NEW SUNDAY MORNING SCHEDULE
As we’ve enjoyed nearly ten months in a united worship service every Sunday morning, I believe the time has come for us to formalize our transition to a single corporate worship service. As our church moves forward together, now is also an opportune time to adjust our Sunday morning schedule to strengthen our worship service.
As I first shared with the deacons and in our church business meeting back in January, the Lord has blessed our fellowship with a renewed sense of unity, and I think that is directly related to our decision to continue with one service in the fall that brings all our members together each Sunday. I also mentioned the idea of adding another 15 minutes to our worship to enable us to enhance certain elements of our corporate worship. For example, I would like to see more time for prayer in each service, especially prayers dedicated to adoration and praise or to confession and lament, not to mention more robust pastoral prayers that offer intercession for our church, other local churches, and our missionaries and the global church, as well as our local, state, and national leaders. I would also like to have time to occasionally highlight our faithful stewardship or allow a member to share a brief testimony. And I’d never complain about having a few more minutes for the sermon, though I promise that’s not why we’re making this change.
As we considered how adding 15 minutes would impact the Sunday morning schedule, it made the most sense to move the start time for the worship service earlier rather than move the start (and end) time for Bible study later. As pastoral staff have had individual conversations with various members—from young families to senior adults—we’ve tried to take everyone’s various perspectives into account, and it looks like 9 AM would be the optimal start time for worship. This is also a much clearer time to share in printed promotions and personal invitations to worship. (And not to engage in questionable hermeneutics, but according to Acts 2:15, it looks like the church began at 9 AM.)
We’re very sensitive to the fact that – taken together – these changes would have the net effect of basically eliminating our former 11:15 contemporary worship service and just moving all those members to the 9 worship service. While that may be the case, we’re very grateful for the humility and flexibility these members have demonstrated throughout this season of change. We know we still have more work to do as we refine our worship music to edify and resonate with our various current members while still enabling us to reach the lost in our community, especially the thousands of college students living just blocks from our campus.
As I suggested back in January, I’d want to see any new schedule in place no later than Palm Sunday so that we’d have a week to get acclimated before receiving new guests on Easter Sunday. And we wouldn’t want to confuse any guests by making a schedule change after Easter. Based on the positive feedback we received in January and in February, when I again brought up all these suggestions, we believe we’re now ready to move ahead with this plan.
On Palm Sunday, April 13, we’ll begin our new Sunday morning schedule with worship from 9 until 10:15 AM and Bible study from 10:30 until 11:30 AM. Let’s all pray the Lord will bless this change as we dedicate more time to Him gathered in worship and committed to the reading, preaching, and hearing of His Word, the singing of His praise, and praying in His name.
Josh Hall, Senior Pastor