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By Bob Hunter

How can pastors and forward thinking congregational leaders convince others, who generally are older folks; that contemporary worship is not merely a form of entertainment, but absolutely necessary in order to reach younger families? How can we illustrate this in a way that opens up the purse strings to pay for the equipment that most contemporary worship services require?

As a pastor serving a small rural congregation, it was not easy to convince the folks that in order to grow, worship needed to be relevant to these generations. Something happened at a youth group meeting that planted a seed in my mind. I took it into worship, and we received the prayer and financial support we needed to start a new service, which celebrates its fourth anniversary this May.

During a youth group meeting at church, one of the kids said she was not feeling well and asked if she could call her parents to come get her. In a few minutes, she was in tears and pulled me into one of the Sunday school rooms.

I thought she must have gotten sick and was frightened, but that wasn?t the case. She was embarrassed, very frustrated, and said to me, 'Pastor Bob, I don?t know how to use the phone.' It was a rotary phone.

She was a 4.0 student who could surf the World Wide Web with ease. She was the most responsible kid in the group. However, she had never seen a rotary phone before. It was replaced shortly afterward. God used this incident to plant the seed that grew into contemporary worship at Salem.

One Sunday morning, I started the sermon by telling the story (without revealing the identity of the youth) about the rotary phone. Then I 'baited the hook' by saying, 'She should have known how to use that phone, shouldn?t she?' They, being most of older folks, immediately took the bait. It always seems like prior generations think kids should know these things.

In a good-natured way, I kept it going a little longer until there was no doubt that 'these kids today don?t know what they should.' I suggested that that?s what their grandparents probably thought about them too. Everyone laughed. But I went on with a practical illustration that changed many of their hearts and minds.

I produced a brown paper grocery bag. It contained six antiques; three were hand tools and the other three were kitchen items. I said, 'Here are a few things that your grandparents thought you should know how to use. Let?s see how you do.'

One by one I presented the items. No one was able to guess what any of them were, but had a great time trying.

With each item I reinforced what they had said about how the youth should have known how to use the phone. When this exercise was completed, most of them were now sympathizing with the youth. They got it.

The next point compared the rotary phone to touch tone phones as a metaphor for traditional and contemporary worship.

Rotary phones work fine, for those who appreciate them. But in this world, where the vast majority of people use touch tone phones, the rotary phone is nearly inaccessible for them.

In other words, 'rotary phone worship' doesn?t necessarily reach 'touch tone worshipers.'

Most of the hearers were convinced. A few months later, the administrative council voted to budget money for a new service. This, along with several private donations, got our multi-sensory, contemporary worship program started in May 2002.

The new multimedia equipment gets used for other ministries as well. We have both traditional and multi-sensory, contemporary worship. Both services have attracted people through the presence of the Holy Spirit, but the contemporary service has brought about 60 new people to Salem. That?s a lot of people for our relatively remote location.

Several folks still fondly remember the 'guessing game' sermon. If God showed us how we could do it, he will show your leadership team how you can do it too.

The Rev. Bob Hunter is pastor of Salem UMC in Sparks.