By Thom Rainer
Our churches did well in reaching the agrarian culture. We gave the farmers time to get the chores done and get to church by 11:00 am. Unfortunately, this culture began to wane around 1860 with the onset of the railroad and industrial age.
Most of our churches have worship services for the farmers who no longer exist.
We haven’t changed a lot in the past 160 years. I guess life moves slowly for a lot of churches.
In the meantime, a dramatic shift is taking place in the American workplace. More people are working on weekends, many of them on Sundays, than ever before. But most churches haven’t moved their worship day at all. It’s still on Sunday mornings.
We keep hoping the farmers will show up.
While I would not advocate abandoning Sunday worship, I wonder why so few churches offer a non-Sunday alternative. There is a huge demographic we are missing: those working on the weekends. Consider these issues:
According to a 2016 time study conducted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 34 percent of the workforce works on the weekend. Do the numbers. The U. S. workforce is approximately 160 million. That means over 54 million work on the weekend. Please read the preceding sentence again. 54 million. That’s staggering.
- If someone works either day, Saturday or Sunday, they are not likely to attend Sunday services. For Saturday workers, Sunday becomes their day off after a tough work schedule.
- The reasons for not doing weeknight services are rarely theological. If you have a biblical conviction that Sunday should be the only day to have a worship service, stick with your conviction. For the rest of you, please consider this issue prayerfully and carefully.
- If your church has Sunday-only service or services, you are missing out on reaching one of three working persons. I really don’t think most church leaders realize how huge this number is.
- Most churches will not do a non-Sunday service because they’ve never done it before. Such is the most common excuse of dying churches.
- Some church leaders are rightfully concerned about leader exhaustion doing a service on a day other than Sunday. I get that. Such is the reason many leaders must view the non-Sunday service as their time of service. Many will not attend Sunday services at all. And a number of churches moving in this direction are doing so with a minimum of volunteers, such as a guitar-playing worship leader, and childcare only for the youngest kids.
- A few churches are experimenting with Thursday evening services on long holiday weekends. They are often able to reach the members who will be traveling over the long weekend.
- The challenges of weekend workers are exacerbated by our members who travel many weekends, by those involved in sports leagues, and by those who just see Sunday as a day off. Some may see offering an alternative service to be a compromise to culture. Others may see it as an opportunity to reach those in culture.
- The two fastest-growing demographics working on weekends are entrepreneurs and those with more than one job. The rise of the entrepreneurial society and the gig economy virtually guarantees this weekend workforce will increase, probably substantially.
The weekend workforce is not a future trend; it is a staggering present reality.
Some churches will adjust and seek to reach these workers.
Others will continue doing business as usual.
They are likely hoping and praying the farmers will show up on Sunday morning.
Posted on October 7, 2019
With nearly 40 years of ministry experience, Thom Rainer has spent a lifetime committed to the growth and health of local churches across North America.
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58 Comments
I’ve attended a large church that does three services, one on Saturday and two on Sunday but it has multiple preaching pastors so the can take turns on a weekly basis. Now I attend a small church in a small mid western town where the pastor actually preaches in three entirely different small towns about 22 miles apart all on Sunday morning. She/he would be hard pressed to preach more services.
I think we need to clarify our goals. Are we doing Sunday for the believer or unbeliever? The biblical pattern is that a Sunday service is for the believer who chose the day in the first century as a response to 1) the need for a Sabbath that is seperate from the Jewish Sabbath 2) on the day Christ arose 3) on the day the Holy Spirit descended and inaugurated the Church Age. They DID NOT choose it because they had the day off; it is questionable that any of the average believers had any day off. Let’s remember that the reason we have the concept of a weekend is directly connected to the Christian faith! Believers who meet out of conviction will come even if they worked Saturday and churches like mine also offer mid week prayer meeting and small groups at various times and days to accomodate those wanting to go deeper (or who cannot meet on Sunday). As for unbelievers, I think we need to focus on going to them, not trying to get them to come to us.
Good points. For the first Christians, who were mostly Jewish, their day off was Saturday not Sunday.
I wonder when Paul met with believers when he went to a place with no synagogues? We need to move beyond the Jewish church, all this stuff is no longer binding and is cultural to the 1860 American church culture. Someone needs to read Hebrews 6 (which is written to Hebrews not Gentiles), let’s move on from all this rudimentary stuff and get going with the freedom Christ has given.
My point was that the early church met on Sunday even when it wasn’t a day off. Furthermore, there was nothing culturally accommodating about the early church.
Can you document this commonly held assertion?
Bill,
Yes, it’s called the Bible.
So, in other words you cannot document it outside of the Book of Acts. That ended about about A.D. 58-60, with much of it years before this. Early church would be the first few centuries.
There are so many presumptions people 2,000 years later accept and then build their entire theology and ecclesiology upon. Most concepts and some theology in Protestant churches do not particularly come from the Bible they come from tradition, and when tradition is held for centuries it becomes a sacred cow.
For someone who challenges the sacred cows, like me, they get ostracized and discredited or get snide remarks by someone who cannot document commonly held assertions.
Amen!
Would anyone be surprised to learn most of Protestant theology and practice comes from the Roman Catholic church? Protestants for the most part act out of tradition not the scriptures. This is why liberals have such an easy time destroying Christian practice. Some would do well to have conversations with those who oppose Christian faith. I have had to all my life with my family. I found very quickly the quick canned answers do not work.
I have tried to do a service for those who work on Sunday as well as the many who go away on the weekends to a summer cottage. Lots of publicity, a core group to give some stability, lots of personal contacts with those who might have that need, and the message was a condensed version of the coming Sunday sermon. What we got was not our target but people who also attended Sunday. It was a bust.
Demographics often bring insights but we cannot build effective strategies to reach that particular group. Maybe it takes more resources and people in ministry than I have.
Do you have any suggestions on how churches could “survey” or find out from their community if there would be an interest in a service on a different night of the week?
Big city synagogues and churches, especially liturgical ones, tend to have one or two services almost every day. They are lay led at times and might not last more than 15-30 minutes. Sometimes those in attendance are asked to lead part of the service. Also, the clergy often go to their parishioners’ downtown offices for a monthly lunch and meet with anyone who wants to join them in the same way that they go to the hospitals and talk with the staff who work all day or all night. There is far more to church than just attending on Sunday. In Christianity it is “be the church” not just “go to church.” In Judaism, it is “go and do God’s bidding” not just “go to synagogue.”
We should be in a spirit of and ready to worship at all times. However, something needs to be said about the need to emphasize the “first day of the week” as the resurrection day of our Lord. To have your main corporative worship service on any other day would take away from commemorating each Lord’s Day our eternal hope—the resurrection and empty tomb.
Warmly agreed, CJ. I write this as one who is highly evangelistic in my preaching, counseling, and everyday life (and our elders are too): pragmatism, an idolatrous love of evangelism, and no functional resting in the sovereignty of God in salvation drive this movement toward “alternate days of worship.” There is no concept of the authority or sufficiency of Scripture beyond lip-service.
Where does the “alternate worship day” show up in church history? Cults and sects alone. Where does it feature in Scripture? Nowhere. Evangelical leaders, under the banner of loving accommodation, are advocating for supplementing or replacing the Lord’s Day — and are going beyond what is written, as though we are wiser than God. Pragmatism and man-pleasing in *how* we worship has spilled over to *when* we worship. The authority of Christ by his Word is merely a token in such a context.
The BFM 2000 directly opposes such thinking: “The Holy Bible…has truth without any mixture of error for its matter…it reveals the principles by which God judges us, and therefore is, and will remain to the end of the world, …the supreme standard by which all human conduct, creeds, and religious opinions should be tried.” (BFM 1.1) “The first day of the week is the Lord’s Day. It is a Christian institution for regular observance.” (BFM 11.1)
I do recognize that Dr. Rainer is not advocating replacing the Lord’s Day — to his credit — but merely supplementing it. I sincerely appreciate Dr. Rainer on many other subjects (“I Am A Church Member” and “Autopsy of a Deceased Church” are books I regularly give away), but brethren, this topic should be abandoned and buried by all who love biblical faithfulness.
I sincerely hope my reply isn’t taken as angry or accusing in tone. I write it in a spirit of pleading and brokenness. Brethren, we must repent and return to the Scriptures as our authority — the “only certain rule for faith and obedience,” where we learn “what duties God requires of us” (Baptist Catechism #4,6).
Grace to you.
So I just finished delivering a message using Nadab & Abihu [It was centered on Yom Kippur and scape goats]. The point was the sons of Aaron didn’t follow God’s instructions on how He wanted things done, but on how they wanted to do things (we always about the easier softer way… lol). I think we need to keep our Sunday as our Sabbath meeting, but Scripture does not negate having a second service during the week… but I believe actually encourages it. But, IMHO, as most churches struggle with sufficient leaders and volunteers we’re stuck!
Good thing the Romans destroyed the Jerusalem Temple, otherwise you might advocate re-instituting the daily sacrifice.
Sunday is fine as far as a good day for the church to meet, but it is not the Sabbath for the church.
Thank you for pointing that out. As a minister, I have been chastised for working on the sabbath because I work on Sunday.
One of the things we Western Evangelicals have not done well is distinguishing between ‘negotiable’ and ‘non-negotiables’, which means we become dogmatic and treat negotiable as if they were untouchable. In God’s eyes there is no separation between ‘sacred’ and ‘secular’, and every day belongs to Him. Our inability to contextualize, without watering down the gospel, means that we will continue to ‘wait for the farmers to show up’, thereby supervising the slow death of the church – and on our watch!
My family members face 12 hr shifts, night shifts, and work from home/weekend work. As a consequence, regular attendance at anything suffers. YET, even when I was home with a nasty cold last night I was still able to tune in to Jazz Vespers via Facebook live video because the pastor saw to it. I was one of 7 people who did so. Why not Sunday morning?? Blest be ANY tie that helps bind.
Thank you for this timely article about the field of harvest we often have forgotten or not even considered reaching out to. We will be intentional in working towards meeting at least some of this demographic needs for a faith community. If you have any suggestions about applicable practices to reach this demographic would be greatly appreciated.
I see a few challenges with multiple worship services in my own setting: First, people will only give you a limited number of time slots during the week. Back in the day (in my church experience), attending church 3X a week was the norm. Even for those who were less committed, you could expect at least once a week–and possibly two. Now the more committed people do 2X a week. But for the less committed, I’m hoping for 1X per week at best. I also very much want people to participate in disciple-making groups. So 1 worship + 1 group = We’re done. Second, add to this that I serve a church of ~125 on a Sunday morning, and part of the challenge is having enough quality leadership and quantity of involvement to do more than one service. Does it really make sense to do a second service if the numbers are low? Who wants to attend a (second) worship service with only 6 people? I think your premise makes a lot of sense in a larger church, but less sense in a smaller church.
I’m wondering if this is where we need to tap into our best elders/leaders and let us design a different service to meet the need? Scale it back, focus on the truth, make it more casual like a big home group, and see how it flies?
Why not ask the people (in the same target demographic as those) who would be most likely to attend what they think would work. Asking elders/leaders who are frequently out of touch is not going to accomplish much.
Should we look at bring back Wednesday night, not as a prayer meeting but at a worship service?
We do a prayer service, then do worship afterward. We pray ourselves empty then get out worship on.
The church I attend has always had a Wednesday evening worship service. On a good night we will have 20 or so in attendance.
The days off are spread throughout the week, and there are many 10-12 shifts with alternating days off. As such, offering a one size fits all midweek service is undoable and remains an unviable alternative. Unless someone has a solution I am missing?
I thought the same thing. How do you coordinate a mid week service with everyone’s day off?
That would be my question as well. For churches who are doing a weeknight service which night do they find to be the best and how did they determine that night as the best night?
I had the same conclusion with no good solution, unless we go to daily masses. It’s not just that people work weekends, that’s an oversimplification. Many have rotating days off. I’ve had people who want to be regular at church tell me not to plan around them because their schedule changes every week.
Actually one solution is small groups, which meet regularly and intentionally, but not necessarily weekly. Not the same as a worship service but still an assembly to build the body.
Someone who doesn’t go to church Sunday because they worked on Saturday is not going on a weekday after work either.
to guy in the pews, One who not totally committed to the assembling together according to biblical instruction, (Hebrews 10:25 ) doesn’t understand that many assembled before
daily responsibilities,and some at evening time. We meet upon the first day of the week after the manner of the early church (acts 20:7, 1st Cor 16: 20, here implied ). It really doesn’t require one to be at every meeting, BUT, it does imply regular attendance for worship, instruction and fellowship . The problem the Church for years and years had Wednesday evening services and Sunday night services but there is two avenues of thought brought in to the problem. 1. poor attendance, 2. The shepherds of the flock doesn’t teach or present sermons on the importance of the subject, but submits to the will of the people and do not want to attend a small attendance, the .cost, ( this should not be a factor,) as the Church is not a secular business it is a calling by God that is why it is in the Bible. It is for their benefit.
Those that will be responsible to their employment to be regular and present, as required, should be all the more committed to the regular assembling of the body of Christ, to His call for regular assembling as we see the day approaching.
Who should take the initiative, It is the Shepherds of the Church to take responsibility
to uphold the teachings of our God and Savior Jesus Christ.
I hear you, Guy in the Pew! Unless…if we get into the communities around us, relate to them, and invite them, then can we dare think that’s possible. We in the pews and up front need a paradigm shift quickly.
Thom,
I’m currently trending to doing my DMin project on basically answering the question “What happened to the midweek preaching service?” and focusing on the importance of the preached Word to develop disciples. I’ve been growing in my understanding of this and this article was very helpful. Thanks!
Thanks, Adam.
What ever happened to “The Lord’s Day which is Sunday.
Consider the people who feed the hungry crowds after Sunday services. They not only aren’t in church, they (gasp) have to work on Sunday!
SUNDAY is NOT the Lords Day!