5 Reasons 11:00 AM Worship Services Are Disappearing

He’s hitting the bottom of the barrel for lists.

I am disappointed at Rainer’s lack of imagination on this issue.

I don’t know the origin of the 11 AM worship service (our church has always started at 10:30, roughly 11), but I know why I liked it as a new believer.

#1 — I was used to sleeping in on Sundays. It was a stretch to make it to the church that reached me, whose service began at 10:45. I was used to sleeping in till noon on Sundays. In my pastorate in Chicago, I actually started an afternoon service for people who felt going to church at 11 AM on a Sunday was too early!

#2— It provided a great church & dinner combo. Many of our people go out to eat after church.

#3— Both of the above reasons made it easier to invite someone to church. It wasn’t too early, and dinner could follow almost immediately. If dinner was at home,the pot roast was in the oven.

#4 — Married couples often had multiple children, and getting everyone ready for church is an ordeal. Millennials may not have children at all, and, if they do, are probably not as concerned about getting them dressed in their Sunday best. A lot of little kids were too sleepy to go to church earlier. Now that they are often rushed to daycare earlier, they tend to have a different sleep cycle. Kids losing out on sleep, however, is a BAD thing for brain development.

#5— Older generations were FAITHFUL. The above made it easier for families to attend church week after week. Millennials and even today’s older generations are not as regular in their attendance. A regular attender used to attend maybe 46 Sundays a year (missing a few for vacation or sickness). Now a regular attender attends 26 Sundays. So, if you look at #4 above, Millennials just stay home if the kids are in a bad mood or too sleepy to go to church.

Since Millennials live in a world without the routines of past generations, they may look at things differently. In the past, most people worked 40 hours Monday-Friday. Couples would watch Lawrence Welk or go out to the movies on Saturday night and have a romantic evening. Then they could sleep in a bit on Sunday and go to church.

Milllennials have little established routines in their lives, Some of that is because of massive social changes. Finding a 40 hour a week job with benefits is a luxury. Many of them work two or three part time jobs, working all kinds of days and all kinds of hours.

In addition, many people want to get church “out of the way” so they can enjoy their Sunday. The concept of the “Lord’s Day” is pretty much becoming extinct.

I like Rianer, but he should know the above.

P.S. — We night people are tired of being bullied by the morning crowd. Not only do we have to pump ourselves with coffee to adjust to the morning crowd’s demands, but now the morning crowd wonders why we like things later.

Solomon was a night person (Proverbs 27:14):

Whoever blesses his neighbor with a loud voice,
rising early in the morning,
will be counted as cursing.

It strikes me that if indeed we Christians tend to observe our “Sabbath” on the Lord’s Day, we ought not schedule church meetings so early as to resemble little so much as another workday. Am I missing something here? The main reason I can think of to stay at 10:30 instead of going to 11am is simply because that makes church overlap with when we’d normally be expecting to eat—at least if the church is going to devote a significant amount of time for the sermon. 11am is OK if the “sermon” is a 10 minute homily and everybody’s going to be out by noon—but if your pastor goes 30-40 minutes or more, stomachs are going to be growling.

We will be having a similar conversation in another two or three decades, but in that future time, the question will be “What happened to Sunday service?”

The trends that will cause the shift away from having regular weekly services (and already are affecting the church) are:

1. Church being viewed as a consumption of media, both in the teaching and music/worship aspect, and media consumption can be done online and remotely.
2. Face to face interactions MUCH less important now than at any time in church history.
3. Church fellowship is being fragmented (e.g. small groups / discrete ministry teams) and there is much less need to meet corporately.
4. Completely disparate work/life schedules between members of congregation.
5. Transportation and logistics becoming more unfavorable (i.e. people living further away from their local church and being unwilling to travel).

[Ed Vasicek]

Since Millennials live in a world without the routines of past generations, they may look at things differently. In the past, most people worked 40 hours Monday-Friday. Couples would watch Lawrence Welk or go out to the movies on Saturday night and have a romantic evening. Then they could sleep in a bit on Sunday and go to church.

Milllennials have little established routines in their lives, Some of that is because of massive social changes. Finding a 40 hour a week job with benefits is a luxury. Many of them work two or three part time jobs, working all kinds of days and all kinds of hours.

The scene: your house, on any Sunday morning:

You awake, get up, and flip on the light switch. [Someone, somewhere, is on the job at a power plant ensuring that electricity is reaching your house.]

You look outside your front door, and the Sunday paper is on the front steps. [Delivered before you awoke.]

You step up to the sink, and turn the faucet. [Someone, somewhere, is at work ensuring that water is flowing into your house.]

You turn on the radio or t.v., to get some local news. [People are at the local station, broadcasting.]

A plane flies overhead. [The local airport has hundreds, or perhaps thousands, on duty, from TSA agents to baggage handlers to ticket agents to flight crews to air traffic controllers……ad infinitum.]

You go to start your car, and notice that the gas tank is nearly empty. [Time to make a quick stop at the gas station on the way to church, where a couple of cashiers are on duty.]

You stop for a red light. [Someone, somewhere, is monitoring the local traffic grid.]

Oh no! There’s a house on fire! [You see in the distance fire trucks, and sadly an ambulance, enroute.]

You think: “I’m glad we have an excellent hospital nearby!” [Where a full staff is on duty.]

You slow down & change lanes as you pass a police car stopped on the shoulder of the road. [They’ve pulled over a reckless driver.]

You arrive at church.

Following the service, your family says, “Let’s go eat at __________.” [You’d all be disappointed if you got there to find the restaurant closed, because the workers didn’t show.]

After lunch, you stop to buy some shoes for one of the kids……..

–––––––––––––

My point: Statistics say that 30% to 35% of people who are employed are working on Sundays.

Actually the Sabbath according to the Holy Scriptures is our salvation, Heb. 3,4. Sunday is the Lord’s day.

every one of the commandments are to be lived. Our salvation experience to to be holy.

Our church changed to 10:30am many years ago, and the time works well - plenty of time for singing and preaching and out before Noon.

A question/problem that can be probed is: Why is Sunday School attendance declining? And why has Sunday night church disappeared?

Many years ago, our church had mostly older people. During that time, Sunday School attendance was very good. Now that more younger families attend our church and many of the older believers have died, Sunday School attendance has dropped. Despite gentle urging, getting younger families to attend Sunday School is like pulling teeth.

To counteract this, many churches have “small group studies” which essentially have replaced Sunday School. Yet Sunday School is the ultimate small group ministry. The problem is not getting children ready on Sunday morning because families manage to send children to school early on weekdays. Some churches have replaced Sunday night church with small groups. Yet I suspect those small groups are not attended by most in the church.

I am not against small groups or creative ways to disciple people. What I find troubling and dangerous is the disinterest by many professing believers who attend good churches but who believe that casual attendance at the Sunday morning worship service is enough. To some extent, this has always been a problem. But the problem seems to be worsening as Christians are being influenced by our individualistic and self-centered culture.

Larry Nelson wrote:

My point: Statistics say that 30% to 35% of people who are employed are working on Sundays.

Yes, but that means that 2/3 of all people are off. And, when church services first started around 11 AM years ago, I would guess that half that percentage worked on Sundays. Stores were closed. Many gas stations were closed. Fewer people went out to eat.

I don’t know if your comments are just about the 40-hour week,or are somehow connected to the origin of the 11 AM service?

It doesn’t matter when your service is. It could be at 0500 (good luck on that). It could be at 1400. It could be at 1100. Who cares? The larger point is that a church should provide venues for its people to come and worship God through singing, prayer and preaching from the Bible. This means there should be multiple services per week, whether we’re talking about Sunday School or some kind of mid-week bible study in addition to the traditional Sunday service.

That is the point. Who cares when on Sunday the service is held? Ours is at 0930. When I was a Pastor, we did 1030. It doesn’t matter when it is, it only matters that is happens. That determination will hinge on your people, and what works best for the congregation.

Wally Morris wrote;

What I find troubling and dangerous is the disinterest by many professing believers who attend good churches but who believe that casual attendance at the Sunday morning worship service is enough.

This has been the trend for over two decades. We went from three major time slots (Sunday School/Morning Service, Evening Service, and Prayer Meeting) to one half of the first slot.

It is a different world, and I believe there are a lot of reasons combining to make this happen. It began with the two-income family, continued with the advent of more media to absorb our time, was fueled by more perfectionistic views of parenting (little ones are being pressured to become multi-tlaented multi-experienced), and nurtured by a sense of entitlement to a wealth of experiences from cruises to weekends away. Add to this divorce and the great pressures of blended families and the tendency to overspend, add to it the idolatry of sports and (even Christian) music — and accepting the idea that more is always better when it comes to size of house, for example — put it all together and we have the perfect storm. You can throw in OCD, the rise in autimsm spectrum children on one hand and attention deficit children on the other — what a different world from the Leave it to Beaver days.

This is why JBL’s comments are on the money.

Can’t get that worked up about people not being in Sunday School, though my family personally takes advantage of it. We need to remember that it didn’t exist prior to a couple of centuries ago, became a big deal theologically (as opposed to literacy instruction) mostly in the 20th century, and now, as before, churches are exploring new forms in the same way that any number of other institutions became part of, and then were, abandoned by most churches. This would include Psalm-singing, all-day church services, pew rentals, professional musicians and exclusion of congregational singing altogether, stained glass, cruciform church architecture, round church architecture, house churches, Romanesque architecture, Gothic architecture, pipe organs, a separate loft for minorities……

The question, really, is not whether a certain form is being retained, but rather whether the forms currently being used work well to draw people to study the Word for themselves and come into fellowship. Sunday School can certainly have a place if it’s done well. So can small groups, and Wally’s concern that far too few are coming into either is well taken.

Big problem in this line is teaching that inserts itself too much between the reader and Scripture, in my view. Lots of “Bible Study books” are really book studies, and lots of sermons are really “what the pastor wanted to talk about”. And then those who do this wonder…..why people are not drawn into fellowship more often. Well, there ya go.

Bert Perry wrote:

Big problem in this line is teaching that inserts itself too much between the reader and Scripture, in my view. Lots of “Bible Study books” are really book studies, and lots of sermons are really “what the pastor wanted to talk about”. And then those who do this wonder…..why people are not drawn into fellowship more often. Well, there ya go.

You are right, Sunday School is just a vehicle to teach people the Word. What matters is that believers are Scripturally literate and into the Word. The sad thing, as you point out, is that many Christians “do church” without in depth Bible study and have little fluency in the Scriptures. Sunday School did partly address this need, and no good, consistent vehicle has arisen to replace it.

Ed, good point, but it strikes me that if the sermon isn’t succeeding in showing people how to do in depth Bible study and become fluent in the Scriptures, we’ve got a bigger problem than whether we’ve got a good Sunday School or its equivalent, no?

Interesting picture; in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, the mostly presumably illiterate characters often show a Biblical literacy that puts today’s church members to shame,a good example being the Wife of Bath’s Tale. Now of course Chaucer had something of an advantage in being the writer, but his characters had to be plausible, and what we have here is that his readers believed that it was believable that the wife of Bath would have, through her exposure to church services, conversation, and the stained glass windows (the German word for “education”, “Bildung”, literally means “picturing”), a reasonable theological education.

Scary thought, but we might have a bit to learn from our illiterate forebears in this regard….

Various formats for spiritual growth do change over time. A fundamental question is “Why are we seeing some of those changes now?” I think we are seeing a major shift in attitudes and commitment from believers in even our good churches. I do get “worked up” about declining Sunday School attendance (and prayer meeting as well) since I suspect the real reason for most Christians is simply unwillingness to come because they just don’t want to. Some Sunday School groups that I have attended in the past at different churches were not worth going to - small talk, boring lecture with no interaction, mini sermon. I can understand why people don’t want to come to those. But when you have an excellent teacher, good topic, expectation of interaction and involvement from people in the group, and people still won’t come, then there’s something more serious going on. The decline/change in the “format” is a symptom of deeper problems in people’s heart and the culture.

When we first came to Huntington (small town, conservative), some churches were just beginning to cancel Sunday evening church during the summer months because they wanted “to give people more time with their family”. That was not the real reason. The real reason was they couldn’t get people to come. Eventually the cancelation spread to year-round. Now, we are 1 of the few churches that still have a Sunday night service. Several churches have substituted small group Bible studies on Sunday night, either at church or in homes, but these are lightly attended. And again, why can’t people get their “small group experience” during Sunday School? If people want an in-home small group Bible study, that’s great, but why couldn’t it be another day other than Sunday night? Probably because they are “too busy”.

I believe the decline in Sunday School attendance, the disappearance of prayer meeting and Sunday night church are symptoms of the influence our culture on Christians in negative ways. We complain about the increasing secularization of our country, but we are contributing to that process by our own failures in yielding to the culture while trying to clothe that failure in spiritual language and grasping for alternatives hoping that people might be interested.

I’ve had many people ask me questions about a Biblical topic and I thought to myself “If you had been coming to Sunday School regularly, you would know the answer to that question.” Many lament the decline in Biblical knowledge among Christians. But if people won’t come to Sunday School or even a small group study, that decline will continue. I’m all for adjusting meeting times to accommodate particular needs. I’m sure the early church had various meeting times since many of the early Christians were slaves and couldn’t just walk away to “go to church”. But when you offer various times and opportunities and people still won’t come, then the problem is not the time slot - The problem is the hardness of the people.

I couldn’t agree more, Wally.