Let me take you back to the late 1970’s.
I had recently graduated from the South Wales Bible College (which through a series of fine tunings is now Union Seminary) and was ready to launch myself into the world of Christian service.
The pattern for pastors in those days had not changed much for centuries:
There were two services on a Sunday and a Midweek Bible Study and Prayer Meeting.
The Sunday morning service tended to be geared toward those who were already believers and the Sunday evening service was geared more toward unbelievers, sometimes it was referred to as the Gospel Service.
This meant that the expectation was for three sermons a week, most which were preached by the pastor. That was the regime I followed for a large chunk of my early preaching ministry.
If my 1970’s self was teleported forward to 2025 I would find myself in an unfamiliar place.
Most churches do not have a weekly central prayer meeting and Bible Study. The freight of prayer and Bible Study is now mostly carried by home groups. Sometimes the link with Sunday preaching is maintained by using discussion questions that arise out of the Sunday sermon.
Although the drift away from a Sunday Evening Service started long before Covid, the Pandemic was the last straw. Many churches decided after lockdown to concentrate their efforts on one main Sunday Service.
Another factor in this change is that the idea of a Sunday morning edification service for believers and a Sunday Evening evangelistic service for unbelievers became increasingly artificial as attendance habits of believers and unbelievers changed.
In the past 25 years the emphasis in evangelistic activity has moved to evangelistic courses like Alpha, Christianity Explored and 321. These courses retain some elements of a sermon-like talk but are set in a more informal setting than a traditional gospel service.
There are many positive things that have arisen out of these fine tunings of the way conservative evangelical churches do things:
- It has changed the workload of the main preacher/pastor. Instead of preparing three sermons per week, now it is one a week. If there is a preaching team that might go down to once a fortnight or less often. Extra time on one sermon ought to contribute toward raising the quality of the sermon.
- It has changed the focus of the main preacher/pastor from seeing their preaching as the only way a congregation grows. I like Peter Adam’s definition of church life as “pulpit-centred but not pulpit-restricted”. Preaching is still to be viewed as a central task of the pastor, but their role is not restricted to this. There is a need to exercise leadership for the church in partnership with other others and to develop training so that others can engage in a variety of ministries in the church.
- It has changed the mindset of the main preacher/pastor to grasp that their ministry is not only about speaking to people, but it is also about listening to people. Speaking to people in the congregation about their joys, concerns, needs, insights and questions not only enriches the pastoral reach of the main preacher/pastor, it also roots their ministry in an ongoing conversation between the Scriptures and the everyday life of their hearers.
For some, being stuck in the 1970’s mould may appear to be an act of faithfulness, but it may well be a lack of imagination and flexibility.
Photo by Alan Rodriguez on Unsplash