By Mark Horne

Praise the L_ORD! I will give thanks to the L_ORD with my whole heart, in the company of the upright, in the congregation. Great are the works of the L_ORD, studied by all who delight in them. ~ Psalm 111:1-2

When I was a young teenager, we had a pretty stout youth group in the church I grew up. Our group wasn’t so much about numbers, but about friendship. We worshiped at a rural church. One that had true “country boys” who circled up their trucks earlier than the meeting started to cut up and hang out. Most of the conversations were about frivolous teenage stuff. However, some of them got deep. One conversation sticks out in my mind. It was about Sunday night worship.

As most privileged American-church-teens often do, a lament began about “having to go to church…my mom made me come tonight.” None of us fully recognized the vitality of our parents’ encouragement to study God’s word and fellowship with other believers. This became even more true when I was caught dumbstruck by one of my friends who was a grandchild of one our stalwart ruling elders. “My grandfather expects us to be in church every time the doors are open, and I hate it,” he said.

Now, I was no saint. At the time, I wasn’t even a “good” Christian. I was a good son. I was a good student. I was a good teammate. I was a good friend. However, those that were close to me would tell you that I wasn’t a good Christian. And though there were times I would rather been anywhere but church, I never felt hatred towards going.

The sentiment of Sunday evening (and even mid-week) services described by my friend has carried the day. Fast forward just 30 years and now most places will you rarely find a church still meeting on Sunday evening. The mindset is people won’t come, there is not any interest, there are only a few showing up, we’re wasting energy running the a/c and lights for only five people, etc.

Are those just reasons not to gather for worship? One time a pastor friend told me one time his session was thinking about nixing their Sunday evening services. And he went to a conference where he had the chance to have lunch at a table with a prominent key-note speaker. He point blank asked the question with which his session was wrestling. The answer he received, “Why would you do that? If you look at the Scripture and study what the early church did, when did they meet?” “In the evening. After they had worked all day,” my friend responded. To which this prominent, reformed, and resolute pastor-professor replied, “Exactly. So, if you had to biblically cancel a service based on economy and attendance, then which should it be?” My friend ashamedly said, “The morning service.” To which the gentle admonisher nodded in agreement.

Was the lecturer saying we all should cancel morning worship and only meet in the evenings? No. The point he was making was the evening service has had a special place in Church-life since its inception. In addition, it is of my opinion that the American church culture has been too hasty to countermand the practice. We have lost a sense of what piety means and what it entails.

First the definition, piety one’s deepest concern for God by completely surrendering oneself to Him with devout, child-like affection. In other words, our devotion to God is rooted in our love for Him. Our desire to please God comes from a heart to know Him personally, practically, and experientially.

The pious life entails many facets. In his short booklet, Piety, Dr. Joel Beeke, President of Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary, lists several means that cultivate piety: the Preached Word, the Sacraments, the Exercise of Church Discipline, the Personal Study of Scriptures, and the Prayer Life and Work of the believer, among others. (Beeke 23-35) Furthermore, there is one other that I want to highlight, the section Communion of the Saints. Beeke states, “Watson said that association promotes assimilation. A Christian life lived in isolation from other believers will be defective and spiritually immature. We cannot have a heavenly fellowship if we promote a hindering fellowship.” (Beeke 27)

The Sunday evening service gives us an opportunity to worship together once again. It allows us to bookend our day with the worship of the One True God in fellowship with our brothers and sisters. I love how Dr. Ian Hamilton, professor at both Edinburgh Theological and Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminaries, states in his book The Gospel-Shaped Life, “The keeping of the Lord’s day, the Christian Sabbath, can be the result of either legal obedience or evangelical obedience…. Where Sabbath-keeping is the fruit of evangelical obedience, it will be deeply joyful…. We live in a day when more than ever we need to recover the Sabbath for God’s people. Because we love the people of God, we long for their good before God, and the good that God longs to bless his people with will never come to them apart from them honoring his holy day.” (Hamilton 138-139)

Echoing what Dr. Hamilton is saying, we are not worshipping on Sunday evening to be legalistic. The last thing I want is to cause another to hate going to church because I have placed upon them a burdensome “duty.” The purpose is the opposite. The Sunday evening service is another offering of worship to God’s people for our church and community. There are a lot of churches in our area that doesn’t meet on Sunday evening. Our church gives those believers who want another service to worship with us. There are those who can’t get enough study of God’s word. Our church will give deep, thoughtful teaching on Sunday nights. There are some who may have to miss a Sunday morning for work, travel, or minor sickness. Those folks will now have an opportunity to worship at the evening service. And there are those family/friends/acquaintances that we invite to church who wouldn’t step foot in a morning worship that just might come to a Sunday evening service.

I am looking forward to this new life-giving aspect of our church. I hope you will pray with me for the establishment of it by God’s hand and the means of outreach to the community through it.

Works Cited

Beeke, Joel R. Piety. Philadelphia: P&R Publishing, 2015.

Hamilton, Ian. The Gospel Shaped Life. Carlisle: The Banner of Truth and Trust, 2017.