Community

9Marks has an excellent blog site and I really appreciate some of the insights from Mark Dever (pastor of Capitol Hills Baptist Church).  Here is a recent posting from him on the value of Sunday evenings services and how/what they bring to building church community.

“Jamie (faithful elder at CHBC) told PJ (faithful intern at CHBC) that a second reason this congregation seemed to have unusual depth of community and relationships was the evening service.  Let me briefly explain.

We understand Sunday as a Christian Sabbath.  Not equivalent to the 4th commandment in the OT.  We think that is fulfilled in Christ.  But we also see the Lord’s Day in the NT (e.g., Rev. 1:10).  We think Hebrews 10:25 requires us to assemble regularly.  That is normally on the Lord’s day in the morning (in continuity with the earliest Christian history, long before it was a day off for Christians from their jobs, and in celebration of the Lord’s Resurrection).  However, we as a congregation also exercise our liberty by deciding as a congregation that we will ALSO assemble on Sunday evenings for praise & prayer.  We don’t understand that Scripture requires this of us, but we chose to for our edification.

So we have a second meeting on Sunday, at which most members come, and some visitors (they are welcome).  At this service (which runs from about 6:00pm to 7:30pm) we will sing (6:00-6:15), and conclude by hearing a 15-minute sermon (after which we close with a hymn).  This 15-minute sermon is delivered by someone other than the regular preaching ministers.  It may be one of our non-staff elders, a deacon who is gifted in teaching, a member who works on the Hill but is considering being a preaching pastor long-term, a member of our church who works for a non-profit but is a good teacher, etc.  The text is chosen by me.  It is given to them weeks or months in advance.  It is from the opposite testament of Scripture as the morning passage, but should contain a related theme.  This helps the congregation to hear from more people and focuses us less just on the preaching pastors (especially me & Michael Lawrence).  God works powerfully in the lives of members through other members.  This strengthens the community of the church.

But the core of our time on Sunday evening probably does this even more.  This is the period from 6:15 to 7:00 or 7:15 in which pre-screened prayer requests (they ask me through the week, or on Sun AM) are shared & sometimes questions asked by the congregation, or volunteers gotten, and then they are prayed for by members of the congregation.  So, this past Sunday night, various members said good-bye, told us where they were going, thanked us for various aspects of their life here, and shared prayer requests.  One couple who have been here for 5 years shared about going to become associate pastor of a nearby church.  Mike’s sharing of his gratitude to God for a number of ways He has used the congregation in his life put a number of us in tears.  Another sister shared about a practical way women in the church could help an evangelism prjoject in the Middle East.  Another brother stood up and shared about his having preached his first sermon that morning.  (A church in Delaware had asked us to cover their pulpit for them this past Sunday morning, and we asked this brother to do it.)   Another brother who is stationed in Afghanistan was back for a couple of weeks and shared how things were going & took questions.  We prayed for Matt & Jonathan as they were headed to South Africa for a couple of weeks to do 9marks work.  And this is just HALF the things that were shared & prayed for.

People feel sad when they miss Sunday mornings.  But, it has to be said, at least they can get the audio of the sermon.  When you miss Sunday EVENINGS, you just don’t feel like you know what’s going on.  And people stand around forever and talk.

How to establish this kind of culture would be a different entry.  It certainly happened slowly, over time, and took deliberate leadership.  (I had to “move” the requests from mainly about health to being mainly about more spiritual matters, and from being mainly individual to being more about ministry or some corporate activity of the church.)  Some of this shift was difficult.  Much of it had to be carefully done.  In all of this we had to be patient.  But I think Jamie is right.  This, by God’s grace, has been greatly used by God to establish a deeper community here among the congregation.  And we thank Him for it!”

Tags: church community