Sunday night services have fallen on hard times. I can understand why. Attendance is low. It’s tiring for pastors & their families, especially for those who have 6 children.
People are busy. They feel overworked, overcommitted, tired and stressed. Family time is drained by a million things.
I know, I know — in our world, family time is mostly drained by TV & the internet. God knows it's not church services doing most of the draining! Let's be honest -- people who stay home from Sunday night are not always using that time to sit and have quality conversation & fun with their kids.
People used to “go to church every time the doors were open.” But that assumption isn’t there any longer, unfortunately even among Christians.
Sunday night services are hard on pastors
Pastors are also tired. Administration and stresses drain the creativity and energy it takes to draw out Biblical content and present it in fresh, memorable way. Pastors also complain of not enough family time. (TV & internet? Hmm.)
But we still do Sunday night services at our church in South OKC. I’ve had people ask me why, even suggest that we cancel it. But I haven’t, and I don’t plan to.
Here are 4 reasons why we still do Sunday night services at our church. Your mileage may vary, but here's why we do it.
1. It gives me freedom to focus on non-core people on Sunday AM.
I have two different audiences with two different needs. While you don’t have to “dumb down” the Gospel, or the Bible, preaching to an audience of young Christians & biblically illiterate people does require changes in preaching. You have to think about assumptions, different cultural connection points, different levels of biblical literacy.
Having a Sunday night service gives me the freedom to say "I'm going to focus on preaching to the newer people on Sunday mornings." The reason I could say that? Because I knew I could preach the core on Sunday night.
2. It gives me a chance to encourage the leadership of the church.
I often talk with pastors frustrated because EVERYONE doesn’t attend on Sunday PM. I’ll be honest… that’s not the end of the world to me.
It’s no secret that those who come to Sunday PM service are the most committed people you’ve got, at least in terms of faithful church attendance. Board members, musicians, children’s workers, nursery attendants, and more get up from their Sunday afternoon time and have given decades to serving God's people. What an opportunity to encourage those who make the place run! As a leader, honestly, if I didn’t have Sunday night to do that, I’d have to create a new venue to do it -- it's that vital.
Even though they were present for your Sunday morning service, they were probably serving anyway. They gave out. They come into Sunday evening with deflated tires — you are the air compressor. Pump ’em up.
3. It gives me a chance to develop systematic Bible study content.
Preaching is a lot of work. It makes sense to figure out how to make some of your work do double duty.
Sometimes, I’ll develop the material, and teach it Sunday nights. It lets me outline the book, develop the flow of thought and application, locate illustrations, do the background and language studies. Then when I re-preach it on Sunday mornings, I can develop it further, develop graphics, artwork & Powerpoint slides, add another layer of communication smoothness on it.
I don’t feel badly about doing that, and you shouldn’t either, as long as it’s not all the time. I’ve probably done this with 10-12 series over the years. Your core people will not mind, as long as you are serving them well. They might even enjoy hearing it again, with another layer of polish on it. Learn this from Top 40 Radio & Christmas music: If the song is good, it’s worth playing again.
4. It gives me a chance to cast vision to the core.
When you’re doing church in a way that people are not used to, communication is crucial. John Maxwell was right when he said, “People are down on what they’re not up on.”
I realized the potential value of this when I taught a series on the purpose of the church on Sunday nights early on in my ministry. One of my core people said, after going through a few weeks of inductive study on the purpose of the church, “You know, I am realizing that the church is here for more than just to keep it going and keep the doors open.”
Exactly! From a leadership standpoint, you can’t put a price tag on that. And I realized that this was a chance I had to keep communication lines open with key leaders. They were core people who needed to hear from me outside of the Sunday AM context… to hear that it was going to be OK.
Even though there were people coming that were new, and didn’t hold our values, had political bumper stickers we didn't agree with, that didn’t look or talk or smell the same… it was going to be OK!
A side note about Christians looking for Sunday night church services:
Some Christians are actually looking for this feature, especially in a time when many churches are ditching Sunday night services. There are about 4,000 Google searches per month for terms like "Sunday night church services near me."
Some of that is just dealing with the realities of a busy, overworked culture. Some of it is folks who are working Sunday morning, but still want to follow Christ.
Who’s going to reach out to them?
Remember, when Christianity was “turning the world upside down” (see Acts 17:6), they were worshiping on Sunday, in a culture where everyone worked on Sunday. Jews worshipped on Saturday. Gentiles didn’t take Sundays off. They just found creative ways to gather on those days.
It could be that your church might be part of what fills the gap as the culture we live in continues to change and grapple with the transition away from Christendom. In a time like that, the church gets to be flexible.
And that might look like keeping your Sunday night service!
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