The Enyarts

Here is an example of a liturgy:

1. Remember who God is and what he has done for our lives.
Do this with two songs at the beginning of the service. The focus of these songs is to remember. The songs should be about who God is and what we are here to do.

2. Release
A prayer of release. Every service.

3. Renew our minds through the teaching of God’s word

4. Recognize

5. Respond
We believe that the Spirit really does stuff when we let it go. Call people to respond personally. It’s prayer, communion, and financial worship

6. Blessing
Call people to receive

Where is the sermon in this liturgy? Where in the order? It’s toward the front. Why do you suppose it would be toward the front? For most churches, at least the churches I’ve seen you’ve got worship, call to worship, announcements, some sort of fellowship time, then the sermon, then maybe half a song and you’re out. Correct? Why would we do it differently? The idea Biblically is that worship always is a response to revelation. It’s a response to truth. You don’t just come in and conjure up feelings of worship. Right? At least I can’t. In terms of just walking in–we’ve had a crazy week; we’ve got the kids adjusted, they’re finally in their classes, they’re in their rooms; we’re just going crazy and all of the sudden it’s like time to worship. How great does that work normally? Not great. We believe Biblically in the Psalms, in Romans 12:1

Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship.

Notice, what do we worship in view of? His mercy. And Paul has just spent eleven painstaking, concrete, thick chapters elucidating God’s mercy. Eleven chapters! And then he says, in view of that, worship. And what’s worship? Offer your bodies. And the word “bodies” there is your life. That is your act of worship. In the Psalms, you’ll often see the Psalmist talk about God is everlasting, God is grand, and he’s awesome, and he’s this and he’s that. And then they’ll say, “Come let us worship and bow down.” We don’t believe worship is an atmosphere setter. We don’t believe worship gets the people calmed down. Right? Worship isn’t a filler. Biblically worship is the end zone. Worship is obedience. Now that obedience and the heart for obedience can be expressed in song, and that’s what we do. But you notice we have little signs out in the parking lot that say, “Now you begin to worship.” That’s the idea. Do you see how this changes how we preach? If you put the sermon in the front of the thing, what’s the goal of my preaching? To lead people to worshipful obedience. It’s not just, here’s half a song and we’re out. Nothing wrong with half a song and we’re out. This isn’t, better – worse. I’m convinced that Scripture teaches this idea. But it doesn’t teach that it’s the only way to do it. But we need to realize that the temptation is that what we are preaching is the most important part of the service. And it’s not. The most important part of the service is what comes afterwards.
- Do people obey?
- Do they respond?
- Do they worship?
One of the defining marks of teaching is not ending by giving a bunch of information, end with a call to response. This is a huge change. We come from the school of thought that says the teaching is the end zone. And the Bible needs to beat that out of us a little bit.
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The contrast of preaching and communicating between the modern church and the emerging church

If you are wondering what the emerging church is, many people are wondering the same thing. The emerging church is kind of a loosely affiliated movement, typically of younger churches who are reexamining some of the things that we have held to be sacred, that really turn out to be traditions rather than insights from Scripture. Are we an emerging church? The answer is, of course, it depends what you mean. If by emerging church you mean we think the Bible is up for grabs and we don’t think that truth is absolute and we are all for playing culturally relevant over Biblically faithful, then no, we are not emerging at all. If by emerging church you mean, are we willing to try on culturally relevant forms of communicating eternal truth? Absolutely. We always want to be emerging that way. If emerging is, we are putting all of the tradition and faith and doctrine that has been handed down to us on the table, then no, we are not emerging. Not at all. We want to be faithful stewards of what we have been handed. But each generation must translate the truth of the Gospel to the next.

The modern church: the sermon is the focal point of the worship service.
The emerging church: the sermon is one part of the total experience of the worship experience.

The modern church: the preacher serves as the dispenser of Biblical truths to help solve personal problems in modern life, i.e.: Three steps to financial security; Seven steps to God’s will; Eight Biblical principles for raising children. Is there any problem to any of that? No, as long it is understood that the Gospel is way more than principles for living. Right? It’s a radical turning upside down of everything. So you’ll hear from a lot of “modern churches” that kind of teaching. Here’re needs, and here’s how the Bible addresses them. Nothing wrong with that. But if that’s the sole diet, it’s like eating nothing but asparagus.
The emerging church: the goal isn’t to solve problems, or to answer every question. The goal is to lead people to worship.

The modern church: there is an emphasis on explaining what is truth.
The emerging church: there is an emphasis on explaining, and experiencing, who is truth.

The modern church: the starting point is the Judeo-Christian worldview.
The emerging church: the starting point is the Garden of Eden and the retelling of creation and the origin of man and sin – it’s a fancy way of saying we don’t want to assume anything.
As teachers, we can’t assume that words like “atonement,” “edification,” and “reconciliation” are understood.

The modern church: Biblical terms like “the Gospel” and “Armageddon” don’t need much definition since they are basically understood.
The emerging church: Biblical terms like “the Gospel” and “Armageddon” need to be explained.

The modern church: the message is primarily communicated in words.
The emerging church: the message is communicated through a whole lot more than that.

This is what teaching is, it’s more than communicating information, it’s calling people to response. It’s calling them to worship.

This excerpt was taken from the CD series, "Preach It" given by Mike Erre at Rock Harbor, disk 3, Week 2a