Our service at the new church plant will be at 2pm.
Here are the reasons why:
Having church at 2:00pm on Sundays may seems a odd time to those who are used to either going to a early morning or late night Sunday service.
We understand that 2:00pm may take some getting used to for those who are used to the traditional Sunday schedule for churches. We have service at 2:00pm because there are several strategic purposes to having church at this time slot in the week.
The first reason is that many North American families work way too many hours to keep it all together. The burden is especially hard on mothers who have a career, housework, soccer, sick kids, school involvement… etc. Many families work Monday – Friday, do chores and required social events (graduations, birthdays, family get-togethers) on Saturday, and then have to recover on Sunday to start the process over again on Monday. We have chosen to hold service later on Sunday for two simple reasons, you can sleep in Sunday mornings to physically rebuild yourself and you get your Sunday evening free to have family or personal time. We strongly encourage our families to schedule Sunday nights to spend together.
The second reason is that when we do outreach we want the folks who were out clubbing, going to parties, and all the things that non-Christians generally do on Saturday nights, to come to our service. The folks who really need to hear the gospel message are barely sober by 10:00am, so we work our schedule to better reach and invite them.
The third reason is that we go out on outreach every Sunday morning at 10am to 1pm. We drop door hangers, flyers, bibles, build the bus ministry routes and do random acts of kindness. We are out being the church while other congregations are having church.
The fourth reason is that many of the local congregations are in competition to get a 10:00am space at the local schools, movie theatres, and community centers. We would rather partner with a healthy local church and pay them a reasonable rent for use of their facilities when they are empty anyhow. This allows us to easily expand as we grow and to rapidly add additional campuses as we raise up new campus pastors, worship leaders, and ministry teams.
The fifth reason we have 2:00pm service is that we don’t have to compete against peoples stomachs. Its a (not funny) joke that the move of the Holy Spirit ends at 12:15 promptly at most churches so we can get to a resturant before the other churches. Having church at 2:00pm allows us to have folks who have had the chance to rest in Sunday morning, have a good lunch, take their Sunday nap, and then come to church to get 110% out of the worship experience. It also allows us to take the time we need if God wants to do something special that week in the Afterglow session when we all get together to worship, take communion, and to seek and be used in the Gifts of the Spirit (
1 Corinthians 12).
The final reason we have church at 2:00pm is that it allows the ministry teams to have more time to prepare for the worship service. We would rather have one good worship service every week than 3 mediocre experiences. We have seen many churches stretch themselves too thin by having 3, 5, and even 6 different types of service every week… which can easily wear out even the most faithful Christian.
If we had a recommendation between the priorities of attendance it would be the weekly Growth Group first, the weekend worship service secondly, outreach ministry third, and everything else as their family schedule allows.
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