Tonight I received in my inbox a church newsletter (not from my church but another in my city). It begins with this paragraph:
This is a big week in the life of a church—a great celebration of His resurrection following a purposeful remembrance of His death. This year, I wonder if I might ask a favor of you: Would you be willing, as an act of outreach to our visitors, to give up your pew on Sunday morning and come on Saturday at 5:30 instead? By the grace of God, we traditionally welcome dozens of new guests on Easter Sunday, and it would be a great act of kindness to leave them plenty of room to park and sit with their families. And don’t worry…the 5:30 service will look, sound and feel just like Easter Sunday!
What do you think about this? Is this a noble thing, desiring to make it possible for visitors to come on Easter? Or does it suggest that the church is no longer the church when believers cannot gather together to worship on the morning of the Resurrection?
Interesting. Do they realize that by asking their church (and specifically those involved enough to be on the email list), the visitor’s experience they’re aiming for on a Sunday morning won’t be the same when dedicated members don’t attend?
And that goes without mentioning the issue of church being all about personal experience.
It is an interesting question, and this letter you refer to, did not come from our church, I guarantee that. I attend a church that is asking asking our body to consider the exact same thing, I would say that in our situation at least, it is a space issue that drives the request. We already have Saturday night service and two on Sunday, and ask our members to attend that Saturday service with regularity. The message and music are the same and it offers the ability of the body to spend time after church in fellowship, as the necessity to move out to allow others in for the next service is not pressing. In the case of Easter which along with Christmas services obviously brings the most strain on the facility, from parking to seating to children’s ministry it does seem a bit uncomfortable with regard to the time of the service. For us at least our request comes from a desire to be available for those who do not experience a worship time with regularity, rather than turn them away, even though few of this demographic will in all truth return, with the possible exception of Christmas. We have chosen, to make room for those who are not exposed to the gospel with regularity or maybe not at all on this day, and really every week as we do encourage our body to fill up that Saturday service. The Resurrection is celebrated every day, in the Christians life, is it not? I am not saying that the day of Easter is not important, it is, but in our case due to space constraints we are ask regular attenders to “consider” making the sacrifice of the day, for those who may not celebrate it at all most times. Perhaps the Holy Spirit will move them to consider the greatest question of their life, and if not we will continue to reach out to them with the gospel of life. We have not found this to be too much of an issue for our regular attenders in any case as we have made this same request for the last three years, and to good response.
Dan – the question that underlies this issue is “what is the church?” I think that many churches disregard biblical teaching about what the church is in favor of something that seems like a better idea to them. Church is defined as a meeting to attend rather than a body that one belongs to. It’s easy to justify our ways with the idea that the “ends justify the means.” If more people are saved, who can question that? But I think that this method of thinking hurts the body in more ways than one. I think pragmatic considerations are behind the existence of large churches, but what we gain in “cost savings” is meaningless when the church is no longer a church. Just thinking with you…
Todd,
Your point, and the question behind it is well taken. In my position in our church I struggle with the “pragmatic” all the time. How to do this? Is this the best way, Is there a better way to make this work? Easter and Christmas are two of the more difficult ones. I appreciate that you bring me to the point of thinking it through again though. Thank you.
By the way, What do we do about Christmas this year? Its on Sunday? Do we or don’t we? What if we have a Christmas Eve service? Do we still have Sunday service? That is a burning question for some churches even now.
Thanks again for thinking with me.
By not meeting to worship on the Lord’s Day because Christmas is a family oriented holiday, aren’t we saying we place family time above worship? Personally, I’d prefer my children and grandchildren witness our family’s priority for worship.