Wisdom and ideas, please
 

We have decided to try going to just one service on Sundays for awhile, expanding our morning service and also our Wednesday night service.

How many of you attend a church where there is only one Sunday service, and what is your feeling towards it?

We do it and love it. Just know that once you go to one, you will never get the evening back. You might get a few, but never what you have now. I say this only because you said you would do it for awhile.

It was clear to me once I saw the avatar some time ago where you had bushy facial hair that you were on the road to compromise.

This confirms that. What a shame. How dare you violate the biblical principles set down for two services on Sunday....er.....wait, never mind.

Awwww, go ride your bike. Looking for wisdom and ideas here, not jokes from someone who won't even meet you when you come to visit their church!


:tease

Bro, in the seven years we have been in Staunton we have only had Sunday evening services for Holiday events. If you are a bi-vocational pastor, I highly recommend you do the same.

Preparing three to four sermons a week while working a 45-50 hour a week secular job is killer.

I attend a church where there's only one Sunday Service. I spend more time at the church now than I did before when I was going to a church that had both morning and night services on Sunday.

We have drama team practice at 11am so hubby has to be there a little before they start practice to operate the sound system for them, we have leadership meetings some days, pre service prayer every service, some days I work in the church library from 11:30 till 1pm. Sunday School starts at 1pm... Worship service begins somewhere between 2:00 and 2:15 because they allow a short break in between for going around and making visitors feel welcome and letting the kids go to the bathrooms. Worship service is rarely over before 3:30-- and most days will run closer to 4pm. Then sometimes there are other things that we do on Sunday evenings, like visiting nursing homes, etc.

We have prayer meeting & choir practice on Tuesday nights... Mid week service & kidzchurch on Wednesday nights.

There's always something extra going on that people can be involved in if they are able to do so.. like Friday morning outreach where people go out into the community and visit with senior citizens, people who are disabled and not able to get out to church.

Sorry for rambling so much.. but yes, I really like things the way they are now with just one Sunday Service. :)

This I agree with.

But I almost feel like I am letting the church down.

We had discussed this last year, but didn't do it. A couple of factors have come together to make it more viable now.

I have friends who attend one service on Sunday.

The teaching is from 1:30 pm to 2:30 pm and for the Sunday School classes. Then there is a 15 minute break.

Worship service is from 2:45 pm til 3:30 pm and all are in the auditorium, other than the very young children.

As I recall you didn't even tell me you had visited my church until AFTER the fact!!!!

Brother don't feel condemned you do what you feel you should do in your situation.

Must be Alzheimers, brother.

We were going to meet before service, but I got lost on Old Hickory and ended up not getting there until wel into the service.

Just yanking your chain previously!:tease

We only have morning services (9 & 11) and no Sunday evening service. On some Sunday evenings, we have Relevant Classes that last for four weeks at a time, or sometimes a special "Encounter" Service with a prophet or some other special speaker. Tonight, they just finished their fourth week of elective classes, which have been really popular.

Our Wed. evening services have become more like our Sunday night services used to be; very intense spiritually. Longer praise & worship, waiting on God, gifts in action, etc.

This sounds like what we have in mind as a goal.
I would be interested in your Sunday format and Wednesday format, if you would care to share.

(Notice I stayed away from the word "program". We all know that OP's do not follow a program, just three choruses, special singing, choir, offering, and preaching. It cannot be a program cause it ain't written down!)

LOL!!! I remembered it was YOUR fault, just not why. Hopefully you can come back again sometime and we can grab a cup of coffee before or after service.

Our church has one Sunday service; 10:30 Am , this is a morning worship and at the same time downstairs SS/Childrens' church type programs.
This has been the only Sun service since this church began in Apr '99. (begun as a UPC Home Missions work; there are other churches in area but under churched for a metro area )

They also do a Sat service @ 7:30pm. This is the worship service for the saints.
Sun morn is evangelistic.
Wed night there are cell groups meeting in homes.

At various times Sun night has had discipleship classes, choir practice or whatever was needed.

It works well.

We have two services, but I wish we only had one afternoon service and I always look forward to that on months with fith Sundays.

We do and I really, really like it! It's so nice to have the evening to ourselves, not keeping the kids up late...no one is usually wiped out on Monday morning either!

The church I pastored for the last three years only had one service on Sunday. I think the key is to make the service a truly celebratory time and take the time for ministry in the altar at the end of the service. I agree that once the PM service is cut it is impossible to resurrect it. I tried twice to restart the PM service to appease some who pined for an evening service, but it simply wasn't supported by enough people.

Discipleship Team shares the following in an article they have produced on Sunday Night Services;


"Church history tells us that the beginning of Sunday night church evolved from those who worked hard on their farms early on Sunday to be able to travel by horse and buggy or by foot to get to church by about 10 or 11 for church. They had traveled so far to church and they hadn’t seen their friends all week they decided to have dinner on the grounds and stay around for evening fellowship, prayer, bible study and worship. They were trying to maximize their time too. Ronny Russell, author of Can A Church Live Again? explains, “I read somewhere years ago that Sunday evening services began in England (the good folks who gave us Sunday School) when gas lights became widely used in businesses and factories. Churches couldn't stand the thought of people going out on Sunday nights (it was still the Sabbath) and so they decided to install gas lights and open their churches for Sunday night services."

We only have one service on Sundays. We have choir practice @ 12:30 pm, Sunday School from 1:45 - 2:30 and then service generally starts around 2:40-ish. We are done by 4:30 and the evening is free. It's SOOOOO nice. . .I don't know that I could ever go back to a morning & evening service :noidea

I like it, although I do miss the evening service sometimes. I agree with PP and FB on this point; once you cut the evening service, it will be next to impossible to get folks to attend again, because they will fill that night with other things. (Which isn't bad, especially if they use it for family time, or to fellowship with new converts or unsaved friends.)

Another thing to think about: If you have multiple ministers in your church, the extra service times allow for them to preach or teach, whereas if you have only one service, they will have less opportunities.

Right...we may be moving again and if so, the church we will attend has two services on Sunday, it will be hard to go back to that schedule.

I think this is an excellent point to bring up. I recently talked to an out of state pastor, and he uses Sunday evenings exclusively for the other ministers in his church, not he and his son. Opportunities to preach are few and far between when you only have two services a week.

One service on Sunday is a great idea. Speaking as a mom of 2 small kids, Sunday evening services are hard on the kids and the parents. We did it in NYC of a while and my kids weren't even in school. I couldn't even imagine how much harder it would have beenif my kids were in school at that time.

We went to one morning service about five years ago.

When we did that we also started adult Sunday school class at 9:30. Our main service is at 10:30.

We didsmisss our adult SS at 10:20 so folks have a few minutes to get to the auditorium.

We hold our Adult SS in the fellowship hall with coffee/juice and donuts served. We set at tables in a casual setting.

We do use Sunday nights or afternoons for special meetings departmentally.

Three times a year we use Sunday nights for a three consecutive sunday night series of bible teaching.

Our midweek services consist of 6 or 7 home groups that are well attended.

If you go to one service time, the regular @ 10 AM times works best.

Invited guests are more likely to come to a morning serivice trhan one at say 2 in the afternoon.

An afternoion service seems to "wreck" the whole day. You can't do much with your "free time" before or after a 2 PM service, where if you have a morning sevice you have the entire afternoon and evening free.

We start at 9:30 to 10:20 with Adult and childrens Sunday school.
Worship service in the auditorium is at 10:30 and we dismiss at @11:45

This scheduling also allows for our sunday School teachers to be in morning worship with everyone.

If yourSunday School is taking place at the same time as morning worship you'll have many SS teachers that rarely get to be in morning worship.

Sounds good to me! Our service starts at 12 noon, with prayer starting at 11:30am. Church is usually done at 3pm and I tell you...by the time we get home it's almost 4 and we are sooooo hungry!

We tried several diffent times a cpl years ago to figure what worked best for us.

We have many that travel @ 30 mles to church which makes our situation differnt than others.

If a start time sounds better to you, suggest it to your pastor or elder board to consider if it would be benificial for others too.

Maybe you can get it changed.

You'll never be able to make everyone happy...but hoopefully a majority will be.

Right now, it's the only service time available to us as we are renting the building and the other congregation has services right before us. I'm not really complaining...it's working out pretty good for us, we don't have to get up really early for our commute and we still have the evening for family time.