YOUR HELP IS NEEDED!
The leadership team for Saturday Night Worship (SNW) has been kicking around the possibility of adjusting the start time for the service from 6 pm to 5:00 or 5:30 pm.
What we’ve been thinking is that we want to continue to provide a convenient worship time that takes into consideration the present make-up of our church family and that also allows us to do the following:
- Provide more time after the service ends for fellowship and connection, i.e. strong stickiness. Developing a sense of family and community is a core value of Emmanuel, and starting the service just 30 minutes earlier can help us in our commitment to this core value.
- Provide more time after the service ends to do some different kinds of occasional activities such as an extended worship night after the service is over (Core Value of Worship); an extended time of corporate prayer (Core Value of Prayer); seminars or classes or times of Q&A (Core Value of Spiritual Maturity/Discipleship and the Word of God)
- Provide Pastor Dennis more time with us, the church family.
- Be mindful of the fact that the worship team has to come back on Sunday morning to lead the 11 am service. Moving the service ahead gives them a few more precious minutes with their families in the evening.
But before we do this, we’d like to hear from you!
Would moving the service time to 5:30 affect you and/or your family in a positive or a negative way?
Is 5:30 the best time? Would 5:00 be even better?
Ultimately, what will best help to produce Christ-likeness in you and/or your family?
We would like to ask you to take a couple of weeks to think and pray and talk about this because we plan to do a more formal survey on 6-20-09 during the service.
During the next two weeks we’d certainly love to hear from you about this idea that we’re kicking around. Feel free to e-mail Pastor Dennis at dkeating@efcc.org, or Scott Smith at ssmith@efcc.org or Jennifer Klein at jklein@efcc.org. Or, you can write a comment in the space provided below. Let us know your thoughts, questions, concerns, etc. We’ll get back to you with answers and use the Saturday Night Worship website to post your questions and answers for all to see. We’ll be sure to let you know when a post is made to that site.)
Thanks for giving this idea some of your valuable time.
P.S. If we were to change the start time, we’re thinking a good time to do so would be September 5, 2009.
June 5, 2009 at 9:44 pm
I think starting the service at 5:00 or 5:30 is a good idea. All of your reasoning is sound and makes good sense.
June 10, 2009 at 4:33 pm
I think it’s a good idea for all the reasons stated- it’d be awesome to have extended worship or prayer time! My question is, what about dinner? Would people have to then eat very early or late?
We’d personally do better with a 7pm service. Because even when we intend to go to Saturday Night service (like when we know that we will miss Sunday), we tend to forget because it’s already too early. The day slips by, and 6 is early.
June 11, 2009 at 3:57 pm
We do not like the idea of making it earlier. We have a hard enough time to get there at 6:00 with all the activities that our kids are involved in on Saturdays. Also, I don’t like the idea of having church at dinnertime. We like to eat right before we go. If you make it earlier, we are going to have a very late dinner, or very early dinner. Please don’t change the time!!!
June 11, 2009 at 7:56 pm
5:30 would be the earliest for me, otherwise it cuts into the day too much.
June 16, 2009 at 3:52 pm
I agree with Phil, 5:00 or 5:30 would be ideal, 6:00 has also been fine, anytime we can be there to praise His name is always a perfect time. Plans should be made around Church, God is first!
June 16, 2009 at 5:45 pm
All of your reasons make perfect sense and either 5 or 5:30 would be fine with us.
June 17, 2009 at 5:14 pm
It doesn’t matter to me what time you change SNW to. Earlier would be better for dinner purposes since I always have to put off dinner til after I get home which is always too late for the family.