Even in Churches that prioritise Bible teaching, discipleship, the dignity and centrality of worship, the general pattern is that the evening service is the Cinderella of the Sabbath. Generally, the evening service is an endangered species. A growing majority of Churches simply don’t have one, and there is a sense in the shrinking minority that days are numbered. At MIE, where our combined congregations might see about 200 people through the doors on an average Sunday, we would expect only 30-35 at our joint evening service at 6.00 pm.
The reasons for the demise of the evening service over the last 3 decades are many and complex - though in most of the world they would carry little weight with the rank and file Christian. In many contexts, the Lord’s Day is precisely that, the Lord’s Day, and as such consists of worship and fellowship and feasting throughout the substance of the day. For many of us, Church is simply one more thing we fit in when we can amongst a competing claims on our time and energy. Sunday evenings are often simply a chance to stay in and catch our breath before Monday morning.
It will be an almost impossible task to try to reverse the trend, but our current trajectory will not help the churches - or Christians - in the long run but only hasten their unravelling. Here are a handful of thoughts in that direction:
1. We Cannot build church communities by not meeting TOGETHER FOR WORSHIP…
Church, according to the New Testament, is relational. It is about people meeting together with Jesus among them. Church is family. Church is the interconnected and mutually supportive body of Christ. But those Christ-focussed relationships between God’s people will not flourish by halving the amount of time we spend together. Further, the evening service particularly gives time for fellowship to grow. We often spend time in prayer together, are able to take a more sustained look at Scripture, and to explore parts of our faith that rarely surface in the morning service. The services are less pressured, and time is less pressured - there generally isn’t a rush to get home, or to the ‘next thing’, whatever that may be. Young parents can ‘tag team’ while their partner cares for the children and so have uninterrupted time for informal and ‘grown up’ conversation and even prayer after the worship.
2. The Lord’s Day is still a part of Christian obedience, and rhytm of discipleship
The novel and recent idea that one of the 10 commandments (the only one linked to both our creation and redemption) no longer applies to the church has done and continues to do immense damage to the churches. On any given Sunday I expect about a third of our regular attenders to be missing. There is little sense that meeting together is a Christian priority around which the rest of life should be ordered. Joining with God’s people in corporate worship is not something that should be forsaken lightly. We spent a full year at DTP exploring the significance and centrality of corporate worship in our own experience of disicpleship. Frankly, we should be making more of Sundays, not less, and the sense of not making progress as a Christian is deeply and directly linked to our engagement with the corporate worship of the Church.
One of my favourite sermons from centuries gone by was preached on Psalm 87:2, by Rev. David Clarkson, and was entitled: Why public worship is to be preferred over private. It gives 12 reasons why… which can be read in summary form here.
People, made in God’s image, are made for a one day in seven rest and true rest is found in fellowship with God. The need for that rest has not ceased. Further the book of Hebrews in the New Testament specially concerns ‘the world to come, about which we are speaking’ (Heb 2:5). Therefore, to insist that ‘the Sabbath-rest which remains for the people of God’ (Heb 4:9) is solely about resting in Christ now will not wash. Our weekly celebration of the resurrection each Sunday anticipates and witnesses to the fact of that coming rest—when Christ returns. We have reflected on this together as a Church… you can find some resources on our website here.
3. Putting family before God won’t help in the long run
One of the most common reasons for not making it to Church, sometimes even once, let alone twice, is our prioritising of family. The idea that Sunday is a family day is not totally wrong, but when ‘family’ is not put in the context of ‘Church-family’ we are definitely heading in the directin of totally wrong. If we allow Sundays to revolve around the family / children instead of the worship of God, we are teaching children that family is more important that Church, perhaps even God, and sometimes that other activities - perhaps even activities they would rather participate in - are more important than Church, perahps even God. We may not do this consciously but nevertheless when we continually skip church for family it is there. And then many Christians lament the fact that their children don’t continue in the faith when they are old enough to make their own decisions. We must face the possiblity that we (inadvertently?) gave them the impression that actually God is not very important? Jesus warned us about loving our families more than him, Luke 14.26.
4. Leadership AND DISCIPLESHIP requires DEEPER commitment to the church
Many promising potential leaders, preachers and worship leaders are ‘oncers’. They are there only at church most Sunday mornings. They are gifted, perhaps wanting to grow as Christians, maybe even have a good grasp of Scripture; but their availability to serve the Church is massively curtailed because they are only there once on a Sunday—and their secular jobs / other commitments often preclude them from being at DTP, or even the prayer meeting. Many who are involved in leading Sunday Groups, or who are otherwise committed to serving the Church during the morning services do so to their own impoverishment. There is always a cost to being directly involved in facilitating a service in whatever capacity. Managing the sound desk, providing music, helping at a Sunday Group… however our service looks, it necessarily means we aren’t engaged in the service as others are. Historically, the effects of this were mitigated by attending the evening service. That isn’t necessarily the case in the contemporary Church scene. It is unlikely that we have fully appreciated the cost of our current assumptions and arrangements, either for ourselves, or for MIE.
5. A closed church building on a Sunday evening is a sorry witness
As cynical non-Christians go about their business on a Sunday evening, to see a church building withthe lights off and the doors locked is going to do nothing but confirm them in their belief that God is dead. They still know that Sunday is the day of Christian worship, but perhaps it occurs to them that Christians may claim to worship the living God, yet they seem less than enthusiastic about him.
One of the great marks of true revival is when God’s people can’t wait to get to church. On the day of Pentecost, God came by his Spirit and the people came too—even people who were as yet unconverted (Acts 2:6). They couldn’t help themselves. The fact that we are so far from that and seem comparatively unconcerned by that as Christians seems a terrible indictment as to our true spiritual condition as ‘Western’ Christians.
6. There is more to say
Many folk complain of not knowing the Scriptures. We complain that we don’t understand them well enough to teach our own children, let alone lead a children’s / youth / home group. We freely confess that we don’t understand our own faith… And yet we don’t turn out to the very place where all that could be rectified. In the evening service we are working through the Old Testament. We’re almost finished I Kings. The plan is to work through the chronological books, bringing the other writings in at the point where they ‘fit’ in the narrative. This means that we are covering huge sections of the Bible we will never touch in the morning services, and wrestling with the dynamics of Christian belief and practise in ways that again, are simply not possible within the constraints of a morning service.
The fact remains that we believe that God speaks through the preaching of his word. So, is it true that God has nothing more to say to us or to teach us for the week as a church than what we learn in a 30 minute message on Sunday morning? Do we genuinely believe this is adequate for our growth as Christians, and the developing and renewing of our minds?
But there is more to a service that our exposure to Scripture - though that does remain critical and foundational. Each Sunday is a statement about the reality of the resurrection of Christ, a weekly - and needed - entering into the reality of Jesus death and resurrection. And is an opportunity to renew the Covenant. If you don’t come to the evening service, you are likely receiving Communion only once a month.
If you can survive on that diet, you’re a stronger Christian than I am.
