...when people leave our church on Sunday.

Visit here for a great post by Mark Altrogge, on what should be the goals of a Bible- believing, Bible-teaching church on a Sunday morning. As the ransomed people of God gather together for corporate worship, woe to us if we don’t make much of Christ.

Here’s my thought – when a church realizes that a Sunday morning corporate worship gathering is not about showcasing the awesome preacher, or the awesome worship team, we remove the undue, unhealthy pressure that Churches often feel. We meet together to remind ourselves and each other of the surpassing worth of Jesus, and of knowing Him. Nothing else. And so hopefully our preaching, our corporate singing, our prayer and fellowship all make much of our Savior. A church should feel the accountability and “pressure” (for lack of a better word) to get the Word of God and the content of the Gospel right and clear.

And for music specifically, the goal isn't to have the most awesome vocal solos, or top our creativity last week with how we arrange our songs. The goal is to find fresh ways each week to see Jesus as the most valuable treasure in our lives. We gather to help each other do this, and to equip each other to live another week in the joy of knowing our Savior. If we're seeking to add to this, or to emphasize anything else in our Sunday morning gatherings, we're engaging in idolatry, living as if there are other things more valuable that Jesus Himself.

It's my hope that our desire as a worship team would model the Apostle Paul's, as he says in Philippians 3:7-9,

“But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith—”