When I’m planning a Worship Experience, I always look through the eyes of someone coming through our doors for the first time. I ask myself, “what’s something I would want to be a part of and what's something I could get excited about?” I want people who are already a part of the church to connect with God in new, deeper ways as well. I think the questions for both groups of people remains basically the same, with one massive difference, “what’s something I would want to be a part of, what’s something I could get excited about, and what’s something I would feel comfortable inviting my unchurched friends and neighbors to?”
One of my favorite quotes of all time is from Andy Stanley; “the reason more people aren’t engaged in the church is because we aren’t all that engaging!” He said that in his book Deep & Wide (if you are involved in church at any level, read it, READ IT NOW). The following thoughts are the best ways that I think we can currently engage a modern audience of people; whether they don't go to church yet, whether they haven't been to church in a long time, or they've been in church for most of their lives (remember, the methods will change, but the message never does).
1. VOLUME
The volume at Worship Experiences should be high so people can sing out as loud as they want and not feel like everyone can hear them.
Think about it from the perspective of someone who has never been to church or hasn’t been to a church in a long time, what environments do they feel comfortable in? Movie theaters, concerts, etc. What’s the commonality between those environments? The volume is high enough to drown out distractions and people around you talking.
The house volume should be up so people don’t have to feel self-conscious for singing loudly even if they’re not very “good.” People should feel comfortable singing the songs even if they don’t know them very well yet. People shouldn’t feel like everyone can hear them as they are singing. If someone feels like everyone can hear them, they will sing quieter or not sing at all.
2. VISUALS
The house lighting at Worship Experiences should be dark so people can physically express themselves without feeling like everyone is watching them.
Again, I try to look at this through the eyes of someone who doesn’t go to church yet. Where would I be most comfortable? A movie theater or a concert. That’s why the house lighting is almost turned off for the music. It’s also much more comfortable to express yourself physically when you don’t feel like everyone is looking at you. I want to take down as many barriers for people to express themselves before God as possible. If the room is dark, it can feel more like it is just God and you.
Here’s somewhat of a sidebar, but an important sidebar because it affects stage lighting. For some reason, many people draw the line between a “good, non-showy church,” and a church that only cares about putting on a show on whether or not they use a haze machine. Hazers only job is to give lights a third dimension. One dimension of the lighting you buy is that it lights up where you point the light at, another dimension is that it lights up immediately around your source of light. Haze brings a third dimension to the lights, meaning you can see the in-between. Where the light originates, the light beam, and where the light is ending. For relatively cheap, it totally elevates you from amateur to professional.
3. VIBES
A Worship Experience should always be creative and visually and emotionally engaging.
Vibes is one of my favorite words. I love the way it sounds and feels. A vibe is “a person's emotional state or the atmosphere of a place as communicated to and felt by others.” The church should have the greatest vibes on planet earth. The Bible says, “where two or three gather in my name, there I am with them.” That means we literally have the presence of God with us in a very real, tangible way. The atmosphere really is changed because the Spirit of the Lord is with us, more obviously to us in those moments. People who don’t normally go to church yet should feel and know that there is something different about the churches they come to.
I believe the best way for an audience to do that is through a community of believers being creative. Like Erwin McManus, the lead pastor of Mosaic Church says, "[The church] is supposed to be the epicenter of creativity and beauty and wonder because we're connected to the God who imagined us! Is it possible that you were imagined to imagine and created to create?” We can engage people with our engaging Creator by being creative in all we do. Specifically in our services, we should include different types of creativity, be it music, painting, dance, video, spoken word, or whatever else you think could creatively communicate the message that God really loves each and every person more than they could possibly love themselves.
For more thoughts on modern worship, I definitely recommend this article.