Second Services

Reasons for starting a second service:
1. Auditorium 80% full, much fuller and you might begin to see a drop in attendance.
2. The desire of those serving during the service to hear a message.
3. A rapidly growing congregation.

Difficulties associated with second services:
1. More work for preacher, repetition of message
2. More work for worship team, ditto
3. Transition between services, pedistrian and auto traffic flow problems.
4. Disconectedness between different worshiping groups, one service may not recognise another member who attends a different service. (To combat this you will need to emphisize growth groups, prayer groups, Sunday school attendance or evening services).

I would suggest that you NOT use a different style of music in the second service. Keep them as identical as you can: It may cause competition between the worshippers who attend.

Rob

 

A church I attend on occaision has two morning services: 9 and 11. They're pretty much identical.

 

The church I attend now has 3 morning services, at 8:30 a.m., 9:50 a.m., and 11:10 a.m. There is also Bible Study at each of these times. I know the 1st and the 2nd service are virtually the same, but the 3rd one uses an ensemble instead of a full choir, but I'm not certain if there is any difference in the selection of music. I am certain the message is the same for all services. The choir in the first 2 services exits the choir loft before the message, and then they go to Bible Study, because some sing in both services, or to sit in the congregation, or leave the premises.

 

Many churches today are offering a 2nd service just to simply offer another opportunity for people to come. I had a prof in the Billy Graham school of evangelism once tell me that the 2nd service was one of the most unused evangelism tools available.

BTW, don't dismiss the idea of having two different style services. It can be a very profitable idea to help reach people with different tastes.

We were forced to go to 2 services in my previous church, and yes it can be tiring. On an average Sunday, I was preaching at 8:30, teaching SS at 9:45, preaching at 11:00, teaching discipleship at 5:00, and preaching at 6:00. It made for an extremely long day. Not much of a Sabbath to say the least.

I will never make that mistake again.

 

Our church plans to go to 2 sunday services starting in January if the number of attenders continues at current levels. However we have a senior pastor and 2 pastors now plus me as the intern.. (We are all bi-vocational.) While I am not as good as the more experienced men in the pulpet, I am improving. Why couldn't the preaching and teaching be split up... We do our "sunday evening service" on saturday so that would help to give the pastoral staff some rest. We are praying about a "blended service" in the morning, Bible study for an hour and then a traditional service

 

SBCbG wrote:

The church I attend had two different services about 10 years ago, a traditional service and a contemporary service. The traditional service crowd was very vocal about the type of music they wanted and let it be known that that they would leave if the music ever changed. The traditional service was at 9:15 and the most attended for about a year. Then the contemporary music service (at 11:00) began to grow and eventually out numbered the traditional service.

The fact was the traditional people began to leave their service to attend the more lively contemporary service. When the traditional service was eventually abandoned there were fewer than 80 people attending, many out of necessity since they served during second service.

Rob

 

Lot's of work but one of the benefits will be growth, Lord willing.

The timing will require much prayer and work. It's up to you. If things get too crowded they tend to stagnate and the attendance declines.

Arrange the Sunday school classes so that they are staggered during the different services.

Get a committment from some major group of people that they will attend the new service, a Sunday school class or a similar fellowship group.

It will not only be more work for the preacher but for the deacons as well!

More teachers are needed to teach the children. Double the ushers and welcoming teams.

You'll need to purchase more communion service sets.


Rob

 

I'd think once you hit 80% consistently for a few weeks, it'd be time to organize the second Sunday morning service. When it happens again, then you start a late-afternoon or early-evening Saturday service. Then when it happens again, you start a late-afternoon Sunday service and start calling architects for your building expansion! Once you get to a certain attendance and size, you'll quite possibly also be planting a daughter church about once a year or two, depending on whether you live in or near a metropolitan area.

 

BTW, Elmer Towns has a "How to Go to Two Services" kit if you are interested. It is a bit dated but still somewhat useful.

 

If your church is big enough to go to two services with 3 pastors and an intern, why is everybody bi-vocational?? SOunds to me like the church needs to step up to the plate on this one ...

 

Interesting in how some preachers are different. My pastor, Raymond, says he could preach three or four with energy.

But I know he gets tired and needs a break.

 

There should be no reason that one man has to do all the preaching. If there are gifted men among the congregation, they ought to be encouraged to exercise their spiritual gift.

 

Just one service at my church on Sundays, at 11:00 a.m., and then of course the evening service at 6:00 p.m. We average in the low hundreds in attendance- I'm not sure what the exact number is though.

 

A book I read a few months ago titled "How to Start a New Service: Your Church Can Reach New People" by Charles Arn really struck me as being very practical & helpful in all aspects of beginning a second (or third...) service. I just looked- it's currently available on Amazon.com.


My church is wrestling with this problem again.

We nearly doubled our seating capacity 3 years ago; and on Easter Sunday, 2002 we launched our 4th daughter church, with 170 of our own people (about 8% of our attendance at that time).

Even so, right now with two A.M. services we're again struggling with capacity issues. Our 9:00 A.M. service is typically about 65-70% full; and our 10:30 service runs at 90%+ (sometimes virtually 100%). We also have bursting Sunday School rooms at both hours.

We looking for the Lord's leading about launching a 5th daughter church, or a 3rd morning service (we already do that for Christmas & Easter, with 8:00, 9:30, and 11:00), or even another building program, or a combination of the above.

Wherever & however He leads.