Variety of services
Its hard to write a blog this week, because i pretty much agreed with everything that Ashton said. I do want to just get to the chase and talk about the part about the variety of services from pg 88-89. The discussion was on how some churches offer a variety of services throughout Sunday. This is good because it can operate in a culture that a specific group is most familar with. However if the number of services were cutted this will allow more preparation to be focused on one service and a higher quality can be achieved. I agree in a way. Growing up I was used to 3 services on a Sunday. One at 8.00 a.m one at 11:00 a.m. and then an evening service at 6:00 a.m. As i can recall the pastor was the one who taught at all three of these. Which could effect the higher quality of what one service can achieve. Also sometime the first service would spill into the second service which could leave people comming into the second service a little behind what is trying to be communicated by the pastor. Then the third service comes around later in the evening, and if you ask me this leaves the pastor spiritual and physically drained right? I say this to ask. Although there might be a variety of services on a Sunday do you think the higher quality can still be achieved if a diffrent person spoke at each of the services?
I think a pastor would need a very clear call to endure the drain required to preach at all three services, unless he were preaching the same thing three times. If he were preaching the same thing three times, however, why would anyone come to all three services? I definitely think it would be better to have different people contributing in the separate services, not just to give the pastor a break, but to give different perspectives and to avoid the troubles inherent in being spoon-fed by one person. The biggest reason why I think we should move away from different services to one united services is that it divides the congregation according to age and cultural lines. The argument against this is that if we have everybody will argue and fight over what style of music and what style of dress and what style of preaching to have. But as believers, we need to learn how to surrender our wants and rights to others, and what better place to practice this than on Sunday morning? If we can’t get along with other believers of different age and culture, how can we hope to show the world God’s glory in the way we live?
I think that by having different people speak at different services, you would potentially have higher quality in each service. By dividing the responsibilities, each speaker could focus with more energy on his portion, rather than having one person doing all. However, if each service is the same message and one speaker leads them all, you could also have increased quality – the speaker refining his message and adapting it through each service.