Other "Thinking Drafts" and writing by Keith Drury -- http://www.indwes.edu/tuesday .

IF YOU DIDN'T HAVE A SUNDAY EVENING SERVICE, WOULD YOU START ONE?

Many evangelical pastors wouldn't. Neither would their people. Face it—in many churches, the Sunday evening service is in big trouble.

Not that nobody comes. Some show up out of habit, others out of duty or loyalty. Many come, but frankly don't know why. In many evangelical churches the Sunday evening service is like the old downtown stores with creaky floors; it is still open for business, but it is running on momentum from former days. Where did this momentum come from?

Sunday night service was not invented (as church folklore has it) so that people could return at dark to see the newly invented oil lamps. (Unless that was why Eutychus came to hear Paul that night?) Oil lamps would not provide enough momentum to get this institution into the next decade, let alone down to us today. So, if it wasn't the oil lamps, then what caused all this momentum?

The short answer is this: When a church is spiritually revived, it gets together more often.

Imagine that your rural church has only one service a week, on Sunday morning, and everything is tied up neatly in a 55-minute package. You have a nice job as pastor, and the people are nice people. Yet deep inside, you are concerned for the spiritual apathy and lack of commitment. You begin to preach on commitment and surrender. Nothing happens. You get discouraged, but keep trying. People stare blankly at you when you talk about all-out surrender, radical commitment, and total consecration. It is like preaching to walls—nice walls, but walls just the same.

Then, all of the sudden, six lay people show up in your study one day. They say, '"We want to know the deeper things of God—will you meet with us?' What would you do? Why, meet with them, of course. So you set a good time to meet: Sunday evenings after the milking is done, say at 7:30 p.m.. And, just suppose that this new group gets so excited about spiritual things that they start bringing their friends and neighbors. Soon you have 25% of the morning attendance in this innovative 'evening service,' and they are growing deeper and more radical in their commitment to Christ. Then the Sunday evening attendance rises to 50% of the morning service. Christians from other churches in the community hear about it and start attending, though they still attend their own churches in the mornings. The revival spirit is contagious and growth gets out of control. The evening attendance now sometimes even exceeds morning attendance and a spirit of revival prevails.

One day another small lay group, including several from the first group of six, asks, 'Would it be OK with you if some of us met here at the church every Wednesday evening just to pray for lost people and ourselves?' What would you say? You would hurry to catch this plane before it takes off without you!

Before long your church is humming with spiritual activity. People come three or four times a week to sing, listen, teach, fellowship, work, testify, study, and pray. Besides these church gatherings, there are lay-led 'cottage prayer meetings' which spring up completely without Dale Galloway's help. People are so hungry for God and His Word that they now happily attend every night of the twice-yearly 'revival meetings,' which are essentially one- or two-week-long Sunday evening services.

Your church is a different place. Your people are spiritually revived. It is fun to pastor. Internal dissension and criticism have diminished. Your people are taking Christ and His Word seriously. They are making Christ the center and not just a part of their lives. You have a revival on your hands. You also have a Sunday evening service. This is why the Sunday evening service still has such momentum. It was born out of true spiritual revival.

But revivals don't last. While they raise the standard of true religion back up where it belongs, that standard gradually declines over time. So, what does the pastor do when the revival fervor cools off ten or twenty years later? Perhaps the better question is what does the next generation (or maybe even the third generation) do with these innovations born of spiritual revival?

Which brings me to the Sunday evening service. Now, I know I am in dangerous waters here. We have made this service our badge of our 'evangelicalness.' We formerly used it to differentiate between warm-hearted, committed Evangelicals and cool-hearted, nominal mainline churches—'Why, they don't even have a Sunday night service.' But that claim came back to bite us in the back. Because, though the doors are still open, Sunday night is not the best place to find life in evangelical churches. For most, the Sunday night service is a 'B movie' version of the morning service. A farm-team effort for people who come because they ought to. It is a meeting in search of a mission. A remnant of the last great spiritual revival which has lost its original purpose.

So, what should we do about the Sunday evening service? Kill it? Let it flicker out slowly? Try to reinvigorate it?

I guess I'm thinking that worrying about the Sunday evening service either way is irrelevant. The Sunday evening service is neither the central problem nor the solution. Spiritual malaise is the problem, and a true revival of religion is the solution. When such a true spiritual revival happens, people will hunger and thirst to gather more often to sing, give, testify, fellowship, pray, and hear you preach and teach from God's Word. They may gather on Sunday evenings, or at some other innovative time during the week—but they will gather.

As for your Sunday evening service? I don't think it matters either way. If it is an oar moving the boat closer to revival, keep it. Repair it. If it is merely moving the boat around in circles, toss it overboard. The Sunday evening service is not a cause of revival, but a result.

So what do you think?

To contribute to the thinking on this issue e-mail your response to Tuesday@indwes.edu