Analysis of responses to Q21. Q21 was designed to directly ascertain from worship pastors their perception of what they most often convey about God through their worship services. I would contend that most worship pastors want to convey all of God’s attributes over time in their worship planning. In addition, the response bank is necessarily limited and the attributes arbitrarily paired. Also, what pastors think they convey may or may not be congruent with actual practice, a potential topic for future research but outside of the purview of this research. Nevertheless, the data from this question provide noteworthy insight into the perceived portrait of God that worship pastors believe they are painting each Sunday.

Table 13 represents the characteristics of God provided in the response choices to Q21 and is divided into a column of transcendent characteristics and a column of immanent characteristics.

Figure 18 indicates that conveying God’s greatness and glory was selected by 44% of worship pastors as the portrait of God that they most often communicate through their worship planning. God’s grace and mercy and God’s sovereignty and majesty follow at 16.7% and 10.5%, respectively. Figure 18 also demonstrates an interestingly low percentage of conveying God’s holiness (6.6%), a significant focus of Scripture necessarily foundational to a full understanding of the gospel. Also of special note is the nonexistence of the category of separateness and distinction by any worship pastor as the top choice for what he or she most often conveys about God. The data indicate that worship pastors see God’s separateness and distinction neither as an important aspect of God’s greatness and glory nor as an important means of conveying God’s greatness and glory. Worship pastors appear to shy away from the terms “separateness and distinction.”

Figure 18. Self-perception of what worship pastors most often convey about God in their worship services (ranked lowest to highest)

If indeed, as I have contended, we are in an age of immanence, such a result would be expected. On this question the data support the assertion. (Many thanks to Cody Libolt for helping me to shape this conclusion.)

A somewhat different picture emerges when the most, 2nd most, and 3rd most often data points are considered in the aggregate. Representing what worship pastors most often convey about God, Figure 19 shows a virtual tie between God’s grace and mercy (immanence) and God’s greatness and glory (transcendence) with God’s faithfulness following in third place. God’s transcendent qualities of omnipotence, eternality, separateness, and distinction are negligible.

Figure 19. Composite of what worship pastors most often, 2nd most often, and 3rd most often convey about God through their worship services (immanent categories appear striped on left, transcendent categories appear solid on right)

Adding all composite percentages together, conveying God’s immanence receives a total composite score of 171.6 percentage points while conveying God’s transcendence receives a total composite score of 127.3 percentage points. The 44.3-point variance would indicate a stronger propensity for worship pastors to represent God in his immanent nearness rather than his transcendent distinction.

Presentation of Q21. The WDP contained one question that did not attempt to discern an underlying goal, value, or objective that influenced worship planning but rather asked for a direct personal assessment by worship pastors of the kind of portrait of God they are portraying through their worship services. Q21 asks the following three-part question:

• As you plan worship, what do you most often convey about God?
• As you plan worship, what do you 2nd most often convey about God?
• As you plan worship, what do you 3rd most often convey about God?

The response options appeared as a bank of six groups of transcendent attributes, six groups of immanent attributes, and an option to write in an individual response. The response options were as follows:

1. His closeness and intimacy
2. His compassion and forgiveness
3. His faithfulness
4. His grace and mercy
5. His greatness and glory
6. His holiness
7. His kindness and love
8. His omnipotence and eternality
9. His provision and trustworthiness
10. His separateness and distinction
11. His sovereignty and majesty
12. His splendor and grandeur
13. Other

Table 12 represents the self-perception of what worship pastors believe they most often convey about God.

(In each cell, the top number indicates the number of responses. The bottom number indicates the percentage.)