weeks we bottomed out at about 30 people. Interestingly, however, many of them were new. They were people who were hesitant to come to a church building. Over the next few months the service began to grow to about 70. Then the summer hit, along with some big blockbuster movies. And slowly the theatre began to edge us out.

So...we moved the service to the Joy campus, replacing the last service with our theatre service. It quickly became our fastest growing service. We are able to hire Terey Summers, a professional actress, who took our drama to a whole new level. We were reaching new kinds of people who wouldn't attend a "normal" worship experience. The whole point of the service was to present an experience in which people didn't have to understand the service in order to understand the Savior. It served as the first part of our 3-part mission: Bring them in, build them up, and send them out.

After a few years of leading that particular service (and for a period of time, the Late Service crew--as we named that service--were also returning Sunday night for that service. That was a lot of work!) I ended up assuming responsibility for the worship life, so to speak, of Joy. We moved from a traditional music director-lead ministry to a team-lead ministry consisting of a drama director, vocal director, band director, video director, etc., and I lead that talented group of people. We always maintained different styles of worship each weekend (for awhile we were up to 5 different services each weekend--that was a killer! :)) but the overall vision was set by the team. In the process we were also responsible for the childrens/youth choirs and major holiday season shows, the Christmas Show being the biggest. On top of that came 8 Christmas Eve services and 5-6 Easter Services with special events thrown in for the fun of it. And it was fun. And rewarding as God used Joy to connect with hundreds of people who might not have been impacted anywhere else.

I enjoyed the chance to think outside of the box; to experiment with different presentations of the Gospel in order to better connect with the non-church going culture. Some things worked well (Stomp-like trash can guys, the Christmas program, weekly dramas and video presentations) some things not so well (we had a few clunkers sprinkled throughout our Sunday mornings over the years--but why dwell on it! :)). But we were always motivated by finding new ways to tell the story of Jesus through the Sunday service to people who didn't know him. And the people of Joy responded by bringing their friends.

Because of Walt's profile in the Lutheran Church and the wider church, Joy began to gain a reputation as a congregation to learn from. That lead to a second through-line in my ministry at Joy: the yearly Evangelism conference.