I recently read a social media post by a popular pastor in my region both bemoaning the loss of “night services” (evening meetings at church on Sundays and Wednesdays) and chastising those pastors who would ever consider cancelling them. His tone was one of incredulity and passion, and his words were sharp and penetrating. “I’m scratching my head,” he said, at those who’ve chosen to not meet at night in their churches. “Shouldn’t we seize every opportunity to advance the Gospel and see Bible truth propagated?” I am deducing that he is referring to evangelism when he speaks of advancing the Gospel and seeing Bible truth propagated, both from this post and others. He then interrogates his targets who’ve ceased meeting on these nights with the following incisive question: “What do you do during those times?” At the end of his brief homily, he reminded us all that our “Saviour [sic] is worthy of our best,” displaying an unrelenting dedication to employing the British “u” in “Savior” likely because 1) that’s what the King James Bible does and 2) it’s seven letters, which is God’s number, and is therefore the inspired spelling (I’ve actually heard this presented unironically).
Let’s dissect and discuss
As you might expect, this post received hundreds of “likes” and “amens” in the comments section from a well-intentioned and impassioned mob of head-waggers, but let’s break this rebuke down and see if there’s any substance to it. Firstly, he states that we should be meeting at night to “seize every opportunity to advance the Gospel” and see “Bible truth propagated.” What this reveals is a staggeringly unorthodox and an all-too-common American ecclesiology. In the modern West, we tend to approach “church” as an evangelistically-oriented event, an externally-focused gathering, a public convention that must be at least somewhat attractional and inviting and hope to God that someone who is without Christ wanders in. Because, after all, that’s what church meetings are for: getting people saved.
Except…that’s really not what church meetings are for. While unbelievers are certainly to be welcomed and rightly informed of the Gospel in church, it must be clear that church is for believers. It’s right in the name: a church is an ἐκκλησία, a specified community that assembles for a common purpose: worship, discipleship, accountability, sharing, and following Jesus together. So if we’re going by Scriptural patterns as opposed to today’s polluted perception of the purpose of the church, then the evangelism, the “advance of the Gospel,” the “propagation of truth” to unbelievers is supposed to happen in our daily lives while we’re outside of the four walls of the church building. Upon conversion, only then is the new believer is baptized into the Christian community, the church.
It’s imperative you understand that I’m not submitting that each church becomes a cabalistic, secretive cult, or that we stop inviting our unbelieving friends to church. I’m only insisting that we align our view with the already-perfect design that we’re shown within the pages of Scripture (and church history): the primary function of the church assembly is for worship, instruction, and the discipleship, edification, and perfection of the saints. As believers, we are to evangelize regularly, as a part of our daily lives — not just in church meetings. I can’t help but think that this inside-out and upside-down ecclesiology is the reason for both a lack of vigor in evangelism (taking the “I’ll just invite my friends to church and the pastor will get them saved” approach rather than individually making disciples) and lack of proper discipleship (by focusing on evangelism in church while outsourcing discipleship to mere coffeeshop talks among unqualified, disunited, and often immature believers).
But that’s not all
I have another issue with the challenge proffered by this pastor, and it has to do with the same sentence I already critiqued. Not only does the charge to “seize every opportunity to advance the Gospel” reveal a crippled ecclesiology, but it also bears an obvious inconsistency. By saying “shouldn’t we seize every opportunity…?”, the pastor sounds sincere about the urgency of the mission. And I’m sure that, as far as he’s thinking, he is. But does he really mean “every” opportunity? Or just Sunday nights and Wednesday nights? Do you understand my critique? He reminds me of the version of me in Bible college that wrote a very lengthy poem called “Media and Mirth” in which I decried the activities that took place on campus on Friday nights when — didn’t they know? — Friday night was the night that we elite Christians went out “street preaching!” How could they? Wasn’t this a Bible college, not a fun activities college? How could they compete with the propagation of Bible truth and the advance of the Gospel like this by offering alternative things to do on Fridays? I recall one satirical line of the poem that took a swing at the Friday night volleyball activity: “Let’s not serve God, let’s serve volleyballs!” Cute.
The obvious problem with my thinking was that I assumed that every moment of every day and night had to be filled with intentional, exclusively-evangelism-oriented activities, or we weren’t truly serious about fulfilling the Great Commission. And while I think there’s a lot of room for improvement in this realm for the Church catholic (note the uppercase “c” for “Church,” meaning “institutional” or “at large” and the lowercase “c” for “catholic,” meaning “everywhere” or “universal”), I think that such an approach is imbalanced and ultimately — and ironically — harmful to the Great Commission. I would write more on this, but I’d only get further sidetracked.
But you see what I’m saying? You can say, “We need to seize every opportunity to advance the Gospel!” But if you only mean Wednesday nights and Sunday nights, you don’t really mean every opportunity. That’s just a virtue signal, an overstated case that sounds pious but is really quite empty underneath. Because on Monday nights and Tuesday nights, you’re not asking folks to seize those opportunities. And Thursdays, well, that’s when the game is on, and Friday night is family night, and Saturday is a day of rest, so surely we don’t mean those opportunities. So what you really mean is you want folks to seize the opportunities that fit neatly within traditional schedules and your own preferences. That’s what you mean. Or you’d actually be seizing every opportunity.
But wait…There’s more
Another interesting statement I read in his post was as follows: “To those who have stopped the Sunday night and Wednesday night services……. [sic] What [sic] do you do during those times?” That’s a great question, despite it being rhetorical. On Sunday evenings, I usually am spending time with my family after being with my church family from around 930am-130pm that day (we have a Bible Study hour before our Morning Meeting and then we have lunch afterwards, followed by our Bible Institute time or a short devotional). On Wednesday evenings, I enjoy meeting with my church for our Midweek Bible Study. But even if we didn’t meet on Wednesdays but instead were involved in other ways throughout the week, I think that’d still be counted as heartily holding a healthy, holistic, and historical approach to meeting together as a church. So to answer this pastor’s question, that’s what I’m doing on Sunday and Wednesday nights with a clean conscience before God.
For churches that do not offer “night services” in the way that this pastor has submitted, I imagine their families and individuals are pursuing enjoyable, relaxing endeavors on Sunday nights and Wednesday nights. I believe and obey the author of Hebrews when he said not to forsake the assembling of ourselves together, and I take this very seriously; however, I’ve seen — and am weary of seeing — this command be turned into a tool of manipulation to shame people into dragging their weary bodies and unwilling souls into the church in order to somehow be more right with God.
GIMME THAT OLD TIME RELIGION
An unfortunate belief that undergirds a social media post like the one we’re examining is the unfounded conviction that meeting on Sunday nights and Wednesday nights is somehow deeply historic in nature. In other words, it’s seen as necessary and normative rather than elective and beneficial. However, that’s just not the case. While it’s certain that the early church met daily in its formative stages, the only particular day of the week on which they regularly met throughout all of church history is Sunday, Yes, early-church-era Sunday meetings were likely longer, less formal, and more organic (though they grew more liturgical as time went on) than our Sunday meetings typically are today, but trying to twist some passage in the Acts of the Apostles to insist on the historicity of “night services” is folly. In short, if you’re looking back in history to find the ancient and storied origins of Wednesday evening and Sunday evening meetings, you don’t have to look very far to find them; they’re in fact quite novel.
The truth is that sometimes, churches in different regions benefit from different meeting times outside of Sunday mornings, as well as different modes and methods of evangelism, community outreach, and so much more. Some churches just don’t have evening services, and it’s not necessarily a reflection of carnality, laziness, or lack of zeal for God. I don’t know that it’s really conducive for discipleship and accountability if we’re only around each other for 1/168th of each week, but not everyone feels that way. It’s just not a one-size-fits-all, no matter how much some may want it to be.
I’m of the persuasion that it’s high time for churches to be free to adopt a flexible, more organic, tailor-made approach to being involved in each others’ lives within the church throughout the week in exchange for a rigid split-shift-style schedule on Sundays and a necessary meeting on Wednesdays. If that means meeting for some extra time together on Sunday nights and Wednesday nights, great! But it doesn’t have to look that way for everyone. There’s so many options and opportunities: Meals together, walks together, ministering to each other, ministering to the community together, being in each others’ homes, and so on. There’s so, so much room for innovation here, but it’s tragically not welcomed in many churches today.
In Closing…
In the end, it’s very easy for this full-time pastor to write a challenge like this from one of his many bedrooms in his very large house funded entirely by church members, or while looking out the window of one of his airplanes. But down here in reality where we mere bilge rats work 9-5s and don’t have the luxury of having each evening off work, or we never get to see our families in-between job shifts and activities, it looks a little different and not quite as simple as it looks from the ivory tower of a wealthy, tenured pastorate. By insisting that other churches have “night services” like his does, I’m concerned that this self-professed “independent fundamental Baptist” is not letting others pastor their churches independently, while shifting the focus from the fundamentals to the preferential.
