WORSHIP TIME CHANGE, STARTING FEBRUARY 21

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WORSHIP TIME CHANGE, STARTING FEBRUARY 21

Sat, 02/06/2010 - 12:19pm — Dan Evans

(From Pastor’s February 5 e-note)

Ok, you may have noticed in The Beacon an announcement about our moving worship times to 9:30 and 11:00.

Why are we doing this?

There are two very important reasons!

1) For spacing issues, we continue to need people to choose the earlier worship time as their main worship experience each week.

This will NOT change when we move. Though we will be gaining a number of seats in the new space (probably around 30) this is clearly not enough to embrace a large move of God. I mean, just imagine what would happen if God wanted to bring twice as many people as are coming right now.

So, we are hopeful that with a later start time at least 50 more people will choose to worship earlier.

The children’s programs at the earlier worship experience, while not identical, are strongly related to what happens at the later worship experience so your kids won’t be “missing out” on anything if you come earlier. My kids participate in the earlier program.

Of course, as we continue to grow the two offerings of City Kids and Praise Street will become more and more aligned.

Is having a large 9:30 worship attendance possible? YES. Hillside, our mother church, when I first went there had stronger attendance at their 9:30 contemporary worship experience than their 11:00.

It is possible.

I encourage you, if you want to help our continued outreach and growth of bringing in dechurched and unchurched people, then make 9:30 your worship experience. I know this is impossible for some but for others it might be a real choice. And starting February 21, hopefully it will be an easier one.

2) It has always been our vision to continue to offer more worship times (and dare I say, “styles”) in combination with our growth.

While we will continue to focus, regardl

ess of what we offer, that worship primarily be an experience of transformation, there is certainly more than one way of doing that.

So, we will soon be experimenting with an 8:00 a.m., hymn and praise chorus-driven worship experience that includes Holy Communion each week.

We’re not ready to call it “traditional” because our focus is again on transformation not on style and, regardless, it would still carry our Worship DNA that is upbeat, joyful and containing various special elements, not just “traditional” ones.

Yet, this worship experience would appeal to those who either (a) want or need to worship early on Sunday morning (and be done by 9:05); or (b), love the preaching of COAH and the mission focus but feel more worshipful when we sing older hymns and praise choruses of the church.

It would also appeal to those who crave the experience of Holy Communion each week.

A final word about this time change…

With it there will be some modifications to our existing worship experience. Namely, it will be shorter. Currently, we plan worship to last 75 minutes – and yes, it’s occasionally longer because yours truly gets long-winded.

However, we have been planning for sometime on how to reduce it to 65 minutes and, though I’ve gotten a reputation for being “over” with the sermon time, despite last week’s sermon, the previous six or so sermons were “on the dot” or close to it.

This can be done.

Your part will be to work on being in worship early. More about this later, but with worship being shortened we’re going to need as a congregation to be better at not just “ending on time” but “beginning on time,” which means arriving early enough to get your coffee and refreshments before worship begins.

Again, with worship starting 30 minutes later at the earlier worship experience and 15 minutes later at the later one, hopefully this won’t be a problem. (Just pretend like we haven’t changed times and you’ll definitely be ok!)

Thanks.