One advantage of having been in the church for a long time is getting to see the trends that come and go. That is especially true in regard to worship over the past 30 years: the Praise and Worship movement in the Sixties; the changes that grew out of Vatican II in the Seventies; the seeker-driven or seeker-sensitive phase in the Eighties and Nineties; and now, the emerging church worship that draws upon the language and patterns of the ancient church to develop services that invite people into mystery, contemplation and community.

In part, these trends have all been attempts to combine worship and evangelism: to proclaim God's message of salvation through Jesus Christ to a new generation. However, whenever the Church tries to tell the "old, old story" in new forms, we run the risk of giving up too much that is essential to faith for the sake of being contemporary. That can happen when we get our agenda for worship from the people we're trying to evangelize. Instead of our worship telling the story of who God is and what God has done and is doing, it gets shaped by the expressed preferences or "felt needs" of the people we want to attract to worship. As Robert Webber has asked, "Why would we let those who know the least about worshipping God determine how we worship?"

The danger of doing this becomes even more apparent when we consider what evangelism means. Evangelism aims not so much to meet our needs as much as it aims to convert us, to change what we understand to be our needs and to transform the ways in which we go about meeting those needs. "Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect" (Romans 12:2).

Writes William Willimon, "The gospel is answer to our deepest questions, solution to our most pressing problems. Yet, before it is answer, it is a question: If this be God, in the presence of this Jew from Nazareth, then who are we? How then should we live? What is going on in the world?

"The prime evangelistic moment [comes] not in resolution and solution, but in the gap, the gap between us and God, as well as the peculiar way in which God deals with that gap in Jesus Christ" (Quoted with permission from "Evangelistic Preaching as Opening the Gap").

In writing this column, I have been wondering what "worship-driven evangelism" would look like (rather than evangelism-driven worship). It would, I expect, be firmly rooted in witnessing to the biblical story of God's work to redeem his broken world and to get all his lost children home through the stories of Israel, Jesus and the Church. This story provides us with a script, or narrative, by which to shape our lives that is very different from the dominant script of our culture. As we tell this story over and over again in worship, in reading, music, drama, liturgy, sermons and prayer, the Holy Spirit forms us into an alternative community, a new culture. In the process, our own lives become part of the story of God's saving work.

Worship-driven evangelism aims to tell this ongoing story in such a compelling manner that others will hear it as good news, as the offer of life and love found in relationship with Jesus Christ. Drawn by the vitality and authenticity of our worship and our lives, they would come to worship the God whose Holy Spirit is creating new life in our midst.

Such worship would need to be organic to each congregation-the home-grown work of the people. It would emerge out of an ongoing wrestling with the question, "What is God calling this congregation to be and to do in this place and time?" Prayer, study of the Scriptures and discernment are three practices that need to be nurtured among those who seek to lead a congregation in shaping its worship authentically and faithfully.

While rooted in the Scriptures and traditions of the Church, the congregation's worship would express the particular gifts, skills and energies of the people that the Holy Spirit has drawn into its community. While a congregation can garner new ideas from what other churches are doing, it would be a mistake merely to adopt another church's model. It may be that the church down the road is experiencing great numerical growth with its introduction of a contemporary worship band. That doesn't mean that that is what the Spirit intends for your congregation. Who are the people that the Spirit has placed in your midst? What gifts and energies and passions are authentic to them? Asking these questions honestly means that we need to risk being open to doing things differently from what we have been doing.

It is just too easy to slip into the habit of calling upon the same people over and over again to help lead in worship. It is too easy to assume that our usual ways of eliciting participation is the best way to get people to come forward. We have found that we need to be very intentional about asking regularly, "Whose gifts are we not bringing into our worship? Who are we overlooking? What do we need to do differently so that those gifts can be offered?"

Asking those questions as a regular part of worship planning also means that worship gets re-shaped over time as the Spirit evangelizes new people and brings them into the community, each with his or her own particular gifts, passions and call. In order to offer the hospitality of Christ to those people, we need to ask, "What structures can we put into place so that new people have opportunities to offer their gifts?" Those structures need to be shaped imaginatively and creatively because, often, people who are just finding their way into Christian faith are too intimidated to respond positively to a straightforward request to help lead worship.

Currently in our congregation, we have four small groups (pods) who study a Scripture passage for an upcoming worship service with the aim of creating a dramatic rendering of the passage. We encourage people to participate in the group even if they don't want to actually be up front when the drama is presented. As the pod wrestles with the Scriptures and as relationships within the group develop, the participants are nurtured so that they bring more of themselves into worship. Whether or not they actually end up "leading worship‚" they have been enabled to hear the good news of the Gospel in deeper ways and to have their lives formed by its Lord more fully.

Worship that is alive and full of hope nurtures not only believers in Christ-forming ways. It beckons to those who are on a spiritual search, inviting them into a community that is being formed and transformed by the Spirit as that Spirit brings our worship into the community of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.