The arts staff team took quite a bit of time on Tuesday working on a schedule that would maintain our goals of excellence while also being sensitive to your time commitment as volunteers. If we maintain the present sound-check schedule “as is” the adding of the additional Saturday service would add one more hour to the weekend schedule. Fortunately, the staff team felt that this new structure gave us the luxury of streamlining our rehearsal/sound-check schedule, cutting a total of 45 minutes. These changes make the increased volunteer commitment a total of 15 minutes! Needless to say, I was delighted that God provided a structure that allowed us another service without asking significantly more time from our volunteers.
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SATURDAY
3:15 PM
- Stage Sound Check (Technical Team Call Time)
- Full Tech Rehearsal (All Programming, Arts, Music & Tech)
- SERVICE 1
- Sunday School / Nursery
- Possible Adult Bible Fellowships / Support Groups / Institute Class
- Meal for Volunteer Teams / Families
- Café Opens
- SERVICE 2
- Family Connection (30-40 minutes in length)
- Nursery
- Possible Adult Bible Fellowships / Support Groups / Institute Class
- Café Closes
7:30 AM
- Atrium Team Rehearsal
- Café Opens
- Mainstage Team Rehearsal
- SERVICE 3
- ATRIUM VENUE SERVICE 1
- Sunday School / Nursery
- Possible Adult Bible Fellowships / Institute Class
- Youth Sunday School
- SERVICE 4
- ATRIUM VENUE SERVICE 2
- Traditional Sunday School / Nursery
- Family Connection (30-40 minutes in length)
- Possible Adult Bible Fellowships / Institute Class
- Café Closes
The following were some questions that arose in the evaluation process of this schedule:
Why are we adding another service to Saturday when the present service is only half full?
The adding of the service is more an issue of magnetism than flood relief. What I mean is this. The dual track service structure is an essential model for our discipleship and serving strategy. For example, during weekend services we encourage people to take advantage of adult fellowships, serving opportunities (children’s ministry, greeting, etc…), and youth Sunday school programs. The reason this works is because people can serve or attend in these supplemental programs and then attend the corporate service. This year we had a lot of struggles with the Saturday service because all the people who signed up to serve or who wanted a group fellowship experience would be forced to come back to Parkview on Sunday in order to “complete the experience.” With the new structure this is no longer a problem. Someone can now attend on Saturday without being forced to return Sunday to “complete the experience” thus making Saturday a more magnetic/attractive service to our general population. We are hopeful this will make Saturdays a more appealing alternative for those who are presently attending on Sunday mornings, thus opening up more seats during the hours visitors are most likely to attend.
Why are we shifting our Sunday service times to 9:00 and 10:30 am?
There are several reasons for this shift. For the sake of space, I will address two of the more prominent ones. With our two-service structure on Sundays we have been attempting to evenly distribute our attendance so that both services are equally full. In our present structure (8:45 and 10:15) we have found that the 10:15 service is the largest attended service. We are hopeful that the 15-minute shift will help equalize both services, thus maximizing our use of space. One other issue we have with the present times is that Jr. High and Sr. High students are no longer attending corporate worship. The pre-9 am factor causes most students to skip the first hour services and just show up for the 10:45 youth meeting time. We are hopeful the new schedule will maintain our desire to have our weekend services be a multi-cultural, multi-generational picture of the body of Christ.
In conclusion, if there are more questions I can answer please shoot them my way. Your feedback is needed and appreciated!
2 comments:
What I don't understand is why the powers that be are continually trying various "recipes" from other churches because it seems to work for them. Why don't you all just ask the congregation what works for us? I think rather than trying to change the service times, places and lighting, adding venues, adding coffee, live music, videos, moving chairs, sitting around tables and such, just have the sermon be the 35 minutes that are allotted and end each service on time. My guess is that everyone would be very happy then. Jboats
Jboats. Great comments. Your comments along with some recent surveys and numerous comments from other church attendees have been very helpful throughout this process. While creativity and innovation do have a place in service planning there is no question that simple changes can often greatly enhance our relevance and impact. The issue you highlighted was aggressively addressed at the Elder meeting on Tuesday. I am feeling quite confident some of these “simple” changes will accompany the Fall schedule in helping Parkview better impact people for the gospel.
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