Every church I have served has a Sunday night service. They have different worship styles and the preaching is less formal, but they all have this in common: the attendance is not the same as the morning service. Granted there are some exceptions like a musical performance or a revival services.
Some churches have gone away with Sunday services with meeting in community groups or just not having one. Some churches, like Mars Hill and The Village, have a Sunday night service, but preach the same sermon from that morning to give people who were unable to come to the morning service a chance to hear the sermon.
Should church leaders give up on the Sunday evening service or keep it going? Kevin DeYoung has a great post on this subject:
My whole life I’ve gone to church Sunday morning and Sunday evening. My parents took us to church and Sunday school on Sunday morning and they always took us back on Sunday evening. The crowd was much smaller, but there were always people eager to be there. Over the years, the evening service felt less like a “real” service. We’d watch a video for a month or combine with another church for the summer or try small groups. I have nothing against videos (in their proper place), joint services, or small groups. But at the time they all seemed like efforts to keep up the tradition of the evening service without putting forth much effort.
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This is a great question, and one I'd like to think more deeply on. My gut reaction however is that if a church decides to abandon it's Sunday night service it should be because they believe their resources could be used better in other ways. That just seems like good stewardship. I would also add that if a church decides to retain its Sunday night service it should not be solely in the name of tradition, but for hopefully better reasons.
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