The Next Domino To Fall

How many of you attend a church where you still have a Sunday evening service? Or how long has it been since you've attended one? It's been 18 years for me, and I really miss them. The message was usually a spiritually deeper one, and the Holy Spirit was allowed to move. Nobody looked at their watch, anxious to beat the Baptists to lunch at their favorite restaurant.

But the world got progressively more distracting, people got busier, and lower expectations were the order of the day. The Sunday night service doesn't exist in very many places today. And the crush of distractions, busyness, and apathy has continued without disruption. I'm going to make a prediction here that I don't want to make. The midweek service is going to be the next addition to the dustbin of history.

Unless we allow the Holy Spirit to speak to us and move us, and give us creative ideas. People absolutely cannot survive on one hour of God per week. Families can't survive the culture with that one hour on Sunday morning. I lost half my Wednesday night kids this fall, due to sports involvement. That's the first time that's happened. But the culture doesn't care. I can't get the vast majority of 50-and-unders to bring themselves or their kids to Wed night programs. It's not for a lack of trying.

Has COVID accelerated what seems to be The Great Falling Away? I'm not giving up, though. God didn't create me that way.

We are still running (generally) Sunday Evening Services.

Our Sunday Morning Services, prior to Covid was running at/about 125, to include Children's Church. It now totals about 99. Sunday evenings run between 34 and 50 people.

Because I'm the Chief of Security and run the Rangers, I make 'most-all of the services. I'm not more holy than 60% of the attendees, I just have obligations to attend that must be fulfilled. Also, being retired, church is kind-of my (unpaid) part-time job.

We have talked for the past 8 years of discontinuing Sunday Evening Services. I have told the Pastor that I agree that our attendance can be abysmal (occasionally as low as 17 or 18), and it barely justifies running the lights and air conditioning. However Sunday nights are when you sometimes see the most "broken" folks experience a "breakthrough".

Why? No time constraints, more spiritually desperate,......?

I have said to the Pastor that it is easy to look at the Mega-Churches in Dallas and Atlanta and say, "NOW THEY ARE REALLY DOING IT RIGHT!", but we have a small Celebrate Recovery group, on the other side of town, that has only 8 or 10 people in attendance, but they are 8 or 10 that may NEVER be reached in a conventional service. It reminds me of the verse that paraphrases, "....there is more celebration in Heaven when one soul returns to the Lord...."

Insofar as Wednesday nights. We are fortunate to be in the Old South. We have a 17 year-old German exchange student living with us for the school year. Her family is Catholic, but she only attends church on Christmas. She is a bit agnostic, as a result of being educated in the German Public School System. However, she is respectful of the importance of Church in our lives, and she attends on Sunday Mornings, Wednesday Nights, and on Sunday Nights, when it doesn't interfere with an upcoming Monday exam (she is a straight "A" student).

Anyway, she wanted to participate in the Bowling Team at School. Living out in the country, we want her to have as much social interaction as possible, but we noticed that a number of the practices were on Wednesday, after school. We expressed that there may be a conflict with Wednesday Evening Church. When she asked the Coach about this, he assured her that they would be finished in plenty of time for her to attend Church on Wednesday night.

Again, thank God for the Old-South.

If you recall Acts they met everyday so for them 5 dominoes have fallen.

So, how do we get the upper hand on this competition with the culture? Having lunch today with a friend, a thought went through my head, and I'm not quite sure what to think of it yet.

For those of you who have watched Shark Tank on TV, you know that the investors often talk about the acquisition cost of each new customer. Many times, it's the sole reason why they decide against investing in a new product. It will just cost too much to educate people on why they need it.

Christianity is actually a new product for most people under the age of 40. Yes, people need it, but it's so different from what they've (unsuccessfully) used to try and solve their problems, that they don't naturally look in the direction of the cross. And so we end up having to spend a lot of resources to get them to look. A lot more than in the past. These days, more so than money, volunteers' time is in precious short supply. Our churches try out an amazing variety of ministries designed to attract people's attention. But as we move further into the 21st century, fewer and fewer of these ministries prove to be effective.

What's a reasonable. acquisition-cost-per-soul? Jesus would look back to the cross and say, "To the point of death." And many missionaries today actually follow that answer. Fortunately for the rest of us, it never gets that serious. Even though the value of each soul is beyond cost, there are only so many dollars and hours to spend. What can give us a good return on the investment?

Is it building one-on-one relationships, which may take years of cultivation to see fruit? Is it social media advertising? How about summer VBS programs? Or is it fervent prayer?

joecool wrote:

Unless we allow the Holy Spirit to speak to us and move us, and give us creative ideas. People absolutely cannot survive on one hour of God per week. Families can't survive the culture with that one hour on Sunday morning. I lost half my Wednesday night kids this fall, due to sports involvement. That's the first time that's happened. But the culture doesn't care. I can't get the vast majority of 50-and-unders to bring themselves or their kids to Wed night programs. It's not for a lack of trying.

Came across an article talking about how to keep the mid-week service from being mid-weak. Here are their 7 points:
1) Evaluate everything you're doing right now.
2) Make sure your kids programming is relevant.
3) Try something different.
4) Involve attendees in the decision making.
5) If you have a meal, do it with excellence.
6) Offer quality programming for adults.
7) Explore other nights for programming.

If you want more details on each point, go to www.lifewayresearch.com/2018/11/14/7-keys-to-growing-your-churchs-midweek-services

I believe that Rangers is one of the things that fits in with your 7 points. If it's done correctly, kids can really get fired up, bring their friends, and other family members.

We had one boy, whose parents fell away from the church. After being out of the Program for 2 years, one Wednesday night, he announced, "I'm going to Rangers, whether you guys are going to Church, or not."

Upon hearing this, his little sister said, "If HE's going to Church, then I am too....."

We have not had a Sunday night SERVICE in the 14 years we have been attending this church.
We do have a Sunday prayer meeting.

Talking to a friend last night, he mentioned his cousin's church schedule, and how it has adjusted due to cultural pressures. For example, youth sports are filling athletic fields on Sunday mornings. And most parents' priorities don't put church at the top. If they're not out there rooting for their kids, then they're sleeping in.

So, on Sunday mornings they now start with worship and then break into classes, whether you want to call it Sunday School or small groups. And that's it. Sunday night is when you come back to get the pastor's message. It seems to work for them.

As I think back to the past, we used to have a big crowd on Sunday morning, with a smaller group coming back to hear the evening message. The latter tended to be for the more committed Christians, who expected and allowed the Holy Spirit to move them and for things to happen. Nowadays, after the near extinction of that service, it seems that only the more committed people are coming to the Sunday morning service. The Casual Christians have dropped a notch in attendance, only coming on holidays and when guilt moves them, which doesn't seem to be often.

I've posted before that the Church needed a thinning out. And thanks to COVID, we've definitely had a "wheat and chaff" season. Not a bad thing, though. I'm reminded of how a large group of Israelite warriors was thinned out to a much smaller number, yet they were able to rout an army with God's help.

The man in me wants quantity. But God knows its quality that wins out. I deeply thank you for serving the Lord and being part of HIStory. How does it end? (Spoiler alert: we win.)

joecool wrote:
I've posted before that the Church needed a thinning out. And thanks to COVID, we've definitely had a "wheat and chaff" season.

Agreed. Most of the weak Christians in name only have dropped away. All of them are gone from our church now. The last left about a year ago.

joecool wrote: People absolutely cannot survive on one hour of God per week. Families can't survive the culture with that one hour on Sunday morning. I lost half my Wednesday night kids this fall, due to sports involvement. That's the first time that's happened. But the culture doesn't care. I can't get the vast majority of 50-and-unders to bring themselves or their kids to Wed night programs. It's not for a lack of trying.

Came across an article talking about how to keep the mid-week service from being mid-weak. Here are their 7 points:
1) Evaluate everything you're doing right now.
2) Make sure your kids programming is relevant.
3) Try something different.
4) Involve attendees in the decision making.
5) If you have a meal, do it with excellence.
6) Offer quality programming for adults.
7) Explore other nights for programming.

If you want more details on each point, go to www.lifewayresearch.com/2018/11/14/7-keys-to-growing-your-churchs-midweek-services

Just a few more weeks until we wrap up Wed nights, as we suspend them during the summer months. And I'm already trying to plan out the 2024-2025 season. Youth group is going well; adult small group is preaching to the choir, as usual; kids' class is struggling to attract more than 6-10 kids, and only half of them actually attend our church. Yeah, it's tough to get the under-50 crowd to come, or at least to drop off their kids. We've tried a lot of things over the years, but there's one thing on the above list that we haven't really done.

Try something (REALLY) different. Kicking something around, just in my head for now. What if we started Wed night with everyone in the same place for about 10 minutes? And the adult, teen and kid groups alternated weeks in presenting something to everyone? After that, we'd break away into our different areas. What could be presented? Maybe a short video, maybe a discussion on things of importance to their group, or who knows? It could give people an easy step into lay ministry and a feeling that the church is THEIR church, and not just their parents'. It would probably need a name, maybe Generation One...GO, for short. Togetherness is important. Oooh, what about To-gather for a name?

Well, whatever it is, we need to try something really different.

I always hated that summer shutdown. It always took at least 3-4 weeks to get behavior back to where it was in May.
In Michigan, summer is when you have most of your daylight to do things outside on Wednesday evenings. We had 90% attendance for the summer for the few years we ran year round.

ccm2361 wrote:I always hated that summer shutdown. It always took at least 3-4 weeks to get behavior back to where it was in May.
In Michigan, summer is when you have most of your daylight to do things outside on Wednesday evenings. We had 90% attendance for the summer for the few years we ran year round.

Those were my thoughts, EXACTLY.

It has always taken months to recover from the loss of education/expertise/momentum that you give up over the summer. Our Ranger Outpost is so small that it is run as a One-Room Schoolhouse, with me as the School Marm. Many nights we may only have 3 or 4 boys. We can't afford to lose any more momentum.

Besides, summer is the only time that we have enough light to find the model rockets that we launch. (Build & paint them all winter; launch them in the summer.)

joecool wrote: Try something (REALLY) different. Kicking something around, just in my head for now. What if we started Wed night with everyone in the same place for about 10 minutes? And the adult, teen and kid groups alternated weeks in presenting something to everyone? After that, we'd break away into our different areas. What could be presented? Maybe a short video, maybe a discussion on things of importance to their group, or who knows? It could give people an easy step into lay ministry and a feeling that the church is THEIR church, and not just their parents'. It would probably need a name, maybe Generation One...GO, for short. Togetherness is important. Oooh, what about To-gather for a name?

Just read my pastor's weekly e-mail to the church. He does a great job in summing up the challenges that the Church faces, and he highlights a term as a commonsense remedy........To-gather.

Now, is that coincidence, or coordination by the Holy Spirit?