Key To Church Growth: Worship

FROM THE ARCHIVES – Worship Leader Magazine – July/August 1994

Editors Note:

It’s fascinating to reflect on how Robert Webber’s 1994 article remains relevant to the modern church, even though the worship style he describes may not be what we commonly find today. Webber highlights a unique blend of “high liturgical evangelical charismatic sacramental worship” at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, which may seem unfamiliar or even outdated in a time when contemporary worship styles often dominate.

Yet, the timeless nature of this worship style—rooted in deep tradition, reverence, and a Spirit-filled approach—offers a compelling reminder that authentic, Christ-centered worship is always attractive. While today’s services might lean toward modern musical expressions or technology, Webber’s reflections reveal that the core of worship—empowered by the Holy Spirit, gospel-centered, and focused on creating an encounter with the living God—will never lose its power to draw people in.

Churches today can learn that, beyond trends or preferences, it is worship that embodies depth, transcendence, and genuine connection to God that will always sustain and grow a vibrant congregation.

Here’s Robert Webber from 1994.

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WORSHIP & LITURGY

Key to church’s growth was devotion to worship

I am a member of St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Geneva, Ill. I want to tell you about its remarkable growth, and then reflect on my story.

Fifteen years ago, St. Mark’s was a little church in a little town outside of Chicago chugging along with 50 or 60 people in attendance. I wasn’t there back in those days, but I’m told that it was one of those “dead” Episcopal churches.

You know what I mean. The liturgy was said without a lot of enthusiasm, and the people kind of paid their dues to God, ate the bread, drank the wine, and went home to a ballgame on the tube.

A new rector came about 14 years ago, a rector who had a different vision. His vision was of a church alive with faith, a church full of people who wanted to know more about the Scriptures—people who wanted to worship not only with their lips but with their lives.

Unfortunately, the energy and spiritual vitality that this new minister, Rick Lobs, brought to the church wasn’t what everybody wanted. So half of the people left in search of deadness somewhere else.

Now this would-be reformer was faced with an uncomfortable situation—a church about half the size of the one he came to. But the gift that he gave them was this: those 30 people wanted renewal and church growth.

Today, that same church is about 500 strong, with new people streaming in every week. So what made the difference? How did this church grow?

I asked Rick, “To what do you attribute this growth?” And he answered, “Worship.” I thought he was right because that’s why I was there. But I wanted to make sure, so I went around to folk who had come to the church in recent years and months. “Why are you here?” I asked them. “There are lots of other churches you could go to, but why this one?” Again and again, they gave a one-word answer: “Worship.”

This Style Of Worship That Isn’t Supposed To Attract and Hold People

There are many different styles of worship, and I support them all. But in the case of St. Mark’s, it is a style of worship that isn’t supposed to attract and hold the people. It is what I would call a “high liturgical evangelical charismatic sacramental” worship. And the people keep coming. Let me describe some aspects of this liturgy:

First, it is a liturgy empowered by the Holy Spirit. As a recent guest said to me, “When we sang the Sanctus, I could feel the Holy Spirit come down upon the whole worshiping assembly as the presence of a thick cloud.”

Shaped by the Gospel

Next, it is a liturgy shaped by the gospel. Worship is the gospel in motion. In worship, we remember, proclaim, and enact the living and the dying and the rising of Christ. At St. Mark’s, we not only think it all happened 2,000 years ago, but we experience it happening now in our midst. The manifest presence of the resurrected Christ is there in our assembly, in our song, in the Word, and most especially at the bread and wine.

Furthermore, we sing hymns; we read prayers; we take time to be silent; we visualize our worship in processions, candles, crosses, vestments, and banners. We sing with an organ. We also sing with the great sound of the trumpet, with trombones, flutes, and strings. During communion, we sing choruses and gospel songs and celebrate the death, the resurrection, and the exaltation of Christ. This is not a funeral dirge, but a festival of joy and thanksgiving. And every Sunday, we anoint with oil for the laying on of hands. And the people go out with joy.

You’re Doing It All Wrong

They tell us that we do it all wrong. But the people keep coming, and we experience what Luke said resulted from the worship of the early church: “And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved” (Acts 2:47b NIV).

Want to grow your church? Worship with all your heart, your soul, and your mind. It doesn’t have to be the style of St. Mark’s worship. But it does have to have the empowerment of the Holy Spirit, the gospel as its centerpiece, and a sense of both transcendence and immanence.

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