Friday Communication - 2nd June 2023
Why two Sunday morning services?
A couple of weeks ago I was in the kitchen at church on a Sunday morning and some of the kitchen team asked me if we had considered doing what we do in January on a more permanent basis – consolidate our two morning services into one Sunday morning service. They had been thinking about it for good reasons. They were conscious of the work load the two Sunday services created for Pastors and also of the complexity and demands of running two Sunday Schools and sets of service teams. I was encouraged by the question because it showed they were thinking about what promoted the health of the congregation as a whole, about how we can do things in ways that are sustainably fruitful, and as usually if one person asks a question twenty others have been thinking about it, I thought I would speak today about why we have the two morning services.
We need space
Firstly, their concern about two services being more work is well founded. It is more work for everyone. We are filling the same number of roles at each service from roughly half the pool of the people who would be available if we had just one morning service. That can create a situation where those on serving teams can be asked to serve more frequently, or they have smaller teams to meet the need, or they confront more frequent gaps in their teams when someone is away and there are fewer people to fill in, or we have some roles, like Sunday youth, that seem particularly difficult to fill. That can be discouraging and occasionally we can feel our service as a burdensome responsibility, especially if we are the team or ministry leader. And it is more work for the pastors, particularly the administrative work of creating, training and then filling teams. So it is no surprise that the Pastors and Session do keep the situation under review.
But we remain committed to two morning services for two reasons.
Firstly, we could not all fit in one morning service. This year the average weekly attendance of all people, including children, is 158 at 9:00 and 191 at 11:00, with their being on average 124 adults at 9 and 120 adults at 11. That is an average. Sometimes, particularly through the coldest months, attendance is a little less, and sometimes attendance is more. But on average there are 349 adults and children present on a Sunday morning. The seating in our auditorium has a number of configurations but generally seats about 300, and up to 350 when the concertina door into the hall is opened. We simply don’t fit, and that degree of crowdedness would discourage some from attending. It would also compound our parking issues. Having two services in the morning when most people want to come is a present necessity if we are to have space for all.
And secondly, as we want the Lord to add to our number as He saves people, and we want to remove any reasons for ‘regular irregularity’, we want to make it easy for people to attend. For that we need to have sufficient space in our services for people to attend comfortably. Space was particularly important for people to feel safe returning post-Covid where we were all conscious of increased risk of transmission of the virus with increased density of people in a room. And space remains important, people having sufficient space to be able to move about comfortably, to be able to get to available seats, and to have conversations with those they want, to not feel crowded. We want to have the space to encourage regular attendance and welcome those who are new to us. At the moment our two morning services give us that space.
Ways of thinking about serving
So what about the demands that places on all of us to keep the services running well? Let me offer three suggestions to help you think about your participation on a Sunday morning team. Firstly, be encouraged that we need two morning services. It is wonderful to be saved together, to have many brothers and sisters whom we can encourage and be encouraged by, wonderful to see the Lord continuing to save people and joining them to our fellowship. And it is wonderful that our children can grow up with other children whose families are serious about helping them to grow up as disciples of the Lord Jesus. It is even, at some level, great to have a parking problem, although this is sadly not entirely caused by people wanting to come to church.
Secondly, don’t think of serving on a team as extra work, an ‘add on’ to church attendance. It can feel this way, especially if we are tired and it is a struggle, as it can be with children, to get out the door to come. But the Christian life is freely serving one another in love [Gal. 5:13]. Being on a team is just the expression of a life that is committed to that loving service, and it is a direct contributor to fulfilling the purpose of our gathering, which is to encourage each other to love and good works as look for our Lord’s return [Heb. 10:25]. It is encouraging, to give some examples, to be able to bring a friend to a well kept and clean space – thank you all who contribute to cleaning the building; to be welcomed; to have an opportunity to catch up over a cup of tea afterwards – thank you morning tea bringers and servers; to be able to hear clearly; to know our children are being taught the faith and have an opportunity to develop friendships with other children from families committed to the same faith as our own. Don’t think of serving on a team as an extra. It is an expression of the love we are to show in our whole life, and a source of the encouragement which is the purpose of our gathering.
And thirdly, let a consciousness of the many roles that need to be filled to make our Sunday morning gatherings welcoming and encouraging be a reminder that we are all needed, and an encouragement to regular attendance because we are all needed. Having many teams and forms of service is not a tactic to help inclusion or attendance. It is the expression on a Sunday morning that we are a body, the body of Christ [1 Cor. 12:13], made up of people with many different gifts, a body that needs us all to serve with what we have for the body to work well. And that is a consequence of the way God has arranged his body so that we are conscious we are all needed and we all need each other in the body, a consciousness that God says should promote our care for each other well beyond our Sunday gatherings. As Paul says “God has so composed the body .. that there may be no division in the body but that the members may have the same care for one another.” [1 Cor. 12:26]
Let’s embrace the opportunity to serve the Lord Jesus by serving each other in love on Sunday and so make our gathering an encouraging one, and pray that we will together make our Sunday gatherings ones we are pleased to invite others to, and ones to which the Lord will add those He is saving.
Let’s embrace the opportunity to serve the Lord Jesus by serving each other in love on Sunday and so make our gathering an encouraging one, and pray that we will together make our Sunday gatherings ones we are pleased to invite others to, and ones to which the Lord will add those He is saving.
