PUTTING AN END TO WORSHIP WARS - Elmer Towns

experience. Those attending The Bible Expositional Church tend to be converted as they
understand the propositional truths of scripture and respond with full intellectual belief.
Because a person is yielded to God and responds to the message that is preached from His
local church pulpit, he/she does not seek alternate experiences from other churches or from other
sources. This person remains within the framework of his home church (even though they
change churches, they seek another that has the same worship style) hence they remain within
one worship experience for their Christian life on earth. This is probably the history of most
worshippers. When they find any internal yearning to change their worship experience, they may
interpret their feelings as a temptation and reject it. They tend to remain true to the doctrine and
worship style of their church. They tend to have a relatively solid experiential foundation for
their Christian life, and they live and die in the faith in which they were first born again.
13. When you move geographically, seek a church that will maximize your strengths.
There comes a time when we leave our church because our jobs move us, we retire, or many
other valid reasons. We leave the worship experience we've had all our life, then we are faced
with choosing another worship experience. You should be careful of choosing that which is
novel, unusual, or just different for the sake of being different.
Know your spiritual gifts, and choose a church that will maximize your spiritual
usefulness to God. Just as we instruct a Sunday School staff, "Use people where they are
useable," so we would instruct those moving from one church to another, "choose a church that
can maximize your strengths."
14. Recognize your contribution when God puts you in a worship experience that has
different expectations than your giftedness. Sometimes a person will find himself in a church
that is different from the method of worship that he/she has experienced, yet it will be difficult to
change churches because other churches are not available. This could be a military family, a
person who is on a temporary business assignment, or a person finds himself in a neighborhood
where there is only one church. When you find yourself in a body of believers that worships
differently than your strengths, begin by knowing yourself. You may find yourself in a typical
Baptist congregational church, but you really desire a Renewal or a Bible Expositional Church.
Rather than complaining about the present church, submit yourself to the congregation. Also,
rather than trying to change their worship style, recognize what you can do; then use your
strengths and giftedness in the church to accomplish the glory of God.
A person with strong teaching gifts may feel comfortable in a Bible Expositional Church,
but finds himself in an Evangelistic Church. He should invest his teaching gifts to train as many
as possible in the Word of God. The Lord would probably tell the person with dominant skills,
"Bloom where you are planted."
15. Since methods of Christians' worship presents a problem to some people, don't
emphasize the differences, but the unity we have in Jesus Christ. Even though we may
use different expressions of worship, we still worship the same God from the depths of our