The "Attractional" Body (Part 2)

On Liturgies and Formation

Apr 16, 2025

Caleb is back with Part 2 of our series on the Attractional Church. (If you missed Part 1, read it HERE first) Today he discusses what we mean by liturgy and how that shows up in an attractional church. Caleb’s final installment (coming after Easter) will provide an optimistic and encouraging vision for what healthy and flourishing church could be.

Written by: Caleb Southern

Our church services are never neutral.

Cultural critics have recently been noting the dangerous tendency of Westerners to divide into various tribal affinity groups that are increasingly hostile to each other. One such division is generational. We are increasingly seeing a division between the old and the young.

A nagging question I have is whether our churches resemble this cultural tendency. If so, why?

Our churches should be a place where generational barriers come down. Our churches should be places where the mature and elderly in faith can be encouraged by the awe-filled faith of new converts and where new converts can be personally parented by mature mothers and fathers.

I have been writing about the attractional church paradigm. Our working definition is that the attractional church is “a way of doing church ministry whose primary purpose is to make Christianity appealing.”¹ In my last post, I talked about how attractional churches are driven by consumerism and pragmatism. One result of this is that churches are tempted to cater to particular demographics who may have cultural currency. Theologians and other researchers have documented the rise of a youth culture which American churches have generally appealed to.2 Sometimes, they have been co-opted by these cultures to such an extent that our church services are increasingly characterized by a youthful emotionalism.

Before you paint me as someone who hates young people and feelings, hear me out.

Our emotions should certainly be alive to Christ. A consistently unfeeling faith is probably a dead faith. However, we all have experienced seasons when our emotions have not matched reality, when our emotions have lied to us, when our emotions have been dead to something they should have been alive to or been too awakened by something they should have been more reserved toward. Am I alone in this? We must be people whose feelings are alive to the gospel. But we must not judge the “success” or “failure” of our spiritual life by our emotions alone.

We never want emotions for their own sake. That is emotionalism.

My fear is that attractional churches are inadvertently in the business of manufacturing “experiences” that foster a specific emotional response. I see two initial issues that this can create. First, it makes us, not God, the focus of worship. Second, manufactured experiences lead people to sense that church is inauthentic. People ask themselves, “If Christianity is so true and wonderful and beautiful, then why does it not speak for itself? Why does it feel like you are trying to sell me something? Why does it feel like you are trying to make me feel a certain way?” People in our culture are starved for authenticity. Performance-driven, production-like worship services only add to this starvation. Ironically, it is actually younger generations that are rebelling against the perceived inauthenticity in “an overproduced spirituality.”3

Every church service has a liturgy. My fear is that attractional churches operate with an experience-driven, high production, consumeristic liturgy.

Ok, I lost some of you. We don’t hear people talk about liturgies a lot anymore, but you encounter them every week. A liturgy is the regular form by which public worship is conducted. How your church service is typically organized week after week—that’s your church’s liturgy.

landscape photography of church interior — Photo by Jeff Sheldon on Unsplash

Now that we’re on the same page, let me make two assertions: (1) liturgies are not neutral and (2) not all liturgies are created equal. Recently, I read David I. Smith’s On Christian Teaching.4 He talks a lot about pedagogy, or the method and practice of a teacher in the classroom. Bear with me, I promise this is not off-topic. Here’s a quote Smith includes in his book: “…a choice of pedagogy inevitably communicates a conception of the learning process and the learner. Pedagogy is never innocent. It is a medium that carries its own message.”5 What’s he saying? He’s saying that the way a teacher actually teaches conveys a message. If I am a teacher, and I verbally communicate that I value student input in the classroom, but then all semester long I offer no opportunities for questions or discussion, and I never call on students with raised hands, then I have actually communicated that I, in fact, do not value student input. My actual way of teaching (my pedagogy) did not match my words.

Now, to see how this is not off-topic, here’s the quote above again, except I’ve replaced some key words: “a choice of liturgy inevitably communicates a conception of worship and the worshippers. Liturgy is never innocent. It is a medium that carries its own message.”

Just as the way a teacher’s actual teaching communicates something to students, so too the ways we organize our worship services and environments communicate something to people about what it means to worship. Our liturgies are formative. Slowly, over time, we are formed by our bodily practices. If we say that prayer is important, but there is no time for sustained prayer in our church services, we have actually communicated that prayer is not important. The way we organize our church services, and the environments we offer them in are implicitly communicating our values and slowly, almost imperceptibly, forming us at the same time.

I think there’s four essential elements to Christian worship that the attractional/seeker-sensitive paradigm undermines, even if unintentionally: Preaching, Praying, Singing, and Eating.6 The biblical basis for this is Acts 2:42, “And they [first Christians] devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers” (ESV).

First, preaching. Preaching should always be a part of our worship gatherings. The sermon is where we should most authoritatively hear God’s word for and to us. Sermons should proclaim the finished and accomplished work of Jesus based on faithful exposition of specific biblical passages. The Scriptures are “God-breathed,” “living and active,” and always sent out to accomplish His specific purpose (see 1 Timothy 3:16; Hebrews 4:12; and Isaiah 55:11). Because of this, it is my personal conviction that specific books and passages of the Bible should be the anchor of each sermon. This way, God’s word and voice, not the preacher’s skill or ability or cleverness is the primary focus. By Jesus’s own testimony, all Scripture is about Him (Luke 24:27; John 5:39). This means that every sermon—whether based on an Old or New Testament passage—should “preach Christ crucified” (1 Corinthians 1:23 ESV). These two aspects of preaching—text-based and Christ-exalting—are guardrails that ensure that sermons exalt Christ and avoid mere moralism or legalism.

Prayer is “expressed helplessness.”7 When we pray, we are saying to God, “I am totally dependent on You for this matter.” Prayerlessness may be a sign that we think we’ve “got this.” In my experience, Sunday morning worship is validated by the emotional response of the worshipper. This is never said out loud, but its implicitly communicated. There is an emphasis on creating a particular atmosphere so that people will have a particular experience. The focus of all of this is on the individual person and whether or not he or she feels something. The problem is that all of this can be manufactured without God. Therefore, prayer—which, let’s be honest, can be a lot like work sometimes—is dispensed with. “We have traded in the human weakness required for prayer, in which we explicitly and implicitly confess that we serve and need God, for a worship experience trying to summon God and charge him with making us feel a certain way.”8

The apostle Paul commends singing as an essential component of Christian worship when he writes, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly…singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God” (Colossians 3:16 ESV). I think there’s two ways that the attractional church model undercuts singing so that it is no longer spiritually-formative. The first involves content. Notice that Paul connects “singing” with “the word of Christ dwell[ing] in you richly.” Our songs should not only move us emotionally, but should teach us the word of Christ. Again, a major part of my concern relates to the focus of our modern worship songs. They tend to be highly individualistic. Instead of Christ and His finished work on the cross as the subject of the song, the individual and their needs/emotions are the subject. The second aspect of singing is the environment. Historically, Christians have sung as congregations, as a corporate affirmation of the truths being sung, regardless of how one is feeling at the time of singing. Their joyful proclamation of Jesus through song has the power to help break down the hardest hearts. Attractional churches, however, tend to rely on professional-quality, performance-oriented music in dark rooms. The result is that people are actually discouraged from singing because the congregation has become passive receivers of the performance. The dark environment tends to isolate people and make them feel alone, even as they are in a room full of people. Functionally, our worship services have become concerts.

Eating is the final component of Christian worship. Wait…what? Notice when the first Christians gathered together, they “devoted themselves…to the breaking of bread” (Acts 2:42 ESV). This references back to Luke’s gospel where Jesus instituted the Lord’s Supper: “And he took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them” (Luke 22:19 ESV. Emphasis added). The Lord’s Supper (or the Eucharist or Communion) is a sacrament practiced by Christians. A sacrament is an embodied way of communicating the gospel. You can listen to a sermon describing how Jesus has washed away your sins. This is reinforced through the sacrament of baptism in which that washing away is embodied, or “acted out” so-to-speak. The sacrament of baptism doesn’t itself wash away your sins, but it is a means of grace where God can powerfully communicate that message to you. Protestants believe that there are only two Scripturally sanctioned sacraments: baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Baptism is widely practiced and happens one time, usually at a Believer’s conversion or public confession of faith. My concern is that many denominations in the West have neglected the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. This is concerning because it is the one sacrament that Jesus Himself instituted (Matthew 26:26-29; Mark 14:22-25; Luke 22:14-23; 1 Corinthians 11:23-26).9 That our Savior and Lord instituted this sacrament should make us eager to participate in it as frequently as reasonably possible. I mentioned in my last post that attractional church services are generally aimed at appealing to outsiders. This means the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper is usually administered only the bare minimum number of times allowed by a church’s denomination (or maybe not at all if there is no denominational affiliation). Baptism and the Lord’s Supper are holy acts and means of grace. We neglect them to the detriment of our spiritual formation. The Lord’s Supper is not merely symbolic. The Lord’s Supper should be a reminder and witness to the work Christ has accomplished. When we participate in this sacrament, we reflect on that truth and are reminded that we live by Christ’s atoning work day-in and day-out. Theologian John Stott summarizes it like this: “[W]henever we share in the Lord’s Supper, his sacrifice on the cross is remembered, partaken of, proclaimed, acknowledged as the ground of our unity and responded to in grateful worship.”10

That’s my elevator pitch for the major components of Christian worship services. Here’s the question nagging me: Why do church services in attractional churches neglect much of this rich liturgy? I believe that, generally, the attractional church paradigm operates with a liturgy characterized by professional production where worship is self-centered, passive, and individualistic. People participating in this liturgy are slowly formed around these implicit values. “Really, every church is discipling the people in its community. We train them, with our implicit and explicit messages, with the very rhythms of our community, to follow a certain way, to be conformed to a particular path.”11 It is true that the Scriptures give us a lot of freedom on how we organize our worship services. However, this does not mean that every possible way of organizing our worship services is equally desirable. We should think long and hard about how our current liturgies are forming people.

Have you read 1-2 Samuel recently? You really should. Here is one thing that I can’t stop thinking about: Israel’s monarchy was simultaneously a curse (since the people were rejecting God as their rightful King) and a blessing (since in His divine providence, God knew that Jesus would ultimately come through the line of David). God’s sovereignty in the story of 1-2 Samuel is one reason why I can critique the attractional church paradigm without giving into despair and hopelessness. If the people of Israel could only receive Jesus after having passed through the monarchy, maybe it will be that we can only receive revival after passing through the attractional church paradigm.

Our God is gracious, and I will rejoice that Christ is worshipped and proclaimed “whether in pretense or in truth” (Philippians 1:18). Still, let us heed Paul’s further counsel that our manner of life—and worship—“be worthy of the gospel of Christ” (Philippians 1:27).

Jesus is the Head of His Body, and He will work all things together for good for those who love Him (Colossians 2:19; Romans 8:28).

Life in the Body

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