#341: Tommy Preson Phillips on Why People Are Leaving The Church To Look For Christ
Jan 2, 2025
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Tommy Preson Phillips, a pastor at Watermark Church, musician, and author of 'Invisible Jesus,' shares his insights on why people are leaving the church. He discusses his personal deconstruction journey and warns that many evangelical churches lack genuine engagement. Tommy critiques the worship industry, highlighting its superficiality and the disconnect in modern mega churches. He advocates for authentic spiritual connections and meaningful worship music, urging leaders to embrace change and focus on Christ-like values.
Tommy Preece emphasizes that the deconstruction movement serves as a crucial prophetic warning for churches to address their shortcomings.
He critiques the modern worship culture for prioritizing entertainment over genuine community engagement and true discipleship among congregants.
Preece advocates for smaller, intimate groups that foster authentic relationships and discussions, reflecting the essence of Jesus’s teachings on love and service.
Deep dives
The Role of Planning Center People in Engagement
Planning Center People can significantly enhance volunteer engagement in church settings. It allows church leaders to quickly onboard new volunteers through automated workflows, thus streamlining the integration process. Church leaders can create forms for potential volunteers, helping to manage and schedule them efficiently. This tool, which is free with any Planning Center subscription, represents a major advancement in volunteer management.
Tommy Preece's Journey from Music to Ministry
Tommy Preece transitioned from being a passionate musician to a pastor, a journey defined by his experiences in the music scene. Initially, he wrote worship music on the side while engaging in various music genres, which ultimately led him to pastoral work after a notable loss in church leadership. His evolution emphasizes the intertwined relationship between music and ministry, as he continues to create music that serves the church's worship needs. This duality of roles allows him to write songs that can resonate both inside and outside the church context.
Deconstruction as a Prophetic Warning
Preece articulates that the deconstruction movement acts as a prophetic warning to the church regarding its shortcomings. He reflects on personal experiences and observations of how many church leaders and communities have failed to engage intellectually and emotionally with congregants' doubts and struggles. His perspective suggests that these exits from traditional churches often stem from frustration with a lack of honest dialogue about faith matters within the church community. In his view, the challenges presented by deconstruction should drive churches to create safe spaces for open discussions about faith.
Reimagining Worship Culture and Practices
Preece critiques current worship practices that prioritize entertainment and consumerism rather than true discipleship and community engagement. He emphasizes that worship should foster active participation rather than passive consumption by the congregation, encouraging a return to a communal meal approach reminiscent of the early church. This shift can lead to deeper interpersonal connections and a more Christ-like community, countering the individualistic and performance-driven worship culture prevalent today. By focusing on community-based worship, churches can cultivate more meaningful and impactful worship experiences.
Finding Jesus in a Community Setting
Tommy Preece describes the importance of community in experiencing and seeing Jesus in everyday life. He advocates for smaller groups where individuals can authentically engage and support one another, creating a safe space for discussing faith and life challenges. Through sharing meals and communion in these intimate settings, participants foster relationships that contradict the isolation often felt in larger congregations. Such practices highlight the essence of Jesus’s teachings, centering on love, acceptance, and service to one another, ultimately leading to a more genuine representation of faith.
My goal in this podcast is to help you grow as a worship leader. Of course that includes your formation, but it isn’t limited to that—it’s also with practical tools to help you in your ministry.
It’s hard to talk about being a worship leader without mentioning Planning Center. As you know, I’m a huge fan. A lot of you are already using Planning Center Services to schedule your volunteers, plan your worship services, and give your team the tools they need to learn their music. But with Planning Center People, you can stay even more engaged with your volunteers and anyone looking for how to get plugged in.
First, some good news: People is completely free with any Planning Center subscription. No, you didn’t hear me wrong—it’s free. Second, some better news: you can use People to add new volunteers to your teams quickly and automatically.
In People, you can make forms for anyone interested in volunteering, put them in a step-by-step training workflow, and then automatically add them to Services to schedule them for the right team. And that’s just one way you can use People. From sending automated emails and seeing church-wide engagement to organizing your member database and keeping information up-to-date, there’s tons you can do.
