The common supper after our evening worship service has promoted more fellowship than I've seen and experienced in 31 previous years of membership in our previous PCA churches that didn't have evening services. Full disclosure: we are now 'independent presbyterians' with PCA ministers - prebymutants.
My PCA church in northeast Alabama has evening services except Easter Sunday evening and the Sunday that ends our Missions Conference. I’ve been there with attendance as low as 12 plus the pastor or as many as 50 when there would be a special service. It averages about 30 per evening with a mixture of ages, from old (me, but not just me) to young couples with babies. The order of worship is more casual as we don’t confess our faith or our sins as in the morning, and we have a time for prayer requests and updates on previous requests. The pastor usually prays, but once a month he starts it, and leaves it open for prayers from the congregation (both men and women.) The sermon is “full-fledged” in that it isn’t a sermonette, but the same as in the morning…35-45 minutes, and is always expository in nature. We have communion on the 2nd and 4th Sunday evenings, with morning service having communion the 1st and 3rd Sundays. I’ve been at this church for ten and a half years since moving from Virginia where I attended a PCA church for forty years (one of the original members of the PCA. I have never seen any hint of an egalitarianism within my church, for which I am very thankful.
The common supper after our evening worship service has promoted more fellowship than I've seen and experienced in 31 previous years of membership in our previous PCA churches that didn't have evening services. Full disclosure: we are now 'independent presbyterians' with PCA ministers - prebymutants.
We must pray that many, many more churches in the PCA recognize the essential necessity of evening worship.
My PCA church in northeast Alabama has evening services except Easter Sunday evening and the Sunday that ends our Missions Conference. I’ve been there with attendance as low as 12 plus the pastor or as many as 50 when there would be a special service. It averages about 30 per evening with a mixture of ages, from old (me, but not just me) to young couples with babies. The order of worship is more casual as we don’t confess our faith or our sins as in the morning, and we have a time for prayer requests and updates on previous requests. The pastor usually prays, but once a month he starts it, and leaves it open for prayers from the congregation (both men and women.) The sermon is “full-fledged” in that it isn’t a sermonette, but the same as in the morning…35-45 minutes, and is always expository in nature. We have communion on the 2nd and 4th Sunday evenings, with morning service having communion the 1st and 3rd Sundays. I’ve been at this church for ten and a half years since moving from Virginia where I attended a PCA church for forty years (one of the original members of the PCA. I have never seen any hint of an egalitarianism within my church, for which I am very thankful.
Fascinating!