What is the most important aspect of a church service?
Apologist David Wheaton shares why the Word of God should be the central focus in all church services. Often times pastors focus on addressing felt needs instead of preaching through the Bible, and letting the Word set the agenda.
“When we preach verse by verse through the Bible, you get to all of these felt needs in any given message, the Bible really addresses everything.”
Sometimes, pastors feel like they have to will their congregation to be moved by the Word, however, that isn’t the case.
“The power to change people is in the Word, not in pastor’s personal stories, not in dwelling too heavily on cultural examples or props. The power to change people comes from the supernatural Word of God which is inspired, inerrant, and infallible.”
Sometimes when pastors rely on answering those felt needs, the congregation never achieves a clear understanding of Scripture.
“You’re jumping all over the place and people don’t have a very good grasp of the full arc, the full trajectory of Scripture.”
Wheaton says that true Christians desire the pure Word of God and aren’t satisfied with inspirational stories.
“True believers desire and crave the Word of God, that’s what they really want.”
Sometimes, churches and pastors focus too much on the experience of the service and not the Word of God.
“The church is trying to create this emotional experience, what you’re doing by that is actually creating people in the church who are going to be looking for the next emotional experience and that’s really not how the Christian life should work.”
As Christians, we can’t live on an emotional high all the time. However, many churches unintentionally give the impression that being spiritual is always emotional.
“It starts with our minds being convinced what the Word is saying is true, and then it follows with our will getting engaged, and then there is an emotional aspect to it for sure, but that’s the third aspect after the mind and the will.”
