Saturday Services: Pros & Cons
In August, 2014 my church added a Saturday 5:00 pm service to our weekend schedule of services. We believed it would provide another point-of-entry to the church for visitors & other non-attendees, and provide an alternative for the 30%-35% of people who statistics say are working on Sundays. (When you stop to think about it, the number of people working on any given Sunday is vast. Many services and businesses operate seven days a week. Police, fire departments, ambulances, hospitals, airports, power plants, public utilities, hotels, restaurants, retailers, and the list goes on-and-on…..)
On the very first Saturday, we had about 200 in attendance. We heard from several that they were grateful for the option to attend on a Saturday (not only because they work on Sundays). We also were pleasantly surprised to find that we were seeing several transient (i.e. perhaps one-time-only) visitors from some hotels/motels in our vicinity. In other words, people just passing through were being somehow drawn in to attend a service while they were just staying the night at the local Best Western (for example). Currently, our Saturday attendance regularly runs about 400.
From the beginning, the Saturday services have offered children’s ministries from birth to 4th grade. We now also have an adult ABF following the service. (Our Lead Pastor teaches it, and its attendance has swelled.)
We’re seeing newcomers on a regular basis at this service. On January 7th, we had five first-time families register kids for Sunday School. Five!
As the even-month Usher Captain (that is: head usher) for this service, I am virtually always present on Saturdays, whether it’s “my” month or not. (I also serve in different capacities on Sundays.) I have been blessed by watching this service, and moreover its attendees, grow since its inception. Our Saturday service time has a different “feel” from our more crowded Sunday services. On Sunday mornings, with three services at this site, we’ll have over 2,000.
So here’s my question: Having seen our results, I’m wondering why don’t fundamentalist churches typically offer a Saturday service time (or other alternative time to their typical schedule). Why not? Is it:
- Don’t see the need.
- Don’t anticipate that anyone would show up.
- Don’t want to add to staff and volunteer time commitments.
- Have biblical/theological objections.
- Other reasons?
Your thoughts anyone?
- 293 views
I used to be opposed because of “the first day of the week” is the “Lord’s day” argument
1 Corinthians 16:2
Revelation 1:10
Now doubt the validity of that view
Two models that cannot coexist:
- The “Three to Thrive” model
- Three services (really 4 if you include Sunday School)
- Sunday is mostly all day or “most of the day”
- SS, AM service, Choir practice, PM service (and maybe AWANA), and pre & post service meetings + Wednesday night
- “Faithful” members attend all
- If a church has a CDS: sports & other activities
- Three services (really 4 if you include Sunday School)
- The “one main service” model
- May also have SS / ABF
- May also have home-based small groups
How the models view Saturday night:
- 3 to Thrive: “What? Four to Thrive?!”
- 1 Main service: Day shift
Other:
- 3 to thrive: “you can’t get enough Bible” and it’s in a central location
- 3 to thrive: Generally isolate from community b/c “evil communications corrupt good manners” (1 Cor 15:33)
- 3 to thrive: generally an isolationist model: Not encouraged (even discouraged) from community activities such as The Rotary, Boy Scouts (AWANA is the replacement), Toast Masters, et cetera
- 3 to thrive is owned by fundamentalism
- One main service is more of a C/E approach
- When I say One Main Service: It may be:
- 3 separate services on Sunday - but same message (a time shift)
- Services on Saturday: - day shift
- Services in multiple locations (via video): Location shift
The typical church is constructed to facilitate an audience listening to a speaker. The result is that every meeting it has involves listening to a preacher/teacher with little time for the church to build meaningful spiritual relationships with each other. I love corporate worship and have grown to enjoy community groups where we meet for Bible study, sermon discussion, and prayer.
"Some things are of that nature as to make one's fancy chuckle, while his heart doth ache." John Bunyan
[Ron Bean]The typical church is constructed to facilitate an audience listening to a speaker. The result is that every meeting it has involves listening to a preacher/teacher with little time for the church to build meaningful spiritual relationships with each other. I love corporate worship and have grown to enjoy community groups where we meet for Bible study, sermon discussion, and prayer.
Agreed. Our church has made a number of changes along these lines too, without giving up the primacy of the Word (our pastor usually goes between 50-70 minutes on the sermon). If we stop to think about why God asked us to meet together, and why listening to many good messages (or even whole services) online is not considered a replacement for meeting together, and is not a church, than we will start to put church together in a way that is still built around the preaching of the word, without leaving out those things that are necessary for church members to be able to “bear … one another’s burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ.”
Dave Barnhart
This is a “big church” problem. A Pastor managing a small rural church simply does not have the time, money, energy or sanity to add something else to his plate. If he has a staff, then perhaps something can be done. However, if you’re already running some evangelistic programs (e.g. AWANA) and you have a Wednesday bible study, then you and your people are probably about maxed out already. Adding a Saturday service won’t be good - and the Pastor’s wife will kill him. Then, there will be no Pastor …
Tyler is a pastor in Olympia, WA and works in State government.
[TylerR]This is a “big church” problem. A Pastor managing a small rural church simply does not have the time, money, energy or sanity to add something else to his plate. If he has a staff, then perhaps something can be done. However, if you’re already running some evangelistic programs (e.g. AWANA) and you have a Wednesday bible study, then you and your people are probably about maxed out already. Adding a Saturday service won’t be good - and the Pastor’s wife will kill him. Then, there will be no Pastor …
…which to me emphasizes that there is a place for all sizes of churches. Larger churches do some things better than smaller churches, and are able to do some things that smaller churches simply cannot do. Equally true is that smaller churches do some things better than larger churches, and are able to do some things that larger churches simply cannot do.
Within a short distance from each other, I was a member of a small church (all-time high attendance of 70) from 1980 to 2000. Since 2000, I have been a member of a large church (recent all-time high attendance of 4,000+).
Simply put, there are advantages & disadvantages to all different sizes of churches.
If you have a larger church, with a staff, and you have enough people who simply cannot get there on a Sunday, then a Saturday service might be a really good idea. I think it could work to think “outside the box” on this kind of thing. As I wrote my previous post, I toyed with this idea:
- A small church could ditch Wednesday for Saturday. Why not?
It might not work, depending on your people and their schedules. But, it (and other options) should always be kept open as possibilities. Everything doesn’t have to be “the way it has always been,” unless Scripture dictates otherwise.
Tyler is a pastor in Olympia, WA and works in State government.
A small church could ditch Wednesday for Saturday. Why not?
If Wednesday night (or other service) is just a repeat of Sunday AM, then you could probably switch it. But why have repeating services for the same group of people?
In our case, Wednesday night serves a particular function in our body that cannot be exchanged for an additional weekend service without taking something away from the body. They serve two completely different purposes.
I think there are some questions that need to be carefully though through about Saturday evening services. If the goal is simply convenience (i.e., don’t have to get up early on Sunday, even though most probably sleep later than Mon-Sat; spend extra time at the lake, etc.) we need to think if we are exchanging the call of the gospel for something different than the gospel. Is our body life and our Christian commitments and celebration something to be worked in around everything else that we desire to do?
If the problem is filling the building the building three or four times on Sunday with more people than space, perhaps we view it differently.
There could be some good reasons for a Saturday service, but I would think the purpose and the reasoning would need to be carefully examined.
Discussion