Whatever Happened to Evening Services?

We do an afternoon service. Our schedule is:

• 0930 - Sunday School
• 1030 - Morning Service
• 1145 - Church Potluck Lunch
• 1300 - Afternoon Service
• 1345 - On the way home!

The afternoon service is my favorite. I try to keep the message rigidly at 30-35 mins, and cover very practical, nuts and bolts things. I love it.

I for one am fine with the loss of the evening service as long as the church still has substance. For me, the increasing distance for driving back and forth to church has made evening church a difficult thing to sustain. When it takes most families more time to drive to and back from evening church, it starts to not make sense. I never liked the fact church was a quick 30 minutes of singing, choir, offering, and another 30 minutes of preaching and we all go home. Then do it again Sunday night because that is always the way we have done it in the past. Our church as a 2.5 hour morning service (after Sunday School) where we spend more time in pray as a congregation, more time in singing and substantial more time in preaching than what is usually done for both a morning and evening service at most churches. In addition, the family has more time together and we find that most church families will spend the time fellowshipping together in the evening.

You attend what you love. If you love the preaching of God’s word and the fellowship of brothers and sisters in Christ, then you love the second service on Sunday. If you love seeing the fourth quarter of football games, the last 100 laps of the NASCAR race, or golf, or basketball, or any other amusement, then you stay home and enjoy your amusement.

Evening Services have long captured my interest, as their decline is apparent all around us. Many churches in our area have abandoned them totally. Others have crafted an alternative of some variety. Our church has continued virtually unchanged since our beginning forty-one years ago. Our attendance has declined slightly, but we maintain a healthy interest in what is essentially the second worship service of the day, with the second pulpit exposition of the day. Some decline is because our congregation has aged, and many seldom go out at night, even in the Summer. Younger families that are attracted to us have been previously influenced by the trend away from Sunday Evening services. Many have never formed the habit of a Sunday Evening service. Some find that Sunday Evening is something from which they benefit, and they are forming new habits on the Lord’s Day. Others seem unwilling to break out of their Sunday morning only mold.

Our conclusion is that as long as the Lord brings people on Sunday Evening (ours is 6:00 pm), we will continue unchanged. If the day comes when people no longer attend, we will, of necessity, consider other options. For now, we consider Sunday Evening a valuable part of our schedule, and are thankful we have no compelling reason to change. We struggle with the same long-commute mentioned by others. We take that into account, and do not expect our commuters to maintain the same faithfulness on Sunday Evening as local members. However, we are often pleasantly surprised to see how many drive 30, 40, even 50 miles to be back with us again Sunday night. What can we say, but “thank-you, Lord.” Our Sunday Evening schedule includes a lot that would be difficult to move to another time. It is the usual time for: 1) The Lord’s Table, 2) Missionary reports, 3) Congregational meetings, 4) Special honors such as recognizing school graduates, new babies, etc., as well as, 5) Ice cream socials after church, etc. We would lose a lot if Sunday Evening went away.

[Darrell Post]

You attend what you love. If you love the preaching of God’s word and the fellowship of brothers and sisters in Christ, then you love the second service on Sunday. If you love seeing the fourth quarter of football games, the last 100 laps of the NASCAR race, or golf, or basketball, or any other amusement, then you stay home and enjoy your amusement.

Darrell, I’m concerned about the assumption behind this. If you are saying people don’t stay for Sunday night (or afternoon), yes, that’s a problem. If you are saying that an afternoon service causes people to stay around is a compromise due to loving worldly things is bad, I would take issue. If you have an afternoon service, people will get back LATER to all these things. I’m part of a relatively new church (coming up on 10 years), and the church planter tried evening services for a while. You know what happened? No one came! People actually stay and come to the afternoon service. Actually, we have people from other churches who come for the afternoon service as well. If you take seriously the “day of rest”, how is a day with an evening service any kind of rest for a pastor? How is that more virtuous?

I take a nap Sunday afternoon. It is a good way to cleanse the stresses of Sunday services without feeling like I’m ready to resign every Monday, and I believe it is honoring to the Lord. Actually, my wife and I go and do a Bible study at the county jail on Sunday night. It is a “date” that we have, and would not have time to do, if we had evening services.

Steve, I made no comments on the virtues of afternoon vs evening services. I have been in both, and either option can be very good for a variety of good reasons. My only point was that at a very fundamental level, people do what they love. If I have the option to choose between two different activities, I tend to choose the one I love the most. Its human nature. If my choices were two hours at a quilting event, or two hours on a bike ride, I will choose the bicycle. So when someone has the chance to choose between sitting under the preaching of God’s word and fellowship with fellow believers, or staying home to watch the last quarter of a football game, then they will choose what they love the most. That is all I am saying. I wasn’t introducing two arguably equal options like evening service vs. jail ministry or anything like that. I was simply saying where our treasure is, there our hearts will be also. Nothing more.

[Darrell Post]

You attend what you love. If you love the preaching of God’s word and the fellowship of brothers and sisters in Christ, then you love the second service on Sunday. If you love seeing the fourth quarter of football games, the last 100 laps of the NASCAR race, or golf, or basketball, or any other amusement, then you stay home and enjoy your amusement.

at our house we have no tv’s, iPad, computers or anything of the such on Sunday. With that said you point is week, because why just a Sunday morning and evening service. Right not an afternoon as well, and while we are at it midweek, Friday evening…. The fact of whether you have an evening or not,has nothing to do with where your love is at. If one church decides to have a single 4 hour service and another has two one hour services, indicates nothing of the heart or which one is superior. I think each body of believers needs to make a decision amongst themselves.

dgszweda, you have introduced all sorts of issues and scenarios here that are outside the scope of my comment. My comment is clearly in the context that a church has decided to have two services on Sunday. I said “second service” on purpose because it could be afternoon or evening. But given that a local church has decided on two services, then if a member is sitting at home at 30 minutes before the second service starts, and he is watching a football game, as an example, any other area of interest might also apply, and he has a choice to stay at home and watch the fourth quarter of the game or turn off the TV and go to church, he does what he loves the most. Now of course someone might attend church out of guilt or fear, but that’s beyond my initial point. All I was saying is that when it comes to decisions, we do what we love. For instance, in the example you introduced, a church that has one 4 hour service instead of two 1 hour services, if a member arrived 2 hours late to the 4 hour service because of a Sunday scheduled soccer game, then this means that for that Sunday, the soccer game was treasured above the 2 hours of missed church.

I get what you are saying!

The big problem is a lack of love for the Lord and His Word.

IMHO, in churches where worship is more like entertainment and the people are conditioned to be entertained, this would be more of a problem.

I agree that afternoon/evening services are my favorite. There is an accumulated power and work by God through the day after repeated preaching and teaching of the Word that makes this possible. God is changing the speaker and softening the hearts of the listeners. Sometimes it takes all day! The repeated preaching of the Word can be critical to your congregation. The most effective times of preaching and teaching to me are where the listeners have heard the Word more often. In jails, we would have multiple singing and testimony times in order to focus the listeners’ minds on the Word. It is valuable and often very productive.

Darrell Post, so if we REALLY love God and His Word, we should have three or four services, maybe even an entire day where we expect people to be at church!

Greg, read my responses above. It seems that my original comment must not have been clear. Its as though folks are reading this:

“You attend what you love. If you love the preaching of God’s word and the fellowship of brothers and sisters in Christ, then you love the second service on Sunday. If you love seeing the fourth quarter of football games, the last 100 laps of the NASCAR race, or golf, or basketball, or any other amusement, then you stay home and enjoy your amusement.”

as though I had said this:

“You schedule what you love. If you love the preaching of God’s word and the fellowship of brothers and sisters in Christ, then you schedule a second service on Sunday. If you love seeing the fourth quarter of football games, the last 100 laps of the NASCAR race, or golf, or basketball, or any other amusement, then your church cancels the second service and you stay home and enjoy your amusement.”

But I wasn’t talking about scheduling a second service or not, I was talking as though the service WAS ALREADY SCHEDULED. And that if someone would rather stay home and do something else rather than attend the second Sunday service, it is an indication as to what they treasure.

Every church has to decide the best arrangement of meeting times. That is not what I was talking about, but rather when the doors of the church are open, and a service is happening, then if a member treasures God’s Word and the body of believers, then he attends if at all possible and regrets if he has to miss it. But if someone just stays home to watch the fourth quarter of a football game, it shows that the game was treasured above meeting together with the church body. That’s all I was saying. I wasn’t at all arguing that increasing the number of scheduled services is connected in any way to having a heart for God.

My comment is clearly in the context that a church has decided to have two services on Sunday.

Often, the decision for a church to have the services it has scheduled was made long before the current church members were making decisions. Special services are also often scheduled without the congregation specifically giving their approval (the pastor schedules a special speaker for a week of meetings, let’s say).

If we are letting the congregation decide, though- what message is being sent when a large percentage of those who attended in the AM service don’t return for the evening? That may not be a motion, second, and “all those in favor say aye,” but at what point do enough people fail to come before it is concluded that the church isn’t gathering?

I encouraged our church to put our Sunday evening service on hiatus last September. We replaced the service (which was a Bible study and prayer meeting format) with times for small group meetings in homes discussing questions related to the morning’s message, and an ESL class at the church building for non-native English speakers. Adult participation increased 50% from what attendance had been in evening services. I would actually prefer to have an evening service, but as I saw the situation, it seemed to me that my responsibility was to adjust our method a bit to be more effective in getting people to come and benefit from more teaching, rather than lament and berate people for not coming who should be.

Greg L.,

Every church has to work through what is best for them as to scheduling. I have no problem with adjustments, alternatives, re-tooling, etc. The early church appears to have met daily at one point. Other contexts make frequent meetings very difficult. But regardless how meetings are packaged, its still a valid question to pose to those who do not participate, but are members of the body. Why don’t they attend? It could very well be a work conflict, a health problem, and so on, but in these examples, one would expect these members to feel regret for not being able to participate. But if they are missing solely because a greater treasure has captured their heart, then this, I hope we would agree, may indicate a problem. Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. That was my only point.

If the decisions were made long before the current membership joined the church, then they are free to work toward changes that would better facilitate the needs of the church body. But I would point out that if, lets say the pastoral leadership decided to do something like schedule a special meeting for a special speaker, I don’t think it would be the end of the world if the members, out of love for their pastor and a desire to be pleasing to God, voluntarily decided to submit to the leadership of their pastor and attend the meetings if at all possible.