Sunday Nite Dead

Most who attend an evangelical church are familiar with the practice of the church hosting multiple services each Sunday. The general habit is, as a minimum, to have one morning service and one evening service. Larger churches sometimes have more morning services and when you get the really big end of town, say Hillsong, there are up to five or six services held each Sunday. Typically the tone and atmosphere of each service will differ as well. Some will be more formal, and depending on the polity or denomination may have a structured liturgy. The others may be less formal and geared towards attendees who are not accustomed to an organised religious service per-see.

In the tradition I am involved with, the churches are quite small: 100 people is a big day. The morning service is called a “Worship Service” and the format is reasonably structured and not often deviated from. There is a song/hymn or two, then prayer, then another song/hymn, then an offering and announcements, and then another song/hymn before the talk/sermon is presented, closing with yet another song/hymn. The evening service is usually called an “Evangelistic Service”. The format is less structured. There is likely to be more or some interaction between the adjudicator of the service and the congregation The environment is more conducive to humour, laughter, enjoyment, relaxation and spending time together as a group of friends and family. Oddly, even though the evening service is designated as “Evangelistic”, not much in the way of proselytising, apologetics or gospel preaching occurs. Usually the talk or sermon is focused on teaching some particular subject from or about the bible and the assumed audience for such presentations are people who are already Christians.

As I understand Church history, the advent of electricity was the original catalyst for churches to start holding services in the evening. With access to electric lights, enterprising leaders saw the opportunity to invite people who did not regularly attend morning “worship” services to come and hear persuasive explanations about Christianity. These “evangelistic” meetings then provided a chance to contact the community and positively impact lives with the gospel message. Over time, the evening service became yet another meeting time for those already entrenched in Church activities. It was more convenient for busy people or shift workers to attend in the evening. Families could attend in the evening without having to worry about their children disturbing a formal “worship” service. Teenagers would attend because the atmosphere was more casual and the environment less threatening (not to mention less boring than a traditional liturgy that had no interaction with the communicants). In general, churches turned inward and lost their enthusiasm for holding public evangelistic meetings.

Then we had “seeker” services. Once again, creative leaders saw an opportunity to reach out to people who were uninterested or disenchanted with traditional organised religion. They began hosting mid week meetings at various times of the day and night to cater to the full weekend schedule of the modern westerner. As did their predecessors from a century earlier, they sought to contact and interact with people in order to gain an opportunity to present the message of Christ.

The church I attend only has one Sunday service at the moment. It is broken into two parts with a brief time in between for refreshments and socialising. The first half is for all intended purposes a “worship” service. The basic liturgy of song-prayer-song-offering-announcements-song-sermon-song is followed religiously every week. Sometimes the number of songs may change or a solo performance is intermingled, but the formula is predictably safe. The second half of the service is called a “teaching time” but more than half the occasions involve a one way presentation or talk. While some presenters try and mix it up and be more interactive or make use of multimedia it is very much an instructional time. This format suits the majority of attendees and is especially comfortable for those not motivated to consider innovations.

However there are some who desire to step out of the box. They wish to introduce an additional service held in the evening. Like their forerunners in the age of electricity and seeker services they believe that an alternative to the morning worship and teaching time might be enough variation to interest non-church-goers to come along and hear a practical presentation of the gospel of Christ. For this I applaud them and lend my support in seeing the idea come into fruition. How disappointing, and on some level, mildly amusing, that there are those in membership of the church that oppose the idea. Their arguments are not in the least bit ideological, theological or scantly biblical. Their arguments against the service are that the local council government does not permit night time meetings! Never mind that in the past six years I have been attending the church there have been countless meetings, parties, activities and events held on almost every night of the week at one time or another. Disregard, will you please, that if the night time meetings are for engagement or birthday parties nobody minds or challenges the actions of those involved. However, do not dare hold an evangelistic meeting on the occasional Sunday evening for you will contravene the council permit!

Recently a Muslim Prayer Centre was built in a nearby suburb and local residents raised objections against the construction of the site on grounds of increased unwanted traffic and noise. The objectors lost out and the centre was built as designed. Now the developers want to gain a permit to open until midnight three days a year to celebrate special religious anniversaries. The residents have again raised their objections and the trustees of the centre are arguing that they are being discriminated against if their petition is denied. One quote from a trustee was, “Can you tell me any church that has any time restriction or limit on numbers?” In answer to that question I provide you “Exhibit A”, my church! As the trustee observes, churches have been growing and changing in the last 50 years without noticeable objection from the community. Yet it is not the community that is currently opposing the change in service time at my church, it is the members who attend there every week.

Once again, if an appeal is made to Church history, the pattern has consistently been that when a group or denomination becomes inwardly obsessed and illegitimately disregards those outside the faith, one of two things occur. The group morphs into a secretive cult or the group dies out. My purpose in writing this is partially to vent my disgust at the situation, but it also with a hope that those in opposition to the idea would support the initiative or stand aside. If they are genuine in their profession of faith as followers of Christ then it would seem likely they will support and encourage those with initiative and evangelistic fervour. If they are simply lazy or playing political games to suit a private agenda then I trust to prevailing providence that they will have their just reward.