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On this episode of The Lead On Podcast, Jeff Iorg, president of the SBC Executive Committee, discusses the importance of corporate worship and suggests practical strategies for how churches can improve corporate worship and reclaim its collective nature.
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Ready to hone your leadership skills and unlock your full potential? Tune in to the Lead On Podcast, where Jeff Iorg dives deep into Biblical leadership.
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Welcome to the lead on podcast. This is Jeff Orge, the president of the executive committee of the Southern Baptist Convention, welcoming you once again to our continuing conversation about practical issues related to ministry leadership. Today is the last podcast in a short series I've been doing under the theme ministry is difficult, but it's not that complicated. Ministry is hard. No doubt about that.
Jeff Iorg:But it's not that complicated. And I've used a model which helps us understand that churches basically do 5 things, evangelism, sometimes called evangelism slash mission, discipleship, fellowship, ministry, and worship. We've been talking on the podcast about practical things to make these five core functions less complex, take a simpler approach, and just make sure that we are staying focused on the things we're supposed to be doing in ministry, especially in church ministry, and not getting sidetracked and distracted on so many other things that make our lives so complicated. So ministry is difficult. It's challenging.
Jeff Iorg:No doubt about that, but it's not that complicated. Today, I wanna talk about the last one of these five functions and that is worship. Now I've saved it for last, not because it's least important. In fact, some people would say it's the most important. I've saved it for last because I wanna talk about today one aspect of worship, which I think, has been devalued in the church in the past generation, and we need to recapture as a value in order to raise this level of effectiveness in our church.
Jeff Iorg:Now when I speak about worship today, I'm speaking primarily about what we do when we gather together for worship. And I wanna say upfront that today's podcast is not gonna be at all about the style, of the music or the choices that are made about any of those kinds of issues. I I really don't care about that. It's not material to me if a church uses an organ or a piano or if they have drums or if they don't or if they sing from a hymnal or project their lyrics. These kinds of things are really not at the core of what I wanna talk about today.
Jeff Iorg:Instead, I wanna talk about the importance
Jeff Iorg:of corporate worship, of coming together to worship God
Jeff Iorg:corporately. Now this has been significantly devalued in my lifetime, but particularly, I'll say in the last 20 years
Jeff Iorg:in ministry leadership. Here's what I mean.
Jeff Iorg:Very frequently, I will go to a worship experience expecting to have a corporate experience where
Jeff Iorg:I am led to do something as a group, and the person
Jeff Iorg:at the front will say, we're glad you're here today. We want you to feel total freedom to do whatever you want. If you wanna stand, stand. If you wanna sit, sit. If you wanna kneel, kneel.
Jeff Iorg:If you wanna sing, sing. If you don't, that's fine too. We want you to feel comfortable and do whatever you want to do. Now, I don't wanna be too snarky today, but I've told my wife the next time someone says that to me, I'm gonna say, okay, well, I'm going home and watch NFL football and read the paper because that's what I really want to do right now.
Jeff Iorg:Now that might be a little bit too blunt for some of you, but the hard reality is I go to worship at a church because I know I need it. Because I know if I'm left to my own devices, I won't worship. You say, oh, but I would.
Jeff Iorg:I'd go out on that fishing boat. No. You don't. You go out on a fishing boat, and
Jeff Iorg:you go fishing. Alright. Let's just be honest. You go to church because you're wanting to gather so that you can have someone help you to get your focus where you really want it to be, which is on worshiping God. Corporate worship.
Jeff Iorg:It's the opposite of instructing people to do their own thing. It's bringing people together so that they can all do something together, so they can do what they don't know
Jeff Iorg:how to do on their own, so they can do what they won't do on their own, so they can do something shared as a church, as a people of God, coming together to worship corporately. So I wanna raise the value of corporate and the corporate aspects of worship today. Now here are some things, first of all, that you can do to reclaim the
Jeff Iorg:corporate aspects of worship. First of all, plan your worship services for all attenders.
Jeff Iorg:Sometimes I feel that worship services are planned only for the people who are really skilled musically or who are really dialed in biblically or who are really focused emotionally, and I wonder if the people who planned the service really understood who was coming to church that day.
Jeff Iorg:What do you think people are thinking about when they're coming to worship service on Sunday?
Jeff Iorg:You say, well, they're thinking about God and exalting him and reading the scriptures and hearing the word of God and praying. No. They're not. No. They're not.
Jeff Iorg:They're thinking about, when am I gonna get the oil changed in my car?
Jeff Iorg:How am I gonna work enough overtime
Jeff Iorg:to get my kid braces? When am I gonna
Jeff Iorg:find the time to get over to the nursing home and see my grandmother?
Jeff Iorg:How am I gonna pass my chemistry test this week? That's what people are thinking about when they get up on Sunday morning, and so when they come to the worship service, you have to have a plan to engage all of them, The 15 year old girls, the 28 year old guys, the grandmothers, the singles, all of them. When I was a church planter in Oregon, I had a younger worship leader who worked with me, who was outstanding, and I I loved mentoring him, and I loved working with him. One of the
Jeff Iorg:things that I often asked him was when he was planning a song or a prayer or something where he was asking people to move physically, like to hold hands or to gather in groups or something like that, whatever was being planned in the worship service,
Jeff Iorg:I would simply ask him, will Sonny Nelson do that? Will Sonny Nelson do that? Who was Sonny Nelson, and why did I care? Well, Sonny was a 55 year old man, married to his wife for more than 30 years.
Jeff Iorg:He had been a successful businessman and had decided to scale his business back significantly, until he got it to the point where he drove an excavator, and he dug foundations for home builders. Now he had, at one point, employed dozens of men, had a large construction company, but after making some significant money at that, he decided he didn't wanna do that anymore, so he scaled it down. He had a truck, a trailer, an excavator, and a group of contractors he worked with, and every morning, he got up, went out, fired up that truck truck that excavator, and dug holes in the dirt, and absolutely loved it. Now his wife was a realtor. She sold real estate.
Jeff Iorg:They had a beautiful home, nice life, good people. They had become Christians a number of years before and had taken on leadership roles in past churches, and they came to our church, really a bit of an unusual couple. They they were already Christians and somewhat responsible in leader in leadership, and and when they came to our church, they were a blessing and a gift, and we were grateful they did. But I would always ask my young worship leader, will Sonny Nelson sing this song? Will will he say this prayer?
Jeff Iorg:Will he stand in the circle, or
Jeff Iorg:will he hold the hands? Will he will he do what you're planning for Sunday? This is the guy that drives an excavator all week. He's a good guy. He loves Jesus.
Jeff Iorg:But will he do what you're asking?
Jeff Iorg:Is the song that you're singing, does it have words in it that he'll identify with? Does does it have a a melody that he can sing? Is it is it a pitch or a key that fits a male voice like his? Now to be sure, Sonny wasn't the only person we considered, but he was one that I would often ask about. Will Sonny Nelson do this?
Jeff Iorg:And I'll tell you, there were a number of times when my young worship leader friend would look at me and say, probably not. I say, well, occasionally, that's an acceptable answer, but most Sundays, it's not an acceptable answer. We have to plan a service that Sonny Nelson will do with elements of worship that he can participate in
Jeff Iorg:wholeheartedly. And then we had a
Jeff Iorg:few other people that I would call their names, and we would evaluate our worship planning based on all the attenders who were coming. You know, this is one of the weaknesses of many of you who plan worship services, and that is you think everyone thinks the same way about worship that you do. They think you have the they they they have the skill set you have, the understanding of music that you have, the understanding of God and relating to him that you have. They also think that you also think they're as intuitive as you are, and and I'm just gonna give you a news flash. They're just not.
Jeff Iorg:K? And that doesn't mean they're bad people or that they're subspiritual, that they're not interested, or that they can't be led to worship. It just means they're very different in how they come on Sunday than you may be thinking. A second thing you can do to reclaim corporate nature of worship is plan that things that
Jeff Iorg:you can all do together. Now
Jeff Iorg:people love to do things corporately. They love to do things together. Now if you don't think that's true, I'll just give you 2 words, college football. People like to wear team colors, participate in team chants, uphold traditions like hand signals or other kinds of sim symbols or signs about their school. They like to go to the game.
Jeff Iorg:I've often said it this way. If I wanna watch and analyze
Jeff Iorg:a football game, I'll do it on TV. But if I wanna experience the game, I wanna go
Jeff Iorg:to the stadium. Let's talk about duck football for a moment. When I go to Autzen Stadium in Eugene, Oregon to watch my beloved Oregon Ducks, 60,000 of us show up dressed in similar colors, ready to participate in cheers together and in expressions that will unify us and support our team. The public address announcer doesn't say everyone cheer what they want, or say what they want, or stand up and sit down when they want. No.
Jeff Iorg:We are unified. We have certain times we stand, certain times we sit, certain cheers we do, and we know how to do them in such a way that people say that Austin Stadium, only 60,000 people, is usually rated the 2nd or 3rd loudest stadiums in America. Why? Because we all come together to do something. Now I'm not trying to equate a college football stadium with your worship service, but I'm asking you this.
Jeff Iorg:Are you planning something that all the people who
Jeff Iorg:come can do together?
Jeff Iorg:Now another aspect of reclaiming the corporate nature of worship is recognizing that you're planning services to invite people to do what they can't do on their own. Now I know this is hard for some of you, especially those of you who are really musically gifted or really in into singing or into being on the platform, to understand that there are a lot of people like me who don't know what to do. When you tell me on a Sunday, do whatever you feel led to do, I'll say, well, I just feel led to sit here. I don't know what to do. I came because I wanted you to lead me.
Jeff Iorg:I wanted you to lead me to sing something or to pray something or to speak something. I wanted you to lead me to do something that I
Jeff Iorg:I really don't know how to do on my own. I need you
Jeff Iorg:to lead me to do something that I want to do with other people, but I don't know how to do on my own. Listen. This is the essence, the importance of corporate worship, where we come together to do that which we cannot do on our own. And finally, another aspect of reclaiming the corporate nature of worship is celebrating these shared experiences, celebrating things that we do together, not that we do independently or separately. Now, I wanna give you now the a challenge to implement the most significant tool that I know available to most churches to measure the corporate nature of their worship and to decide some specific things they can do to improve.
Jeff Iorg:In other words, how can you plan services for all attenders? How can you plan to get people to do things together? How can you plan people to do things that are new for them or that they don't know how to do on their own? How can you plan for people to have a shared experience? How can you evaluate how this is going in your church and make real improvements that are visibly, observably, measurable.
Jeff Iorg:How can you do that? Well, use video. I want you to video your worship service.
Jeff Iorg:Now only do this about once or twice a year, maybe every 3 to 6 months to evaluate how it's going. You say, woah. Wait a minute. Woah. Woah.
Jeff Iorg:Woah. Woah. We we we video our service every week. We're putting it online. We're videoing it.
Jeff Iorg:No no no, you're not. See, you're making the mistake that so many people make and they think that the worship happens on the platform. You see, I'm not asking you to video the platform. Everybody on the platform knows what they're doing. They're all fully engaged.
Jeff Iorg:They are the most worship centric, worship centered people in your church. They've been thinking about it all week. They've been practicing it for hours. They definitely know what they're doing. That's not who you video.
Jeff Iorg:Now, again, was a little bit snarky about this, but when I was a pastor one Sunday, I told my worship team, hey, or one week I told my worship team, hey, this Sunday, I want us to video the worship service, and then I want us to sit down and and watch it and evaluate together some of these points I'm making today on the podcast about the corporate nature of worship. Oh, sure, pastor. We can do that. So I didn't say anything more. But on Sunday, when I arrived, I said, hey.
Jeff Iorg:I thought we were gonna video the the service today, and they said, oh, we we are. Camera's set up, and we're ready to go, and I said, oh, no. No. No. You've got the camera set up in the back.
Jeff Iorg:You're gonna video the the
Jeff Iorg:platform. They said, well well, yes, we need to to video to see how we're doing. I said, oh, no. All of you are doing fine. Take the camera, put it on the platform, aim it at the audience.
Jeff Iorg:You won't be able
Jeff Iorg:to get everyone, but I want a a a still shot of the I mean, I mean, a still camera of videoing the entire service. I wanna be able to get the most of the people in so we can see what the congregation is doing, and just turn it on and leave it on and don't worry about it. And and we did. Well, a couple days later, the worship leader and I sat down. I said, alright, let's watch the tape together.
Jeff Iorg:So we put it in and turned it on, and we were about 5 minutes into the first song. When he said, just can we turn it off for a second? I said, sure.
Jeff Iorg:We turned it off, and he said, I I don't wanna watch anymore. I said, why not?
Jeff Iorg:He said, because no one's singing.
Jeff Iorg:He said, look, there's very few people that are singing.
Jeff Iorg:I said, yeah. I know. He says there's a lot of people just looking around.
Jeff Iorg:I said, yeah, I know. He goes, we're we're just not connecting. I said, yeah, I know.
Jeff Iorg:And then I said, brother, look, this wasn't this exercise wasn't designed to to to discourage you. It was designed to get you to think, what do I need to do differently? And that set us on a path. Now, this young man I was working with was was remarkable. He was he was passionate and eager to learn and to grow and to change, and so he started working intentionally on the things we've been talking about.
Jeff Iorg:How do we plan for all attenders? What do I need to change about how I'm acting on the platform so that I engage people and get them to understand that we're all in this together? How can I shift my focus from the platform to the congregation in terms of evaluating the effectiveness of what we're doing? How can we celebrate the power of shared experience and restructure what we're doing so that everyone understands that it's about them, not about us? Man, that was a powerful, powerful time of watching that video together and then starting to strategize how we could do things differently going forward.
Jeff Iorg:Now let me give you then some suggestions that grew out of that video session that we had that day and some things that you can do that I think will make it more focused make your worship more focused on the congregation and the corporate nature of worship than what happens on the platform.
Jeff Iorg:First of all, plan your service
Jeff Iorg:with the congregation in mind. Think about Sonny Nelson. Think about other individuals. Think about people in your church, and ask yourself the hard questions about will they sing these songs? Will they say these prayers?
Jeff Iorg:Will they read these scriptures? Will are we planning something that the typical person who's just walked in off the street can do together? And then second, recognize your responsibility as a worship leader is to reach off that platform and engage people in such a way that they are with you and that you are actually leading them to worship. Now one of the myths that I hear sometimes today is people say, well, my job is just to set an example for worship and everyone else will follow. My job is just to worship the Lord and then everyone else will just spontaneously see me doing that, and they will follow my example, and they will do what I do.
Jeff Iorg:Well, that's just simply not happening. I mean, if you turn on the, the video and watch in your church, you'll see that that's just not happening. That's because people don't spontaneously watch someone else do something and immediately start doing it themselves. They have to be led where you want them to go. No pastor, for example, ever stands up and says, I'm just gonna stand up here and start talking, and I'm just gonna start talking from different passages in the Bible.
Jeff Iorg:And I don't really care what passage you wanna read this morning. You just turn to your Bible wherever you want to, and you read whatever you wanna read. If you wanna if you wanna, study something else while I'm doing this, you just go ahead and study that. If you wanna think about something else, you go ahead and think about that. No one does that.
Jeff Iorg:No. The pastor recognizes he has responsibility to capture everyone's attention and to bring everyone in the room's attention to bear on a particular theme or subject or idea or scripture. Now does he do that every single person, every single Sunday? Of course not, and no worship leader can do that as well. But every pastor does that for the most of the people who gather and works hard at engaging everyone in the room around a common text and a common idea.
Jeff Iorg:We have to do the same thing in worship leadership, where we reach out off the platform, capture people's attention, and bring it to bear. You say, well, can this really be done? Absolutely, it can. I recently attended a church where I was, so impressed with the worship leader who simply walked out on the stage and said, join me as we stand together, as we come together, as we sing together. And then he started leading, and the focus of his leadership was not on the platform.
Jeff Iorg:It was on the congregation, and it was beautiful to watch him just masterfully lead all of us into an incredible worship experience. Man, it was good stuff Because he recognized that his responsibility was to lead us, not just model for us, not just do something in front of us and hope we caught up with it and did what he wanted us to do. No. His job was to reach off that platform and lead us into doing something that we could do together. So, we're talking about things you can do, and that's certainly another aspect of what it means to lead in a corporate worship experience.
Jeff Iorg:Now, moving on. Another thing you can do is actually involve more people in your church in worship the worship service. How can you do that? Well, you have to do it intentionally by setting aside planning time to make it happen and by actually preparing and training and shaping people to help them participate in the worship service itself. So many things about this.
Jeff Iorg:Some people say, well, we really don't wanna do that because we wanna protect the quality. Get off your arrogance. Come on now. This is worship for the people of God, for all the people of God, and your responsibility is to lead them, to train them, to facilitate them, and to help them to do to to participate in such a way that more and more of them are actually participating in the leadership of and in the participation of a worship experience. Now this this is important theologically.
Jeff Iorg:It's important for discipleship and that it stretches people. It important for symbolism and it com because it communicates inclusion and openness and involvement. It it rests on so many things that are so important. I just had time to go into today on the podcast. But more importantly today, what are some practical ways that you can increase more worship participation by people who are coming to your services?
Jeff Iorg:Well, number 1, use more people to pray. I'm I'm so disappointed when people just spontaneously pray, and the same person prays over and over in a service, or the same person prays over and over week to week in a church. Man, listen. Involving people in prayer is a very important way to get more people participating in your service and to communicate inclusion and to communicate involvement and to communicate that everyone in the room is responsible to be ready to bring us all into connection with God. Number of years ago, again, when I was a pastor of a traditional church, not a new church, we had morning services and evening services on a Sunday, and I realized that we typically had 6 prayers on a Sunday.
Jeff Iorg:We had an opening prayer. We had an operatory prayer. We had a closing prayer. We might have more prayers than that, but we typically had at least those 6 prayers, 3 in the morning and 3 in the evening. So I went to the person who was coordinating our worship back then.
Jeff Iorg:I was a volunteer, by the way. It wasn't even a paid person, and I said, look. I wanna get serious about getting more people involved in leading our worship services and coming out of the congregation to participate, and so I want us to have 6 different people say these 6 prayers every Sunday. Now, this was another day, and so don't misread this, but in in that context and in that setting, it was gonna be the men who led these prayers. Not saying women or children or teenagers can't lead prayers.
Jeff Iorg:I'm just saying in that context, it was the men. And so, I said, so here's what we're gonna do. I want you to get a list of all the men who are members of our church, and I want you to make a chart, and I want you to start calling those guys 6 a week and asking them to lead one
Jeff Iorg:of these prayers. And he did that, and I saw unbelievable things happen.
Jeff Iorg:First of all, guys would say yes to leading a prayer who'd never led a prayer in a worship service before, And on Sunday, they would show up in a suit. I'm not exaggerating. They show up in a suit.
Jeff Iorg:I'm leading prayer today, pastor. I know that. Thank you for inviting me to do this.
Jeff Iorg:I've got it written out. Is that gonna be okay? Yes. It is. You can read it if you need to.
Jeff Iorg:I'm ready. Guys showing up in suits because they've been asked to lead a prayer in a service. Other guys would call me. Pastor, I got called to
Jeff Iorg:lead in prayer on Sunday. Yeah. I I can't do it. Why not?
Jeff Iorg:Well, I need to come see you about that. And pastors or guys would come into my office and say there's something in my life that I I can't I can't get up in front of people and pray with this in my life, and people know it's in my life. And I said, well, let's talk about that. And some guys, we weren't able to get on the platform to pray because there were things in their lives that came out that we didn't even know about. Others got up and prayed.
Jeff Iorg:One man had said to me, I've I've never prayed in public before. I said, well, can you
Jeff Iorg:do it? He said, I don't think so, but I'm I'm I'm gonna try. I said, well,
Jeff Iorg:I'll tell you what. If you can't do it at the
Jeff Iorg:last minute, you tell me, and I'll cover for you. But I want you to try. And that Sunday, he came and he got
Jeff Iorg:up and he prayed. It was a powerful, beautiful prayer. Afterwards, he smiled and said, I can't believe I did that. I said, I know. It was awesome.
Jeff Iorg:He goes, I just I just can't believe all week long I've been praying and asking God to help me, and he did.
Jeff Iorg:And it turned into a spiritual growth moment for him. Now, look.
Jeff Iorg:Six prayers. Six guys. At that particular time, our church had about 200 men that were on our roll. Now, some of them, of course, weren't coming, and they wouldn't come to pray. We knew that, but about a 125, a 150 of them did.
Jeff Iorg:And during that year, I told the guy that was coordinating this, don't ever don't ask anybody twice, because he'd been through the whole list once. And for the 1st 6 months of that year, we had a different person pray all these 6 prayers every Sunday. It was fantastic. And And what was that saying? It was saying everybody in our church, all the men, you're all responsible to help lead worship.
Jeff Iorg:It was a beautiful thing. Prayer. Another thing is to use many people in scripture reading and in responsive readings. Now you'll have to work with people on this. You gotta train them to do it.
Jeff Iorg:You gotta help them practice because there's a lot of people struggle to read in public, and I understand that. But to be able to say to someone, would you lead our scripture reading on Sunday? Would you lead this responsive reading on Sunday? Would you lead in the scripture of our church on a Sunday? Another way to get more people involved, men, women, boys, and girls, any church member can do this.
Jeff Iorg:Another way to get people more involved is by using testimonies. These are can be written or video or interview style. I particularly like using video or interview style, testimonies because it gives you as the leader the opportunity to capture something that's precisely what you want to use in the service and also to limit the time. And also, most people are very nervous about getting up in front of people, and so doing it in a video in their home or in a more comfortable setting or and certainly a time other than Sunday, gives them the opportunity to do it in a more relaxed context or setting. But yet, you're able to use these videos and show them on Sundays and make even more people participating in the service.
Jeff Iorg:Another way to do this is to just use more singers. Now I realize many church say, well, we just got 2, and that's all we'll ever have, and we're glad to have those 2. And I get that. My daughter, for example, went through a season in their church where, you know, they were doing a church plant, and there was really literally no one. And my daughter got pressed into service, to lead the worship, and it was really hard for her.
Jeff Iorg:And I I admired her for doing it. So I realized some churches don't have a lot of people. But look. If you do have a lot of people, use a lot of people. Don't just make it 1 or 2 people who get to lead in this kind of approach, but use as many people as you can.
Jeff Iorg:Here's another one. If your church still takes, an offertory or has an offertory time in the service, this is a good time to involve more people playing musical instruments. Now, I realize you may not wanna do all of this on a on a Sunday morning when there are more people there and it's more pressure packed, and I know it makes people more nervous. But again, there are other services, Sunday night services, prayer meeting services, other kinds of services. There was a time in my ministry where I on had a Sunday night service, and I said to the children and teenagers who played instruments in our church, I want you to start playing the oratories.
Jeff Iorg:And they would come and do it, and we had to, you know, get them organized, and I've heard orphatories on the tuba, orphatories on the ukulele, orffertories on the piano, but these children and teenagers were learning these instruments, and I would say, I want you to learn this song. We want you to come and play it when you're ready. We'll have you do an orffertory for us on a Sunday night. It was another way to get more people involved and to communicate. We're all in this corporately together.
Jeff Iorg:And then, Lord's Supper and baptisms are also more ways to get more people involved, where you can involve people in serving the Lord's Supper and in, being present and physically there in, actually observing the supper, and then also in baptizing, letting more people participate by standing in the baptistry, by being a part of the baptismal experience, by being a part of the service, by having people stand, who are sharing the gospel with someone, who are instrumental in their baptism, or in any way like that. You get the idea. These are ways to communicate to your church the service is about all of us. It's corporate. We're gonna come together to do it, and then I just give you one last suggestion, and this this one might be a little bit, a little bit like get off my yard, but I don't want it to sound that way, but turn the lights back on in your worship service.
Jeff Iorg:When you turn the lights off on a congregation and put all the spotlights on the stage, what you're saying is stage matters, audience doesn't. In fact, audience is what it becomes, not a corporate worship experience. Listen. When I preach, I want the lights on. Why?
Jeff Iorg:Because I wanna be able to see people and look them in the eye. I want people to be able to open their Bible and read their Bible. I want people to be able to take notes and see the notes they're taking. That requires some light in the room, and so I recognize that many people today, they they wanna worship in a situation where they turn the lights down, put the focus only on the stage, and you say by doing that, well, yeah, but we do this. It gives people the opportunity to zone in and just be just them and alone with God.
Jeff Iorg:Well, I don't want people alone with God. Not in a corporate worship service. I want them to come together to be with people with God. And I'm not listen. I'm not against a private time of worship.
Jeff Iorg:I have one almost every day where I get alone with God and read the Bible and pray and have reflection with him. That's very important. But I don't want that on Sunday morning. No. On Sunday, I wanna come together with a few 100 other people.
Jeff Iorg:And I wanna stand up and sing and read scripture and pray and do things together that say we're all in this together. And I wanna feel the power of the singing around me and the word of God being said around me. I wanna feel that moment when we are corporately engaged in worship. Well, over the past few weeks, we've been talking about this theme. Ministry's hard, It's difficult, but it's not that complicated.
Jeff Iorg:Churches do simple, direct, important things. We evangelize because we're on mission. We make disciples. We share fellowship. We do ministry.
Jeff Iorg:We worship God. This is what we do. Don't make it more complicated than it is. If your church is involved in something besides these five things, try to influence your leaders. And if you are the leader, influence your followers to move back to these core functions.
Jeff Iorg:This is what we do. We must do it well. Let's not over complicate it. It. Let's keep the focus on the simplicity of ministry.
Jeff Iorg:Yes, ministry's hard. It's difficult in the culture in which we live. But it's not that complicated. Let's do the simple work we've been assigned as we lead on.