Two Sunday Morning Services?

Not in my church but in some in my area. Usually because there isn't room for everyone at once.

 

We have church at 8:30 and 10:45 AM with Sunday School at 9:45. Too many people for one service!

 

Our church only has one service, but I know of some that have their traditional service at 8:30 and their contemporary service at 10:30.

 

am service-one, anytime from 10 on until-no ss, only Bible teaching.

pm service-5:30 worldwide broadcast(shortwave) "Sons of Liberty"

midweek-usually after 6

street ministry-anytime, most often Saturdays

 

Because the amount of people who attend our church, we have two services. One at 9:30am and another at 11:00am. It also gives a chance for people who minister in other areas to be able to attend one of the services and not miss it. Besides, people can't have an excuse for accidently sleeping in for the 9:30 service when there's another one on it's wings.

 

We have two services (9:00 & 10:30 AM) due to space considerations. We hold concurrent S.S. classes during both services; so that people can attend one or the other S.S., and then the alternate service time.

Our auditorium seats about 900, and we typically have 600-700 in the early service, and 700-800 in the later service. Add in the nursery children, and also kids who attend S.S. one hour & junior church the other- and our typical overall attendance is in the low 2000+ range. On days like Easter we'll hold 3 morning services: 8:00, 9:30, 11:00- with overflow seating available too. Last Easter, our total attendance was 3,300 (lots of visitors, etc.- we make an extra-special effort to invite friends, family, strangers, whoever!).

Would we like to have a building large enough to accomodate everyone in a single service? To do so, we'd be looking at building probably a 2,500-3,500 seat auditorium, to provide for some growth and also high days like Easter. Another church locally just built such an auditorium (by no means elaborate), which cost $11,000,000! Even then, their avg. attendance of approx. 4,000 can't all be accomodated in a single service- they have 2 morning services.

Conclusion: oftentimes it's just good stewardship to have multiple services. We just finished paying for the construction of a church building in the country of Malawi, for some African Christians who lacked any building whatsoever to meet in. I think God gets more glory from that investment than from a bunch of rich (by virtually any world standard) American Christians spending multi-millions just for the sake of being able to say we all can meet in one service. "Economies of scale" in churches with multiple services can free-up funds for many more productive purposes other than debt servicing on increasingly larger church buildings.

BTW, we've also branched off & started six additional churches over the years: with three of those in the past 3 years.

 

We did have an earlier 8:30 service; 9:30 sunday school; 11:30 church. This wasn't because of inside pew space, but because of outside parking space.

We went to the earlier service then sunday school because my husband had to be at work by 2:00 pm. But, the choir didn't sing in this service, so we did miss out on a few blessings.

I guess the pastor got tired of preaching so much so they just paved the grassy area.

Seroiusly, I don't think enough people took advantage of the early morning service to justify the extra service. I'm sure it did take a toll on the staff.

We have to rush around now, but now we sing in the choir nd thoroughly enjoy it.

 

There are quite a few churches in my area that have an 8:30 and a 10:45

 

It doesn't have to seem as 2 separate churches. We done it before. We kept our SS the same. So, you still had contact with everyone. Sunday School is where relationships are really formed.

 

We have Sunday night, and Sunday school, but we just have one Sunday morning church service

 

We have two main services: 9:00 and 11:15, which are geenerally identical. We also have a 4:30 and 6:30 evening service which are not identical to the morning service.