Sunday Evening(Second Service)

Fifteen minutes ago - you're late!

I seem to remember that the Apostle Paul put a lad to sleep during one a while back.

Are they relevant? Busy schedules have decreased the numbers of attendees so much that most churches have done away with them.

The Catholic Church down the street has a Saturday evening service if you're interested

Rob

 

Yeah, it goes back pretty far:

John 20:19
Then the same day at evening, being the first day of the week, when the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews, came Jesus and stood in the midst...

 

Charles Spurgeon, "A Dirge for the Downgrade" (1889):

"Look at your half-Sunday professors—content with only one service and weary of that! How is it with many Christian people as to meetings for prayer? Prayer Meetings are the very soul of Church work and they bring down the blessing upon all our spiritual agencies. Yet they are despised by our high-fliers. In many Chapels two services in the week have proved too great an effort for the constitution of the ministers and too much of a tax upon the time of their hearers who are occupied with the far superior avocations of card games or lawn tennis."

 

My church doesn't have a Sunday evening service (except for at Easter and Christmas), but does have a late Saturday afternoon service (3:00pm) and a Saturday evening service (5:30pm), plus soon to be going back to three Sunday morning services.

As to when, in general, they became irrelevant? No clue, but at the church I went to as a kid, iirc, they stopped having Sunday evening services sometime in 1975 or 1976, when the congregation basically forced out our older (probably late 50's / early 60's) senior pastor and voted in a new, younger, 20-something "senior" pastor. It was all down hill after that, and within about six months time, my parents (and by extension us kids), stopped going. That was fine by me. By that time, I was beginning to enter my "science is cool, God is not, so call me an atheist" phase.

 

It's the Lord's day. What's so terrible about being among the Lord's people and praising your God twice on that day instead of once?

Some churches have a more evangelistic service in the evenings so that people can invite their friends to it knowing that there will be a more direct message to the unconverted.

 

Why would a Christian not want to come? I think maybe people might like to have a read of Psalm 84 and then examine their hearts. OK, the car needs washing and the Apprentice or whatever is on the telly, but isn't it better to be in the presence of the living God and amongst His people?

 

Churches discarding the evening service often spin it as they're bolstering the family: it frees up time for families to be together.

 

Depeds upon churches, as the first 2 membershipped in had it, current one does not!