How Can I Create Holy Expectancy?

I was honored to spend some time with a couple of churches recently as a Worship Coach. One of the questions a pastor asked stroked me as profound. I thought my answers might serve you as well.

His question? "How can I help my congregation come to the worship gathering with a sense of expectancy?"

Don't you love that question? I do!

My first answer was actually a question, and I think it is essential. I'll ask you the same question: "Do you come with a sense of expectation that God is gonna do something?" 

Leaders, if we don't come expecting God to do something God-sized, I don't see how we can expect those we're leading to do so. Shouldn't that anticipation penetrate the way we prepare sermons, choose songs, rehearse musicians, and pray for those who will come?

Now that we've covered that, here are some other things we talked about:

• Before the next time you gather to worship, ask God to create a sense of holy expectancy. When you gather with others to pray, ask God together. When you gather as a church to pray, ask God corporately--as a faith community.
• At the beginning of a service, call people to worship. I don't just mean to read the first few verses of Psalm 100 or Psalm 150, though I'm all for using passages like those and do so myself. More than that, let's call people to engage in worship. Perhaps you could use your own words to say something like, "Let's connect our hearts with the heart of God and discover together just how much He loves us." You can find a hundred ways of your own to do the same.
• At the end of the worship gathering, announce what you're excited about next week--a new series, a new sermon, a specific audience the Word will serve powerfully, etc.
• Use Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube etc. to herald the things that are exciting to you about the service. (I will sometimes share a great YouTube video of a song we'll sing in worship.)
• Encourage everyone you can, in small groups or one-on-one conversations, to engage in personal, private, daily worship. The more people worship on their own, the more dynamic when those people gather together. Said another way, personal worship explodes public worship.
• As lives are changed--especially as that happens IN the worship gathering--a very natural, organic sense of expectation will develop. Find ways to share the stories of life change when you learn about them. Use videos or live testimonies. Publish stories in the church newsletter and on the website. Celebrate life change and people will come to expect life change. I can't imagine a better way to create holy expectancy!
• Finally, success breeds success. The more people start to experience worship as dynamic, powerful, engaging, transforming, etc. the more they will begin to expect it.

I hope this serves you and those with whom you worship.

Are there other ways you do this in your congregation and community?