This post is over a year old, but it is carefully written and a study in neutrality. Its
subject is the declining interest among evangelicals in attending traditional
Sunday evening church services. Thom S. Rainer explores the history of
Sunday evening meetings and hazards a cautious speculation or three as to why
almost nobody cares about them anymore.
It’s a topic worth
discussing, but before we invest too much energy in debating how we might salvage
Sunday night, we ought to ask ourselves another, more pressing question first:
Do we really want to?
That’s a question we
can read a couple of ways, and I’m curious about both its potential
interpretations:
First, are we up to the job? Are we invested in gathering on Sunday nights
and committed to making that meeting of the church work for the long-term?
Because if we aren’t, let’s not even start.
Every time a
traditional avenue of service for Christ reaches a crisis point — be it an
underfunded parachurch organization, a Christian magazine with declining
circulation or decreasing interest in a particular type of meeting traditional to a number of local
churches — the inevitable die-hards surface insisting that we ought to straggle
on for the foreseeable future no matter what because … oh, I don’t
know … faithfulness, tradition, or someone’s dad started it. Or a friend
was saved through it. Or something. This generally just prolongs the death
throes of the ministry rather than infusing it with new life.
So if all we’re doing
is having a quick flap before reconciling ourselves to giving up on the Sunday
night meeting, let’s save ourselves the bother. Put bluntly, those who raise their
voices in favour of keeping something ought to be willing and ready to do the
donkey work involved in saving it.
Second, are we sure we should? When something is not working, it may certainly
be because Christians are not as committed or spiritual as we ought to be. We
ought to recognize that the problem may be us.
Then again, the problem may be something
else entirely. Rainer theorizes that:
“The advent of Sunday evening services in many churches was a cultural adaptation for its time. Its decline or demise is thus a cultural response.”
Fair enough. If the Sunday evening service
has served its purpose and no longer works in our culture, why not let it go?
Another very sensible reasoning for not
having a Sunday evening meeting is less cultural than practical. Rainer again:
“A number of churches, particularly new church starts, are in leased facilities. They do not have the option of returning on Sunday evenings.”
After all, we have no biblical command to
meet on Sunday nights. It is not an article of faith. It’s simply a tradition
many churches have grown accustomed to; one that some people are reluctant to
abandon for fear that doing so means we no longer love the Lord like we
used to.
Fundamentally then, the question of whether
any body of believers ought to meet on Sunday evenings is a local one to be
decided on the merits by the leadership of each church, preferably in
consultation with the Head of the Church, since his opinion about our service is ultimately the only one that matters.
Reasons
NOT to Stop Meeting
One appalling possibility thrown out by Thom
Rainer for the decline is this one:
“Many pastors simply do not have the desire, energy, or commitment to prepare a second and different sermon. Their lack of emphasis was thus reflected in the congregation’s lack of interest.”
I can well imagine sloppy, lackadaisical
sermonizing — or worse, a repeat performance of a pastor’s Sunday morning tour de force — could speedily destroy any interest
from a congregation in a second Sunday meeting. This would be yet another rather
compelling argument against hiring a pastor in the first place.
But truly, if we are
at the point where we only have a single man capable of teaching the flock, AND we have to pay him to do it, AND it turns out that man is only willing or able to produce a single
30 minute sermon per week, the question is not whether we should have a
Sunday night meeting.
The question is
whether we ought to close our doors entirely.
Assuming we decide that the Lord would like
us to explore ways to revitalize our Sunday night meeting, we need to be clear
on whether people aren’t coming the way they used to … and if not,
why not.
Measuring
the Problem
And they aren’t coming, generally speaking.
In the comments to Rainer’s post, Mark Dance says attendance on Sunday evenings
at his church is “approximately 10% of Sunday morning worship attendance”. Jon
Wellman says, “Attendance between Sunday morning and evening takes a definitive
drop”. Timothy says, “We run about 40% of our morning attendance”.
On the more formally documented statistical
side, data from the Christian Reformed denomination indicates Sunday night attendance has dropped by half in the past fifteen years. The Assembly of God
reports a 6 percent drop in the past year alone.
Apparently if we build it, they no longer
come.
Where
Are They All?
Thom Rainer thinks they are home with their families:
“There has been an increasing emphasis on family time. Families with children at home particularly viewed one worship service on Sundays to be sufficient for them.”
Jeff Meyer of Crosswind Community Church in
Holland, Michigan goes further in explaining why his congregation doesn’t bother
with a Sunday evening service:
“People who are exploring Christianity are not typically accustomed even to weekly worship a single time. So to put forth some kind of community-based expectation that you do this twice a Sunday would be extraordinary.”
This is instructive, because it tells us
that people like Jeff incorrectly view church meetings as primarily for “people
who are exploring” rather than for building up existing members of the body of Christ.
If the problem is a misunderstanding of the
church’s purpose, more evangelistic meetings will not help. Baby Christians cannot
develop to maturity on a steady diet of milk. And if the problem is merely that
the existing congregation views other things as more important than meeting
with other Christians, the specific content of a Sunday evening meeting will
not matter to them since they already have the claim of a higher priority.
Right or wrong as that thinking may be, it
may be necessary to concede the impossibility of attracting large numbers of
Christians to attend a second meeting on Sunday. If we are going to have
one, it will be for smaller numbers.
Making
It Work
Small numbers are not, contrary to popular
opinion, a bad thing. The Lord taught disciples in big groups and small. The
interested ones were obviously there more than the dilettantes and hangers-on,
and therefore got way more out of his teaching than those who came around
occasionally.
The key, in my humble opinion, is making an
effort to actually work with those who are genuinely interested rather than going
through the ho-hum pro forma exercise of “having a service” for the sake
of tradition. Attendance for attendance’s sake is a complete waste of time.
To that end, a few brief suggestions:
1. Gear the meeting to the needs
of those who actually attend, rather than to the perceived needs of those you
hope may attend.
2. Ask yourself what the other
meetings of the church are accomplishing, and do not simply replicate another
existing meeting. The early church devoted itself to “the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers”. Ask which of these is getting the shortest shrift at your church, and aim to
fill up what is missing in the faith of those willing to come out.
3. If the other meetings of the church
give no opportunity for interactive ministry, Sunday night may be the time for
it. Meetings in which members participated verbally rather than merely
listening to a speaker were a significant factor in the fellowship of the early church.
4. Three churches I am aware of
have recently become conscious of a need among believers for an overview of
scripture; a framework into which new Christians and serious students of scripture
alike may be able to plug their various levels of incomplete knowledge and view
it against and in the context of the whole revelation of God. Given that these
three groups are spread far and wide across Ontario, I suspect the needs of
other churches may be similar. This is the sort of thing that might be done on
a Sunday night, accomplishing the building up of those who need it without
intruding on the regular meetings of the church.
Do you want to save Sunday evening?
Spiritual teaching will attract spiritual people in a way that mere
box-checking and pew-sitting will not. The numbers may initially be small, but
if the Holy Spirit is working, much can still be accomplished.
And if what you’re doing right now is not
working, why not try something different?
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