To be honest, there has been a lukewarmness to the concept of Midweek Worship Service. I believe there is over 200 members in our region of the Denver Church of Christ, and there is about a 30% attendance rate on Wednesdays.
Back in the day, the expectations of church members was that one went to midweek to better equip themselves to face the challenges and testing the devil throws our way. I don't understand why attendance slipped a bit, but the leadership group had wisdom enough to alternate male and female midweeks to best accommodate families with children. This seemed to work well for a while, but we returned to the all member midweek until an other solution could be hashed out.
After we returned to the all member midweek, we went to a small-group/Bibletalk/midweek. This then put more emphasis on the lay leadership to spiritually feed their group as well as shepherd/serve them in an encouraging way. I'm not sure if this worked out well for equipping the group as a whole, I feel this is where the devil made his way into people's hearts to get them to turn away. I know for me, with the career path I feel called to, this has stressed me out from time to time. Fortunately, I have had bosses who would understand and would work with me to give me certain weeknights off, so I could attended a midweek or Bibletalk.
As our region saw different leadership changes, we would see new emphasis to making midweeks a time for the family of believers to refresh themselves by the cool calming waters in which the ultimate shepherd lead us to. This was like placing a new pump on a dry well, you might get some water, but in all honesty you need to dig a new well, which meant investing more time in convincing members they need to be together more than just once a week.
Yesterday at church, marked the first Sunday of our change of schedule. I hopes to best equip the members in the church, we now have a Sunday School program for everyone. I've been praying to be submissive to the plan and best support it as I can. This takes some burden from the lay leadership to equipping the members as well as allows for us to meet monthly during the week, instead of weekly.
On Sunday, the new schedule has us in class at 9:30 until 10:15, with our extended Communion-Worship starting at 10:30. We in the teens are starting a study on Hebrews, as some of the Small Group Leaders are getting together for a class on the Cloud and Townsend book on Small Groups, the rest of the regional congregation attending a class on Philippians.
I pray this new schedule works for us, because at first I was not in favor of this idea. As I've been praying for it's success, I feel God will make this work in this short period, as we await our new Lead Evangelist to take the helm. I've been praying that it sticks, and we all can enjoy some great fellowship monthly and will turn into a more frequent occurrence.
