On the weekend of June 28-29 our worship team met on retreat at Glen Eyrie Retreat Center in Colorado Springs (this is a fabulous place - owned by the Navigators - it is adjacent to the Garden of the Gods). We spent 3 days together praying, hiking, eating, discerning, studying and planning as we developed worship ideas and plans for the next twelve months. It was a great blessing. Each year, as a part of this retreat, we worship together at two or three churches. The aim of these visits is both to experience worship and to see what we can learn from others (in the corporate world this is known as “bench-marking”).

This year we visited two churches - a large non-denominational church in a “conservative-evangelical” tradition and a small “alternative” service that was a part of a mainline denomination’s cathedral in Denver.

After worshiping at both congregations our worship team was unanimous in saying they felt they had experienced a deeper and more profound sense of worship at the alternative mainline service than at the non-denominational mega-church. This was true not only for the “traditional” worship team members, but for the “contemporary” worship leaders and even, or perhaps especially, for the four “young adult” members of the team.

Here’s what I noticed as I compared the two experiences: 1. The mainline church, in its architecture, lighting, and symbols, felt like sacred space (that is, the space itself created a sense of reverence and mystery and felt like “holy ground”) whereas the non-denominational church’s sanctuary felt like a large auditorium (here our current sanctuary is more like the non-denom church, though I hope our permanent sanctuary is quite different and more reflective of this kind of sacred architecture). 2. The choice of songs and the liturgy in the mainline church seemed carefully planned with the goal of directing me towards God and helping me to engage in prayer and reflection. I was less clear what the goal was of the songs in the non-denominational church. I did not feel like I had been invited to worship, but rather to “sing along” with songs that did not engage me in worship at the non-denominational church. 3. At the mainline service there was an extended time of prayer with an invitation for persons to light candles as a part of their prayer time - this was 10% of the service time. A beautiful song was sung as persons who wished to do so went forward for prayer. I went forward and lit a candle for each of my daughters and prayed for the light of God’s love to shine upon them. I found myself deeply moved and I felt that I connected to God in this act in a meaningful way. In the non-denominational church I don’t remember ever being given any silent or quiet time to pray on my own. 4. We received the Eucharist in the mainline service and the liturgy and the music during Holy Communion were aimed at helping us confess and receive Christ as we shared in the meal. There was no Holy Communion either in the sanctuary or after church in a chapel at the non-denominational church. 5. The service was slowly paced, with time for silence and reflection, at the mainline church - it felt soothing and spiritual. The service seemed long, yet frenetic, at the non-denominational church.

In the end I felt that of the two, the mainline service was more thoughtfully designed, more spiritually engaging, more personally meaningful and reflected a deeper sense of reverence towards God. This is part of why I believe mainline worship, when it is well planned and well executed, offers a thoughtfulness, a depth of spirituality and a way of engaging people that is quite appealing for young adults, the rest of us, and even for people who have been involved in non-denominational and evangelical churches but found themselves spiritually hungry for something else.

At Resurrection we’re a bit of an interesting amalgam of worship styles - with elements mirroring those in other “mega-churches” - a large sanctuary, the use of technology, etc. - but at the same time seeking to be intentional about designing and leading worship in a way that engages and connects people to God. We have lots of room for improvement and our annual retreat is one part of our effort to do that. My main takeaway from our visit to these other churches is that mainline churches have the potential of offering deeply meaningful and spiritually satisfying worship and that our forms of worship, if executed well, may have a better chance of connecting with a new generation, than some of today’s popular non-denominational and evangelical mega-churches.