Sunday Night Service

Our church has SS, morning service, evening service, and Wed, service.

And to answer your question, yes I think it is a good thing.

 

We still have a Sunday night service, but it meets in our fellowship hall around tables. We have a light snack prior to beginning. The whole hour is spent in Bible study. We go through a book (in the Bible). I introduce it and give some general remarks, hand out a question and answer sheet that leads them through the passage to study. Then we get together, share the answers (sometimes, we have to correct wrong answers) and then I'll preach a short message from the passage.

We have no plans to stop it.

I have no thoughts about churches that don't have Sunday pm services either way.

 

Ditto here, and we plan to keep on with all of them.

 

One church I am a part of does not. One does. Whatever.

Why do they have it? Tradition. Discipleship.

Why do they not? New church. Not there. Yet? Don't know.

The one church that has them has periodically thought about cancelling. Many times. But, they have revamped, re done, gone on.

The other church has no plans soon to start evening stuff.

I dont' think positive or negative either way.

I don't believe you should have them for tradition sake. Or because "thats what churches ought to do."

 

We do not have Sunday night services. We ceased having them several years ago. We were the first church in our county (except for some small part-time churches) to cut out Sunday nights.

We were castigated by area pastors and laymen alike. It's funny now that I look back on it. The very first church to "bite the bullet" was the FBC of our city. Then another. Then another. It started a chain reaction.

Since there is no biblical mandate to have Sunday night services, I was very comfortable in leading the church to drop them. No regrets.

 

Our church stopped pm services in lieu of groups and attendance improved by 50%. The intimacy a small group Bible study is a plus for our congregation

 

We used to have a Sunday night service. Then around 10 yrs. ago, we changed it to an outreach service to young adults. That service was just switched to being held at 1 p.m., so now there is no service at all Sunday nights.

I am fine with this. I think a Sunday night service is fine, but I don't think it's necessary. It should be up to each church.

 

Nope

We don't believe it is a good stewardship of our resources. We offer a couple different activities on Sunday evenings here and there but after seeing our people voting loudly with their feet (i.e. not coming back) we simply canceled everything. We ask our families to spend the time together.

We are honestly evaluating continuing to expand our capacity (i.e. services) to a Sunday afternoon service and ask some of our young families to attend then. Might be a good incentive, sleep in with the kidos and then come to church. We're not sure what will happen.

Pagans....oh wait, nevermind

Actually I don't care if you don't have Sunday morning services, just make sure you are doing what works for your congregation and isn't an excuse so the staff doesn't have to work as hard. Honestly.

We are to gather, that is biblical. We aren't told when, where, and how.:thumbsup:

 

One lazy man said, the other day, that the week-night address was almost as bad as delivering a sermon, so he has a prayer-meeting and a lecture combined in one, and it is neither a prayer-meeting nor a lecture, it is neither fish, flesh, fowl, nor good red-herring; and soon he will give it up because he says it is no good, and I am sure the people think so, too. And after that, why should he not give up one of the Sunday services? The same reasoning might apply to that as to the week-night meeting. I saw, in an American paper to-day, the following paragraph: -”The well-known fact is again going the rounds that, in Mr. Spurgeon’s church in London, the regular hearers absent themselves one Sunday evening every three months, and the house is given up to strangers. English ‘boasting is excluded’ in this matter. Our American Christianity is of so noble a type that hosts of our people give up their pews to strangers every Sunday night in the year.” I hope it will not be so with your people, brethren, either with respect to the Sabbath services or the prayer-meetings. ---Charles Spurgeon, The Soul-Winner

 

A few of the responders feel very strongly about keeping their Sunday evenng service going and that is fine, what I would like to know is your reasons for doing so.

1. Are you doing it because you've always done it?
2. Does your Sunday evening service have a specific and necessary purpose to fulfill or are you meeting for the sake of meeting?
3. Do you maintain a Sunday Service as a pastor because it helps you look busy?
4. If you feel so strongly about it what are your grounds for that strength of conviction since scripture says nothing about evening and morning services?

 

Our church has had Sunday night service since its founding in the 1890s. There are no plans to cancel them. We have Wednesday night Bible study also with no plans to cancel them. Churches in our area have varying forms of the three services. Some cancel Wednesday night only in the summer.

As far as what I think about churches that cancel these services, I think each Baptist church is autonomous and that is their decision.

 

No.

Yes, it gets people into a deeper study, increases fellowship, provides an avenue for studyinjg some issues such a Baptist polity or some kind of theme that aren't for a Sunday morning service or Bible study class.

pretty silly question

I feel strongly about Air conditioning, plumbing, parking lots, grass being cut, trash being picked up and children and student ministries, even though they are not mentioned in the Scripture.

 

I'm wondering if those who've cancelled their Sunday night services did so because their members voted to do so by their absence. I'd venture so say that if the Sunday morning crowd all showed up in the evening, the subject would probably not come up.

Reminds me of a story:

The pastor of a small country church woke up one Sunday morning to see 8 inches of snow on the ground. Even though he was certain the snow would keep most everybody at home, he decided to go over anyway, in case anybody showed up.

Sure enough, as he sat there in the church, he heard footsteps on the porch and one of his members came in. They say there for a while, but nobody else showed up.

"Well, brother," said the pastor, "what do you think."
"Well, preacher, if I went to feed my cows and only one cow showed up, I'd feed him."

"Fair enough," said the pastor. So they pulled out a hymnbook, sang a couple of hymns, and the pastor preached a fiery, rip-snorting sermon, with the one member nodding and saying "Amen" occasionally.

After preaching, the pastor said, "Well, brother, what do you think?"

"Preacher, if only one cow came to get fed, I'd feed him. But I wouldn't feed him the whole load!"

 

Alas, no.

We're a young church plant, and still small. We only have about 150 active attendees. Plus, we're renting space, and dont' have free access to the space on Sunday evenings.

When our attendance gets to a sustainable level to warrant additional services, we will do so.

 

No Scriptural mandate for Sunday services.

But if your church wants to do it, and it's meeting a spiritual need, go for it.

It doesn't make those that have it any more spiritual. It doesn't make those that don't any less so.

Our church has experienced large numerical growth in all categories the last several years...except for Sunday nights.

Culturally, it's getting harder to pull it off.

 

Come to think of it, there's no scriptural mandate for a Sunday mornign service either. Congretations are free to fellowship for worship as they see fit.

 

Does your church have a Sunday night service?
No.


Why or why not?
That time is set aside for small group meetings.


Do you currently have evening services and plan to cancel them?
No evening services are offered at our church.

Do you currently only have morning services and plan to start evening services?
Only morning services, don't know about plans to start an evening service. IMHO, people are busy enough as it is in their lives, working and raising children, and its too much to expect people to set aside 2 nights a week for church services.

What do you think of churches that do not have evening services?
They see the reality of the effect of busy people having busy lives. Many people with children have other activities during the week that they attend, and it gets stressful to pile one more obligation onto families.