Bad Ways To Determine Good Worship - Part 1

Quoting Hart & Muether . . .
Let us first review how not to evaluate worship. One common mistake is to play the numbers game. This method says that the larger the church, the better its worship - or, at the very least, there must be something good going on in the worship of big churches. It is surprising how often Christians succumb to this logic. Followers of Jesus Christ should know better than to equate popularity with truth. As W. Robert Godfrey has pointed out, Jesus was the greatest church-plant failure in history, by the standard that the church-growth movement generally employs. In John, a great multitude gathered to meet Jesus by the sea of Galilee, but he did not mistake the crowd for the true disciples. He questioned their motives.
He said: "...you seek Me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate the loaves and were filled" (6:26). Our Lord then went on to tell his audience that he is the bread of life, one better than the manna the Israelites ate in the wilderness because it gives eternal life (6:48-50). The response by the multitude was not the one predicted by many church planters. They said, "This is a difficult statement; who can listen to it" (6:60) and then proceeded to abandon Jesus. By the end of his teaching, the number of disciples with Christ had dwindled to twelve.
The numbers game is one that Christians, especially reformed Christians, will always loose. Consider these statistics: the circulation of People magazine is 3,600,000: Christianity Today's is roughly 170,000, The Outlook's about 4,500; and the Westminster Theological Journal's 1,200. It is obvious which of these magazines is most popular. But which are most edifying? The truths of the Reformed faith are indeed hard sayings to hear. Sinners do not naturally like to hear about their guilt and the consequences of their sin, nor their dependence on a suffering savior for eternal life. Any conception of worship that suggests the Reformed faith can be easily packaged and so appeal to large numbers of men and women has not reckoned with the history of Reformed and Presbyterian churches.
This is not to suggest that smaller is always better. Of course we should yearn to see our churches filled, and we should remove unnecessary barriers to outsiders, that they are not offended by us and our ways. But we must also strive for recovery of reformed worship. The point is simply that size is not a reliable measure of faithfulness. In fact, large numbers should be read with measure of suspicion since our Lord himself said "...many are called but few are chosen" (Matt. 22:24).
From:
With Reverence and Awe