One of the biggest changes that I made when coming to MVBC was re-instituting a Sunday evening service. The church had one years past, but it had gone the way of the Dodo Bird. My previous two churches had Sunday evening services, and I loved the time to share, to pray, to experience church community with men and women of all ages. It was the closest thing these churches had to real family time.
But a Sunday evening service in metro Atlanta -- or any other metro area -- is a real challenge. The schedule of life finds a way of intruding. The week gets busy fast. Sunday evening can be an break from the rigmarole of life. Nonetheless, I pressed ahead. Why?
Because I felt the church needed to have a service that was large enough for us all to be together and yet small enough to experience some sense of intimacy. The teaching on Wednesday nights had been divided up into small groups. Today, Wednesday teaching is still separate. Though there are fewer groups on Wednesday, we are never all together. Sunday morning is large enough that someone can enter the church and still be anonymous. That is not possible on Sunday evening.
But more than that, the Sunday evening service is a different kind of service. It is not a repeat of the Sunday morning gathering. The majority of our time is dedicated to prayer. In the hour from 6-7 you can get a sense of where the church is, where we are going, what we value, and what our needs are--all by listening carefully to what we pray for and how we pray.
I've heard more than one person tell me that they really get to know MVBC simply by listening to the body pray.
Every Sunday evening ends with a brief devotional from God's Word. It is not a mini-sermon. Though each man prepares extensively to teach--his main job that night is to apply the text to our lives. It is more of a devotional on a passage than it is a sermon.
We are still going against the grain by having a Sunday evening sermon. Furthermore, I don't ask that everyone be there. I urge new members to come to at least one evening sermon (again, I'm convinced that Sunday-morning-only attendance will make fellowship very hard). However, there is something special about Sunday evening. It is a unique opportunity to see the church in action--not one pastor preaching or even one teacher teaching but the whole body praying.
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