I received a phone call from a pastor I have known for many years. Indeed, I consider him a leader and friend. His question was quick and to the point: “What can I do about our Sunday evening services?” Despite numerous valiant efforts, attendance continued to struggle. The church he serves is, by most standards, a healthy church. But the attendance on Sunday evening is going counter to all the other positive indicators in the church.
This pastor is not alone. Other church leaders are concerned as well. Some have given up on Sunday evening services out of frustration. Others have discontinued the services without much lament. And a few leaders have fairly good reports about these services.
The feelings tend to run strongly one way or another about these services, particularly among those whose traditions have affirmed them in past years. Perhaps a quick overview of the Sunday evening services would be helpful.
An Uncertain History
There will be a number of church leaders reading this article who will hardly give it a second glance. Their church traditions have never, or at least not in recent decades, had Sunday evening services. But there are many other traditions for which these services have been staples. Frankly, the decline in the Sunday evening services among these churches is both noticeable and getting worse.
For years, I have attempted to understand the history of these services. My efforts have not been conclusive. I’ve heard many times, for example, that the evening services began with the advent of the electric light in America. But that explanation seems unlikely since I have found examples of the services in both the 1600s and the 1700s.
Here are some other historical tidbits I have found, all unverifiable at this point:
- The services grew during the agricultural phase of our history. Farmers had to work their land six days a week. But, on Sunday, they would have come to a morning service, then have dinner on the grounds, and then have a second later afternoon services before returning home.
- During World War II, many men and women worked seven-day weeks to meet the production needs of the war. The Sunday evening service allowed them to attend worship since they couldn’t come on Sunday morning. Thus the service time grew in popularity.
- Some denominations and other church traditions focused one service on equipping the believers, and another one on reaching the lost. Thus the Sunday evening service became distinctively different than the Sunday morning service.
- As a reminder, some church traditions have little to no familiarity with Sunday evening services; their leaders often wonder why there is so much discussion about the issue outside their traditions.
Possible Reasons for the Decline in Sunday Evening Services
While the history of this service is largely unverifiable, the decline in its attendance, and the reduction in the number of churches offering are clearly evident. Let’s look at six possible reasons for its decline or demise.
- The advent of Sunday evening services in many churches was a cultural adaptation for its time. Its decline or demise is thus a cultural response.
- The disappearance of blue laws (mandatory Sunday closings) allowed many alternatives to Sunday evening worship, and many church members chose those options.
- There has been an increasing emphasis on family time. Families with children at home particularly viewed one worship service on Sundays to be sufficient for them.
- Many pastors simply do not have the desire, energy, or commitment to prepare a second and different sermon. Their lack of emphasis was thus reflected in the congregation’s lack of interest.
- When many churches began offering services on alternative days, such as Fridays or Saturdays, there was neither the desire nor the resources to keep Sunday evening services going.
- A number of churches, particularly new church starts, are in leased facilities. They do not have the option of returning on Sunday evenings.
Trying to Be Objective
In my previous post on changes in church worship services, I stated my desire to be the objective researcher and not inject my own opinions on the issue. That remains my goal in this article as well. But the previous article engendered many comments and not a little emotion. I see that possibility in this endeavor as well.
I do want to hear from you. I continue to be impressed with the acumen and the insightfulness of the readers of this blog. It will be a joy to hear your comments and opinions on Sunday evening services.
Does your church have a Sunday evening service? If you do, is it thriving? Surviving? Struggling?
photo credit: patrickfranzis via photopin cc
Posted on May 10, 2014
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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233 Comments
I actually did a paper on the history of evening worship for my MDIV in the late 80s at SWBTS. What I found is that it was the invention of rural Baptists that coincided with the introduction of carbide lights. At this time homes were still without electricity so when it got dark everyone went to bed, not because they really wanted to but because there was little to do.
Recognizing the need, some churches raised the money for carbide lights which gave them to ability to hold more informal ‘evangelistic services’ on Sunday nights. These services sometimes included food, were very informal and unstructured, usually included a little of picking and grinning country gospel singing and plenty of loud ‘hell fire and brimstone’ kind of preaching.
When BYPU was introduced and followed shortly by the invention of Training Union, the focus of the evening service shifted to structured weekly programs for church members vs. unstructured random but frequent special preaching services centered on evangelistic preaching to unbelievers.
Today, Sunday evening services are only evangelistic during a revival meeting. Many do not end in an invitation time even though every Sunday AM service in that church probably does. I was not raised in the SBC. The first Southern Baptist church I joined was in Tulsa, OK in the mid 70s after graduating college and moving from CO to OK for a job. In the bulletin of Calvary Baptist Church every Sunday was an abbreviated order of worship for the evening worship service. They always listed it as ‘Evangelistic Service’ even though there was nothing evangelistic about it.
I do not have my seminary paper any more. So I do not know what my sources were. But this is what I remember finding out.
I hope that helps shed some light on its origins.
Personal Reflections…
My father began pastoring at his current church in 1982. At the time it was a small “neighborhood” church. Growing up in the 80’s and 90’s church life was mostly fairly traditional. Sunday night services and Wednesday night services. As the church grew and culture changed it became impractical to continue the services. For example, our Wednesday night services had a dinner before the adults teaching time and kids groups. When the church got bigger than 300 people it required so much volunteer effort and resources to host a church dinner every Wednesday that it began to give way to small group ministries instead. Also, as the size grew we had to go to 3 services on Sunday morning which left little energy for my dad to preach/teach another two times a week, not to mention the extra work involved with coordinating the different ministries.
Today, they are a church of about 2000 and they are completely small group focused. Even if less than half of the people would come to a second and different service on another night that number of people would require so much volunteer work that it would quickly burn everyone out. Not to mention, the current sanctuary still couldn’t accommodate a single service of 800 plus. So, if they were doing an evening service you would have to do at least 2 of them back to back. Which would be following 4 “regular” sunday services(one Saturday night 3 sunday morning). You could easily see that just teaching(and the preparation) over a 24 hour period would take up 20-30% of a normal work week. (assuming around 50 hours). And that doesn’t even take into account doing a Wednesday service.
Personally, I am a pastor for a small rural congregation in the middle of no where(literally). The closest town is 6 miles away and has less than 300 people. No church in our area does small groups and everyone is fairly traditional. Yet, less than 20% of the people in our county go to church on a regular basis. While I inherited a Sunday/Wednesday night service church, people in our area don’t even go on a Sunday morning, let alone during the evening hours when kids sports and family activities are taking place.
Over the past year I am slowly working on transitioning our church into home based small groups. Our evening services are exclusively attended by those who are 60+ and our young families wouldn’t even consider going because we can’t consistently rely on child care. What’s the point of going if you spend the whole time shushing your 3 year old?? One of our first small groups is every other sunday night(subtly changing peoples expectations of the church doors being open every sunday evening!!) for families with young kids. We have them come over to our house since we have a big place for our kids to play. We just lock them in and ignore them…..its wonderful….. The people who are coming NEVER went to evening services, but love doing home groups. And we get some families who don’t come to church at all.
While we are a small church(less than 85) we could pull off multiple evening services. And we kinda still do. But I just don’t see a lot of value to it. I don’t mind hanging out with my senior saints, but they are the only people who come. No one “new” ever comes out to those events. And sometimes it is frustrating because I put as much teaching effort into those times as I do sunday morning. But, seriously, who wants to hear me preach three times a week??
General Observations/Thoughts wrapped up in Questions:
Is the evening service model impractical at a certain church size?
What does it accomplish that is better/more effective than a small group?
When I came to my present church 10 years ago, it had the traditional format of Sunday School at 9:00, boring I mean morning worship at 11:00 and Sunday night service at 7:00. The Sunday school was meagerly attended by 3 children and 7 adults, the Sunday night service was about ten percent of the morning crowd. Over time I transitioned Sunday School to the morning service. We increased our children’s ministry to 20 children and a team of teachers who rotated teaching. I transitioned the Sunday night to Wednesday as the exact same people came to both. I presently have a monthly prayer and praise on the first Sunday night of the month. It takes place in homes, and is working very well. Where I never had any young families before, with this format almost all my young families and teenagers come out.
We have Sunday night services. However, Sunday night is not a repeat of Sunday morning. There is no choir and no sermom as in the morning. Sunday night serves as a teaching time that is interactive with the congregation. Dress is more casual. The Am service runs about 200 and Sunday PM runs about 70. With these numbers at night, it is important to me as a pastor to give our congregation the option of a PM service.
Without Sunday nights I have struggled to have opportunities to give young preachers opportunities, extended missions reports, musical presentations, etc.
How do we define a successful Sun night? Is it attendance in a service or program? Could success be defined another way? Perhaps intentional family time is needed to encourage mom and dad as primary steward of their childrens’ spiritual maturity. Perhaps in homehospitalitiesi are needed to encourage fellowship as many members are too busy to really speak and hangout with others. Perhaps Sun night is an action night where the Church actually gets out of its walls and becomes the church. I think a local church needs to assess and determine what a win on Sun night would be.
Thanks for the article. My dad, who served bi-vocationally in Northeastern Ontario in Canada, and is now with the Lord, was convinced television had created a huge distraction Sunday evenings and permanently changed the use of Sunday evenings.
The church we fellowship at in Oshawa, Ontario see 2 trends – 1) bring a ‘prophetic’ speaker and the p.m. service will be packed or 2) turn p.m. into an equipping time with discipleship groups, applying the morning sermon and now those who attend (attendance increased significantly) come prepared to engage rather than sit as a passive observer.
I actually prefer Sunday evening services to Sunday morning services, although evening services are admittedly smaller. I have noticed that when the quality of Sunday evening programming improves, so does attendance. When leadership invests in Sunday evening programming at the same level as Sunday morning programming, members are more likely to do so as well. On the other hand, culture and apathy also have an impact. I’ve never quite understood the argument that Sunday night is the only time to be with our families. There are 6 other days of the week to work, play, socialize, invest in family, friends and missions. The Lord asks us to set aside one day for Him, not merely 2 hours one morning, but to give Him an entire day. Surely we can find meaning, purpose and even spiritual rest in dedicating His day each week to worshipping, studying, praying, serving, fellowshipping – together. Spiritual and personal growth can be greatly enhanced by regular, extended times together, like spending most of the Lord’s day together. In an association where I previously served, one Pastor and his wife opened their home weekly for Sunday lunch to any in the congregation who wanted to spend the afternoon together. Another, more urban church, held lunch on the grounds on a semi-regular basis, in between services, to help with commuting issues and to encourage fellowship. Sometimes the church hosted an outreach, instead of lunch, on Sunday afternoon. Sometimes, Sunday School classes would organize lunches by class. Sometimes a class would organize an evangelistic outreach after lunch and before returning to church that night. Whatever the plan for that particular Sunday, these were wonderful extended times of worship, service and community building within the family of God. It seems our lives and our sense of community have become so fractured that many church members talk about spending time with family but have forgotten our family is the body of Christ. We’ve allowed culture to overtake us and now see church as something to fit in, an hour here or an hour there, when our busy schedules permit, instead of emphasizing extended, quality time together as a spiritual family. Unfortunately, for many, it has become a low priority to be with God’s family, each week, on His day, in His House. It would be wonderful to see this trend reversed.
Amen and amen! The early Church wasn’t something it’s members “fit in to their existing lives.” They recognized their complete and utter dependence on God and sought Him diligently. Prosperity has all but destroyed “The Church” in 21st Century America, and it’s heartbreaking. Because of our apathy, it won’t be long until we’re forced to once again recognize our dependence. Post Christian America is less friendly by the day for those who take their Christian faith seriously. We’ve seen in the past two weeks that “Freedom of Speech” is a thing of the past if we speak anything that is not “Politically Correct.” We’re naive to think that “Freedom of Religion” will survive much longer given the current political climate. As such, God’s people will begin to experience persecution which will motivate Believers to search out opportunities to gather with fellow Believers to be instructed and encouraged. I want to be sure “The Church” God has called me to lead offers more, rather than less, occasions to meet and worship our great God. But then, that’s just my opinion.
Dear Thom, I minister in the Hudson Valley, an hour north of NYC. When I came here ten years ago Sunday evening attendance was in single digits. When I polled the members who attended Sunday mornings, most felt no need for another worship service. We were the only church around that was still offering a Sunday evening service.
What we have done is to offer a Sunday evening Bible Study which I lead. We still sing from the hymnal, open and close with prayer, but we’re seated in the fellowship hall where we can talk to one another and interact during the study. The studies are topical; everything from parenting, to financial stewardship, to prayer.
Sunday nights still have about 25% of our Sunday morning worship but it is healthy vibrant group. Interestingly we have several who first attended Sunday nights prior to coming Sunday morning.
Great story Gale. Thank you.
Sunday evening came about because of the automobile and the industrial revolution. People started working Sunday morning shifts and could not attend morning worship. The car made it possible to come back. Another cultural change was the located minister.
Traditional Sunday evening service has always been statistically about 40%.
Family time is great, however, that hour of fellowship and spiritual formation has been lost.
One thing to consider is making Sunday evening a second service time. Who doesn’t want to sleep in on Sunday morning and have a casual breakfast and coffee. Attend a dynamic worship in the evening. Sunday evening same as morning.
I think it is multifaceted as many have said. At my current church we do not have Sunday evening worship. Instead we have awana only and encourage our adults to serve. It’s a way to serve in the congregation and takes away the excuse of not serving to attend church.
Another reason is we already do multiple services. Instead of building a new building, we expanded our service offerings. Out musicians already do all three service so asking them to play another is working them even more.
I’m heading to a church that has Sunday nights. However after the kids and youth programs most of the people leave. Only a handful come or stay and it’s all older folks with no kids. There is no child care in the evening and it’s a school night so parents want kids home early.
I think too often the evening service is a sacred cow. It’s not affective but the older folks don’t want it to go away.
Our Sunday night attendance always depends upon the topic. When I preach on apologetics issues, the Holy Spirit, or eschatology, the attendance increases significantly.