Twelve ways to promote the Sunday evening service

Do you have an evening service at your church? Is so, and especially if you are a Reformed pastor or elder, you’ll likely be wanting to encourage better attendance at your church’s Sunday evening service. Many of the Young, Restless and Reformed that entered the Reformed churches ten years ago are more “restless” than they realize. My guess is that you’ll be praying about this regularly as elders and deacons. As a pastor or more mature elder, you’ll no doubt be encouraging or asking the officers of the church to attend both services – after you’ve done some teaching on why this is so important. But perhaps your efforts would also be advanced if you’d consider saying the following during your morning announcements, changing it up week by week.

1. Mention the evening service! I’ve been at churches that have an evening service but routinely miss this first, obvious step.

2. Tell people who is preaching, or the passage or series being preached.

3. Mention the main point or an important point that will be addressed in the evening service. Mention a question that will be answered in the evening service. If the sermon has a hook, use it.

4. Consider celebrating the Lord’s Supper or baptism in the evening service (but you’ll have to have a shorter sermon, or people will tire of this).

5. Consider having a missionary speak or have an interesting ministry update 30 minutes before the evening service.

6. State that there will be a 15 minute psalm- or hymn-sing before the evening service. Do this once a month.

7. State that there will be a 30 minute ice-cream social before the evening service. Do this on a different Sunday of the month.

8. See if anyone has the energy to host a social event after the evening service in a home near the church – a reading group over dessert, a sermon discussion, or just Christian fellowship. Mention it Sunday morning.

9. Tell people that the church is serving “Sunday Sandwiches,” and that they are spiritually nourishing, and even delightful: a morning service, an evening service, and fellowship with Christians in between. Or explain that the elders have carefully worked out a meal plan for the congregation that involves two feasts each Sunday that center around God’s Word; remind them that missing a meal each week will not make us stronger or healthier Christians.

10.  Ask them if they have a better plan for Sunday evenings (this is a leading question, so ask it with a smile!) – and if not, to consider making it part of their weekly pattern to encourage, and to be encouraged by, the ministry that happens at the evening service.

11. Encourage them to see that the best way to avoid reducing the Lord’s day down to a sixty-minute sabbath is to bookend the day with worship.

12. Invite people to consider the decades-long experiment that we’ve been running in Reformed churches: We have cut in half the time that Christians worship together, and yet we are hoping to build a generation of Christians as strong or stronger than that which has come before us. How is it going? One could argue that not all the data is in. Of course, things might improve without changing the main variable! But so far, the experiment does not seem to be working. Perhaps we could try a new experiment: spend more time together as a whole church, and more time sitting under God’s Word, praying together, and singing – and then see what God does!

Dr. Chad Van Dixhoorn is Professor of Church History and Theology at Reformed Theological Seminary, Charlotte. A leading expert on the work of the Westminster Assembly.