It's all about the weekend
[from Preaching Now, Vol. 4, No. 17, May 10, 2005]
In a recent edition of his Leadership Uncensored newsletter, Ed Young, Jr., reminded pastors: "At Fellowship, our favorite saying is, 'It's all about the weekend.' Why? Because throughout scripture, the value of corporate worship is hammered home again and again — that's huge. Also, the weekend is the biggest port of entry into your church. That's where most of the guests and visitors show up. So, to make an indelible impression on the most people, you've got to have the weekend hitting on all cylinders.
"Here are some of the ways we've stayed weekend-focused at Fellowship Church:
"1. Put weekend preparation at the top of your day. Personally, I keep the weekend the main thing by making it the first thing of my day. The most difficult thing that I do is thinking about, researching, and praying for the messages — it's very taxing. If I don't jump on that in the morning, I won't have the energy I need to do it justice.
"2. Make the weekend a priority in your spending. If you really want to know what is the most important thing in your church, look at where you're spending the resources. If you are spending more money on stuff that has nothing to do with the weekend, then you're off balance and you're not focused on what's most important. The majority, I think, of funding, resources, and staffing should go towards the weekend.
"3. Give the weekend serious attention during staff meetings. During our weekly Executive Team meetings, what are we spending most of our time talking about? The weekend. We talk about it, we critique last weekend, we compare numbers, and discuss what went well, and what didn't go well. Then we look at the next weekend and target what we can do to make it a better weekend. Of course we talk about other stuff that's happening in the church but we keep our top staff people focused on the weekend." (For more from Ed, visit www.creativepastors.com. And don't miss Ed's article on "Communicating with Creativity" in the May-June issue of Preaching magazine (www.preaching.com).)
Kent comments -
Apart from all the details, there is something interesting about this that I have seen more and more lately. Can you see what it is?
It is a minister and a church focusing, not the first day of the week, but on "the weekend." Many churches no longer talk about Sunday meetings, gatherings, or services. Instead, they talk about "the weekend."
The first day of the week is losing its significance in congregations that are highly influenced by culture. Sunday is not always convenient to people in our culture. Unfortunately, in order to address that some would rather ignore the Biblical significance of the first day of the week to accommodate cultural expectations. People would rather "go out" on Friday or Saturday. "Church" is one of the many things we "go out" to, so the church needs to meet on Friday or Saturday.
Sunday, the first day of the week, is reserved for sleeping, brunch, and newspaper reading or news show watching. And so it is that some Christians now emphasize "the weekend" rather than "the first day of the week."
I once had a very revealing conversation with a professor of theology - a very nice fellow. He had just finished telling me how the New Testament reveals a clear example of the church meeting on the first day of the week. He refuted attempts to twist the examples in the Book of Acts in a way that would make it appear that the church really gathered to celebrate the Lord's resurrection on some other day of the week.
But he very quickly went on to say, "But that doesn't mean people at churches who meet on Saturday [for example] do not have a genuine worship experience."
I agreed that one might have "a genuine worship experience" (whatever that might mean) on other days of the week. But I asked the professor of theology, "If they neglected first-day-of-the-week corporate worship, they would not be restoring the New Testament practice, would they?"
His answer to this question was, "Perhaps not, but that still doesn't mean they would have a genuine worship experience." We had this exchange several times, and we never could progress beyond this point. This was an astute fellow who understood the force of my question. He just didn't like the implications of holding consistently to his own position.
Culture has demanded that the church not insist on meeting on the first day of the week. Culture must not be opposed, so the church will need to adjust. That, at least, is what many seem to think.