A while ago I received an email from a good friend of mine who is a church planter in Pittsburgh. He asked…
Brian,
Have you guys ever tossed around the idea of doing a mid-week “believers” type of service? If yes, can you give me a brief reason why you decided to do it? If no, is there a specific reason you haven’t visited that idea?
In the spring we were running in the 700’s and we are shifting into a new paradigm as a church. I am struggling with just Sunday AM services and small groups as the only vehicles to connecting with the congregation.
I would love to hear the fruit of your labor.
Toney
I’ve gotten that question a lot over the years from the Senior Pastors I coach, so I thought I’d share with you my response…
Hi Toney,
We never plan to start a midweek “believer’s service” unless it is a duplicate of the weekend service.
Don’t get trapped into thinking (I know did at 700-800) that your people aren’t “deep enough” and that one all encompassing midweek service that offers deep teaching and deep worship is going to solve that.
That logic is kinda like thinking that…
1. Our people aren’t healthy because they aren’t eating enough.
2. We need to fix that ASAP.
3. Let’s offer a meal in the middle of the week for people to “get fed.” In fact, we’ll sort of make it a blowout Thanksgiving meal extravaganza where people get so stuffed they’re loosening their belt buckles and crashing on the couch for the rest of the week.
4. Once that happens we’ll know that we’ve done everything we can to make these people healthy by providing them one big meal a week for the rest of their life that makes people walk away saying, “I’m stuffed.”
That doesn’t make people healthy.
“I’m not being fed” is a term invented by lazy, spiritually obese, self-centered church-hopping religious consumers. Never, ever, under any circumstances let these kinds of people steer your church off course.
Your goal is to help your people become disciples, and you know and I know that disciples aren’t made through “services.” They’re made skin on skin over long periods of time, in the presence of other disciples out and about spreading the kingdom of God.
My advice: teach your Christians to feed themselves, through your weekend services, but make it interesting enough that you still capture the imagination of people far from God.
Can you imagine Jesus thinking to himself, Hmmm. These disciples aren’t getting deep enough fast enough. I’ve got it! I’ll start a service for them at the synagogue!
Dude, you’re hitting it out of the park. Stay tenaciously focused on your mission and over time you’ll see amazing results in the lives of your people.
Press on,
Brian
What do you think? Is there a place in the life of the church for a midweek “believer’s” service?
