More than 925 participants gathered seeking practical tips from more than 100 workshops to help expand and enhance church ministries of all areas, including discipleship, evangelism, women’s ministry and small groups.
The Lexington Super Saturday conference featured two new tracks on which the KBC has placed special emphasis this year: Comeback Churches and the Safe Church Initiative.
The Comeback Churches track is offered as part of the Comeback Churches process which the KBC began in March for stagnant or declining churches looking to experience regrowth. It is based on the popular book by Ed Stetzer and Mike Dodson, which traced the common characteristics of churches that experienced growth after years of decline.
Meanwhile, the Safe Church Initiative track is designed to provide church leaders with tips on how to keep church members and staff safe in order to maintain the integrity of the ministry. Super Saturday courses in this area primarily focused on children’s and youth ministry.
Acknowledging the need for practical training and new ideas in all areas of ministry, event coordinator Darryl Wilson, KBC’s adult Sunday school department director, noted that the early response to the Super Saturday workshops was positive. He added that highlighting the Comeback Churches track was important so that church leaders could discover and discuss ways to turn their congregations around.
“That’s been a concern of (the KBC staff) for churches that have been on a plateau or declining, which would be the majority of churches,” Wilson said, adding that based on Sunday school numbers alone, as many as 69 percent of KBC churches may fall into that category.
He said that the Comeback Church workshops are intended to help “those that are growing to take it to the next step, as well as for those that are plateaued and declining to be able to know … some practical ideas for being able to do that turnaround.”
During the conference’s opening session, Alan Witham, KBC’s church development team leader, described the Comeback Church workshops as an opportunity for church leaders to gain insight into helping their congregations experience “increasing levels of health and growth.”
The highlight of the opening session was a video address from Stetzer, director of LifeWay Research, which followed an upbeat set of contemporary worship music from Steve Gray and the Immanuel Baptist worship team. Stetzer’s message: “The importance of celebrative worship.”
“When we talk about worship … we have to recognize that it’s a celebration,” he emphasized, adding that the “mundane nature of repetition” as worship is in many churches today is not biblical.
“That’s not the kind of worship we see modeled over and over again in Scripture,” he said.
While researching the 324 comeback churches, Stetzer—who conducted a one-day Comeback Churches conference in Bowling Green earlier this year—pointed out that a strong majority changed the way each did worship. He noted that the congregations “reflected upon Scripture,” before determining “how to apply that to their own context.” Many surveyed churches described their worship as “celebrative and orderly.”
However, Stetzer stressed, although nearly 70 percent of comeback churches adopted a contemporary worship style, it is not required to lead a church turnaround. He emphasized that churches need to consider several factors such as community and ethnicity when adopting a new worship style.
“It should look different in different contexts,” Stetzer said. “A biblically faithful worship service should look different from Seattle to Singapore to Senegal than it does in Somerset.”
A trap Stetzer warned pastors to avoid is viewing worship time as a warm up to the preaching. He also cautioned against making the worship music set into a concert. These pitfalls tend to de-emphasize and “crowd out true worship,” he noted.
“When you gather together for a worship service, you want to worship,” he said. “You want to make sure that the heart and the intent and the focus of your people is on God.”
In order to accomplish this, Stetzer urged pastors to “simplify some things.” The order of worship, he pointed out, is often crammed with announcements and other elements that take time away “that should be dedicated to God-centered worship and biblical preaching.” He recommended using a different means to communicate those non-essential elements to improve focus on worship.
Stetzer acknowledged that making changes to worship is a terrifying prospect for pastors, but it is an essential aspect of leading a comeback church. But, he reminded, worship is not intended for the church.
“Worship is not just singing. Worship is … us together saying to God who He is,” Stetzer concluded. “When we say to God who He is, it reminds us that everything that’s about us is not all that important.”
In addition to last week’s Super Saturday training event in Lexington, upcoming sessions will be held Aug. 23 at St. Matthews Baptist Church in Louisville; Sept. 6 at First Baptist Church of Somerset and Lone Oak First Baptist Church of Paducah; and Sept. 13 at First Baptist Church of Pikeville and First Baptist Church of Bowling Green.
Western Recorder issue date: August 19, 2008
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