I received the following article (contained in the following link) as part of one of my weekly email news letters. I am interested in your thoughts. Although the author makes some good points and at the end addresses some of the most common questions that come up on a topic like this, I think some of the questions we have to answer is who is the church service for and what is its purpose. Yet still as a spirit led believer for almost 30 years it is troubling to me that church has to be reduced to a tight schedule that must be adhered to the minute. (you'll see what I mean after reading) Too often we tend to ignore the fact that it is the spirit that draws and changes the heart. Although we often have to tweak methods to our times, I think this suggestion is a bit over the top. Here is the link http://www.sermoncentral.com/articleb.asp?article=Dave-Browning-Case-Hour-Long-Service&ac=true Let me know what you think.
Until next time,
Pastor Paul
2 comments:
Greetings Pastor Paul,
I happened upon your blog and perked up a bit when I briefly perused the content of your post "One Hour Church" I am an AG credentialed minister living in Michigan and my wife and I recently step down from my first pastorate. Our first church here was District Supervised church in which we pastored for 4 years. What is interesting is that I alos work full time to compensate our income all four years for National City Bank-Treasury Management. Both as my wife and have meet with Pastor John Musgrave and also our district leadership as we wait upon the Lord of our next step. It is in reference to walking among the crowd and also working within the body that the question of "Who is church for?" has come across my mind time and time again. Last week I was invited to minister in word in an evening services for a very good friend. We started the service at 6:00 and it ended at 9:00. His staff was prepared and God equipped the childrend workers with incredible wisdom. In light of this the service moved in the gifts, the power of the word, and a powerful response and altar time that had us singing and shouting to the song "I'm Free." I will take a look the reference and continue to wonder. I think I have come to my decision though and know that Christ will send us to Pastor His flock and love our community.
Looking forward to hitting your blog in the future
Rev. Jim Thomas
www.jfthomas.typepad.com
Hi Pastor Paul, a very interesting article. Although, I don’t agree with putting an hour time limit on a service, I do agree with several ideas presented. For me, the main purpose of Sunday morning service is to worship God through song, giving, presenting the Word and praying for others.
I am by no means an expert on order of service and don’t begin to suggest that this is the perfect order of service. I appreciate my pastor trying different things. Here are my suggestions for order of service (assume you start at 10):
1) At 9:45, start looping announcements on an overhead screen utilizing PowerPoint or video announcements. If you have a 2 or 3 minute video announcement, you can have it loop 4 or 5 times before service “officially” starts.
2) Opening song led by worship team or choir. Start it at 9:57 am
3) Pastor or someone designated as the pastor welcomes people, ushers pass out visitor/guest packets, prays and allows for a time of greeting/fellowship. This is the time to pass out welcome/friendship pads. (This also allows people close by to introduce themselves to visitors).
4) Continue with the music part of worship, 4, 5 or 6 songs as the Spirit leads.
5) Prayer time for needs during the worship service.
6) During the prayer time, Pastor can have the congregation be seated and after that time of prayer proceed right into the offering collection.
7) Have the worship team resume singing and after the offering plate passes you stand up and continue vocal worship.
8) After worship service comes to a conclusion, Pastor makes a smooth transition to his message.
9) Altar call at the end of the message.
10) Benediction for those who need to go and anyone else can stay and worship at the altar, seek prayer or worship at their seat.
11) As people are coming forward for prayer, you could also loop announcements via PowerPoint on the main screen, however, this is not a time for video announcements.
I’m not sure the right length of time for the service, but implementing some of the above suggestions will cut out any extraneous or fluff time.
Pastor Paul, a couple more suggestions;
It has been my experience over the past 35 years that most of your people will sit in the same spot every service. We should take advantage of that. If we have small group leaders, we designate various rows for them to be “in charge of”. That is, you put one leader on the second row and make him/her in charge of rows 1-4. Another person in charge of 5-8, etc. based on the size of your church and number of small group leaders. These leaders could also pass out the friendship pads and tell these folks of important announcements for the next week and point them to the bulletin.
The things that frustrate me the most are the awkward transitions. I think we need to make things more seamless where almost everything transitions smoothly. Another example here, instead of the pastor announcing it is time to receive the offering if the Pastor prayed for needs and then as a part of that prayer “thank the Lord for the offering” we are about to give and signal a key usher to have the ushers come forward to receive the offering.
I also find passing the friendship pads during a choir song after collecting the offering, distracting. I do believe there is a place for the choir to give their talents to God, but I always have felt that a lot of people are not in an attitude of worship at this time because they are reading the bulletin, filling out the friendship pad, in a sense tuning out until the choir song is over.
I think a lot of things are based on tradition and difficult to break out of that mold. Again, I appreciate my pastor trying different things, little by little. You can’t make huge changes all at once.
Oh, one last suggestion for before the service. If you have room and the equipment, put a TV in the lobby with a continuous loop of announcements, run it from 8:45 - ??? (if you have 9 am Sunday School based on the above). If you really think about, making announcements, although they are extremely important, are not really an act of worship. You can make announcements the following ways without taking time during the service:
1) Website
2) Sunday bulletin
3) Overhead announcements, pre and post service
4) Announcements in the lobby
5) Small group leaders informing people
6) Weekly e-mails
7) Newsletters
Remember, these are just suggestions. We need to make the main thing, the main thing. That’s WORSHIPPING GOD.
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