So we’re making some changes to Sunday morning that I’m excited about. We are still going to be focusing on gathering together to worship, to hear from God’s word and to encourage one another but the structure of Sunday morning is going to be changing a little bit for a few reasons.
To start, let me talk about what is typical for us right now. Our services run about 75-85 minutes and we do two identical services on Sunday morning. On a normal Sunday, this is what our service would look like -
15 minutes – Opening/Gathering worship – call to worship, upbeat songs, scripture
10 minutes – Community – Announcements, offering, Q&A, congregational prayer
10 minutes – Worship continued – leading towards the message
40 minutes – Message – applicational preaching as part of a series of Sundays usually focused on a book or specific theme of scripture
10 minutes – Worship response – typically one or two songs, maybe some sort of interactive response
If you’re part of a “typical” evangelical church then your service probably looks something like that too. We might change things around – add some time to one section or another, break the message in to sections with some worship response in between, etc – but as a general rule that’s a pretty good template for what Sunday morning looks like for us.
Over the past few months we’ve been talking about some stuff behind the scenes which started out as a discussion about how we help people move further along in their walk with Christ. As a church our mission is “to glorify God by making disciples who love God completely and others sacrificially.” That is the reason we exist. If we’re not doing that then we are wasting a whole lot of time. We are not called to be a social club, a counselling agency or a catalog of programs or services – we are called to make disciples of Christ who are increasing in their love for God and in their love for people. Because of that calling, we have to do everything we can to help people along in that journey – including on Sunday morning.
I won’t explain our new “connections process” in this post but let’s just say it’s having lots of impact in places that we weren’t anticipating – including in the design of Sunday morning. Starting this week we will be changing the layout of a typical service and it will look more like this -
30 minutes – Worship – call to worship, creative expressions of worship, scripture
40 minutes – Message – applicational preaching
10 minutes – Response – this will include our “community” aspects – offering, prayer, Q&A – as well as a very focused opportunity for everyone to commit to taking a “next step” in their walk with Christ
Personally, I am super excited about this but there are three things in particular that I think are worth mentioning -
- 30 minutes of worship – This will not be easy for our people at first but I am PUMPED about this. This will give us the opportunity to move away from a “music is worship, worship is music” mentality on Sunday morning. Having this much time to fill will give us the freedom to be much more expressive in terms of the artistic presentation of our times of worship on Sunday morning.
- “Next Steps” – By being intentional about communicating the importance for all of us (not just spiritual seekers or new Christians) to be taking steps in our walk with Christ we again communicate the mission of the church as well as the need for worship to continue out of Sunday morning.
- Implications – Don’t think that this doesn’t change things. There are lots of things to consider when making a change like this (even though it seems very simple) so we have had to make sure that we can clearly communicate the HOW and WHY and not just the WHAT of this change.
At the end of the day, I think that this change is something that will help us in our mission to make disciples of Christ. If that is the result then I am all for making whatever changes are necessary. Please pray for our church and our leaders as we continue to seek God through all of this.