Hadaway’s research across growing and declining churches identifies worship character as a distinguishing factor. The specific combination that correlates with growth: joyful, thought-provoking, and inspirational. Reverence alone does not predict growth.
This is counterintuitive for traditions that associate reverence with spiritual depth. The finding doesn’t say reverence is wrong — it says reverence without joy and intellectual engagement produces something that attracts a narrow audience.
Growing churches tend to have drums and percussion, multi-service weekends, high-energy worship alongside substantive content. Dying churches tend toward liturgical, dignified, internally-comfortable worship experiences.
The deeper principle: worship should do something to people, not just for them. It should open something — joy, conviction, wonder, grief, awe — not merely contain it respectfully.
For worship leaders, this is practical. The question at every service isn’t “was this appropriately reverent?” but “did something move? Was there joy? Did the congregation think? Were they genuinely inspired?” These are harder to measure than reverence, which is probably why reverence becomes the default.
The goal is an encounter, not an observance.