Wednesday, July 5, 2017

The freedom of only having one service

It seems to me, before the fad of mid-to-late-afternoon-family-services arose, everyone wanted to have two church services on a Sunday morning (with one catering to the older/classic/traditional crowd and the other more family-friendly/contemporary/progressive demographic).

But, having worked in multiple churches with services back-to-back, there's a freedom which is lost with dual services.

First of all, you isolate your congregation by demographic or preference. With the lack of exposure to the "others" form of worship then our preferences only gets further entrenched. This makes combined services a delicate tension to navigate. 

Second, the earlier service is hampered by the start time of the following service. To a vast extent, things cannot go over time. No matter what God might be doing, the initial congregation needs to be vacated by a certain timeframe. No matter how powerful the sermon, how important the announcement or how inspirational the pray is, time will always triumph.

Third, this time restraint also apples to anyone participating in the later service. In the early service, musical and tech prep can be far more relaxed. This, often, isn't an option before the subsequent services. If nothing else, this adds more stress and makes the attractiveness of helping in these areas less.

Fourth, this is incredablly taxing on the minister/preacher. Even if they aren't your typical introvert-minister, then "being on" for 4 hours straight can be quite taxing. Add to this their lack of preparation between services and time-squeeze to "run through" the people they need to speak with or who only "want a moment" of their time.

Although most churches who have dual services won't change, I wonder how often they consider the cost of putting one service immediately after another.

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