We had a guest band at our church last Sunday… I’ll talk more about them later… It gave me an opportunity to watch people worship, to observe how they connect and don’t connect, and I made a startling discovery:

Most people in our church don’t connect in worship.

And we’re a Vineyard church, for cryin’ out loud… We’re a part of the denomination most widely known for it’s worship music…

And I’m not talking about first-time visitors… Many of the Disconnects are leaders of ministries.

My observation is that Disconnects fall into three categories:

The Bored…

A.W. Tozer says, “The church that can’t worship must be entertained and men who can’t lead a church to worship must provide the entertainment.” Our generation (and by that I mean everyone I know under 50) is overstimulated.  We are bombarded with information in the form of TV, advertising, social media and numerous forms of messaging… I carry a device that is half the size of my first mobile phone and connects me to my phone, email, text messaging, as well as instant access to my accounts at Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, etc.  If church isn’t engaging all of my senses the way my life engages them, I will be bored, check out and start people-watching… And I’m not the only one.

Bored Disconnects need to be drawn into worship personally.  There are ways to connect from the platform that will help them stay engaged… I’ll talk more about that tomorrow.

The Confused…

Some people just don’t have a frame of reference for what’s going on.  We have a guy in our church that came from a Catholic tradition… Expressive worship, with the raised hands and the getting loud, is foreign to him.  Sometimes, the expression on his face is laughable.  He wants to connect, but lacks the practice with the methodology.

The seeker-movement of the 80’s and 90’s focused the most attention on the Confused Disconnects… Many of these churches had regular meetings to assess the friendliness of their methods and language to unchurched individuals… The danger here is the potential for removing any real content from songs and messages…

The Confused Disconnect doesn’t need the Christian message dumbed-down, he needs the methodology explained… regularly.  Worship leaders that teach about worship in the midst of worship will have a lot of success in connecting with these people.

The Broken…

People come into church from some devastating backgrounds.  When these past issues aren’t handled lovingly by the church, the people end up being Disconnects.  I watched a young man who has the background to understand the methodology, has the focus to keep his attention on what’s happening, but doesn’t have the heart to connect…

Broken Disconnects need the attention of teachers and leaders apart from what the worship leaders do on Sunday; and real relationships in the church that don’t make things worse.   But don’t underestimate the power of worship to bring healing to brokenness.  We’ll talk about that later too.

Ultimately, it’s up to the leaders to identify and deal with Disconnects in the most loving and effective ways possible, always remembering that we have to build the bridge from God’s heart to theirs.

Tomorrow: Communicating to Connect…