This has appeared in our local newspaper at least twice now. The church will be left anonymous but that doesn’t affect the article.
Eight reasons why you might try our Thursday Night Church Service
8. You’re never in town on the weekends
7. Thursday Night Church might not be as boring and irrelevant.
6. Gillette’s best looking pastor.*
5. You’re always watching football on Sunday.
4. In at 7 p.m. – out by 8 p.m.
3. Your kids will have a blast at Thursday Night Jam Time.
2. Everybody just wears their work clothes.
1. You like to sleep in on Sunday.
* An opinion held by almost nobody
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Ok, so let me discuss the following points.
8. For Gillette, this is very common. With traveling sports as well as intramural sports, people are traveling all weekend and playing games from Friday through Sunday. By the time they get back in town, church is well done and over with. For most sports travelers, there isn’t even time to go to church while traveling for sports because games are often held during church services to get all the games in.
7. What does that say about your Sunday service? That’s all I’m gonna say about that!
6. This really isn’t even worth comment, joking or not.
5. We have 2 services on Sunday: 8:30 and 10. If you attend our 8:30 service, you will still be home before the early game kicks off. Granted, you may miss some pregame interviews and what-not, but oh well! Church is either important or it’s not.
4. Wow, church in an hour. We can do that too. FYI, this church has two services on Sunday. One lasts 60 minutes and the second lasts 70. Question: what takes 10 more minutes in the second service? Lord’s Supper?
3. Obviously, you’re kids won’t have a blast during the Sunday service. This tells me that worship isn’t a key point here but having fun. As Higher Things says, “When we worship, we worship. When we play, we play. When we work, we work.”
2. We have people who wear their works clothes here as well. We have people just coming out of the mines, we have people on their way to the mines. We have people on their way to the hospital. They wear what they wear. As long as it is appropriate clothing, we don’t say anything.
1. Who doesn’t like to sleep in on Sunday? I like to sleep in too, but I’m up and at church. Granted, it is my vocation as pastor that requires me to be at church on Sunday morning. But we have 200+ people every Sunday who, given the chance to sleep in or come to church, choose the latter.
Now, I’m sure that this particular church isn’t holding up their Thursday night service as something better than their Sunday services. This is just a way of advertising their service on Thursday. Couldn’t they have done something different than this, making up a list of reasons why Thursday church might be better for you than Sunday? Just by putting in a little ad highlighting their various services and indicating that Thursday is a more “relaxed” setting would have sufficed, but I guess this is more appealing to people.
I love the fact that churches think they need to dumb church down for the lazy people. It’s like they have to make church a rock’em, sock’em entertainment event rather than giving people the true meaning of church – it is place to escape the noise of the world and be in the presence of God.
And yes, you read the first sentence right – churches dumb down “church” because of lazy people.
Churches that subscribe to the dumb-down theory of God miss the entire point of church. And that is sad. Maybe a refresher course in liturgy is what these “pastors” need.
Lazy people spend more time coming up with excuses NOT go to church than if they just showed up at worship. Lazy people are suckered into the mantra of Sunday morning sports. They want their little ones to have fun and to be with their friends. Instead, lazy mom and dad should stand up to the coach and tell him or her that their child is going to church before playing sports.
But since they are lazy, they ain’t doing that. Instead, they are rushing out the door on Sunday morning to get to Dunkin’ Donuts to pick up a Milky Way Hot Chocolate and a jelly doughnut before standing at the field watching their little one. I wonder if they would rush out to Dunkin’ Donuts and then run to church? Nah!
Lazy people tend fail to recognize the central point of their laziness: they are sinners. They reject God (re-read the Third Commandment sometime) and and accept the world’s rules about everything. In the end, many lazy people think that since they believe in some higher power, sleeping in on a Sunday morning and watching some boring pre-game football show is always better than sitting in some stuffy church building listening to someone drone on for twenty minutes about God and forgiveness while singing slow hymns played from an organ.
Sometimes, don’t you just want to whack people like this?
But I have to say, getting church done in an hour – with Holy Communion and a real liturgy – is a blessing.
Rev. Anthony from New Jersey
You know… I’d probably go to a Thursday night service… When my husband has National Guard Drill and we want to worship together, Sunday morning is not an option. So, we go to our Saturday night service. But then, if he’s out of town at Drill, another option is nice.
Liz, there is a difference here. With regards to a situation like yours with your husband, worshiping as a family on Sunday was not possible. Fortunate for you, you have other opportunities to worship as a family. But if you posit like the church in question did that Thursday might not be as boring, you demean what takes place on Sunday morning. In saying that you want to sleep in on Sunday, you cheapen what the Sabbath really is. Your situation is different in many ways from what this list suggests. Ultimately(in my opinion), the church in question is giving you a pass on Sunday because of your laziness. Did Christ give a pass on sin? Of course not! He called a sin a sin. We need to “remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.” What does this mean? “We should fear and love God so that we do not despise preaching and His Word, but hold it sacred and gladly hear and learn it.” It’s hard to “hold it sacred” when you choose to sleep rather than worship.
Sorry for the misinterpretation… I guess I sometimes find myself immune to “seeker friendly” advertising as that’s what I grew up around (not Lutheran). Thanks for the reminder on God’s Holy Day.