The River:
Questions & Answers on the Process
of Starting a New Worship Service
This page last updated on
01/29/2005
by Ronald W. Waters
Read
my blog on what has happened thus far and
links to related pages
Question: How did you arrive at the decision to start a second service?
Answer: When I was called to the Hammond Avenue Brethren Church
just over two years ago, one of the highest concerns was finding ways to enrich the
worship. My concerns about worship were greater than just enriching the
service. Certainly, I wanted to be sure our worship brought honor and glory to
God while at the same time lifting the congregation into God's presence.
But my
heart was to reach people in the community, not just serve ourselves. We have so
many in this community who are unchurched and, worse, unsaved. And though we
were not at the capacity of our worship center, we couldn't grow much larger in
our average attendance without expanding our seating some way. So starting a
second service (vs. building or starting a new church elsewhere) seemed to be
the best and most cost effective approach. New people are more readily
attracted to something that is new (such as a new worship service or a new
Sunday school class or a new choir, etc) than to something that already exists
and is ongoing.
And as a
congregation, our evangelism efforts were not strong—everyone believes so much
in evangelism that we think we've already done it! A new service seemed like a
good way to help move us forward in our outreach.
Question: What process did you
follow to introduce the idea of a second service?
Answer: In
January 2003, after prayer for God's guidance and courage to step out in
faith, I challenged our board and commissions with the vision of beginning a
second service by fall 2003 or spring 2004.
The board
and commissions accepted the challenge without a vote (I simply did not ask them
to vote, so they never thought about it). They have worked very hard to make
the preparations. The only thing that really slowed us up from starting in the
fall of 2003 was that we had not yet been able to assemble all the instruments
we wanted in the praise team.
The delay
also proved beneficial financially. We had been expecting the proceeds from a
bequest for several years but it kept getting delayed. But last fall we finally
got the distribution. Some of the money had already been spent on new windows
for the church and parsonage. But the board agreed to allocate the remaining
$12,000 for launching the new service. So we did not have any real financial
hardship to our ongoing budget in upgrading the sound system, doing the
necessary newspaper advertising, or buying the instruments we were lacking. (We
had previously purchased and installed a video projection system in June 2002
and have been projecting our hymns on the screen since then. This has had the
added benefit of improving our singing—people no longer had their faces buried
in the hymnal but were able to lift up their eyes and their voices in song at
the same time.)
Since we
were not ready to begin the new service last fall, we did a small direct mail
effort called Our Jerusalem (http://www.newlifeministries-nlm.org/ideas/our_jeru.htm).
While we did not realize a lot of visible fruit from this program, it did help
our people identify friends and relatives who are unsaved and/or unchurched. It
was helpful in preparing the way for this larger outreach effort.
One of the
biggest challenges was deciding how to change our schedule. Our worship and
Christian education commissions wrestled with the question for a long time. We are very
committed to Sunday school as a place to study God's Word together and build
relationships with other believers in the process. So starting the new service
on Saturday night seemed out of the question (we're just not strong enough
numerically to staff a complete second "Sunday" school on Saturday night. Nor is
our small group ministry strong enough to provide an alternative to Sunday
school.
We
considered two options (with many variations): 1) worship, Sunday school,
worship (which is what we settled on); or 2) worship/Sunday school (all ages)
running concurrently, followed by worship/Sunday school (adults)/children's
church. The latter had a lot to commend it and I believe would have been easier
to staff than the former. But conceptually, it just seemed like it would be hard
to explain to our people. We may eventually go to that approach, but not yet.
Question: For whom are you targeting the new service?
Answer:
We are targeting the new service for the unchurched, generally in the 18-55 age
group (though everyone is welcome). We also hope to build attendance at our 8:30
traditional service. So far, we have emphasized word-of-mouth and personal
invitations to unchurched friends and relatives.
Question: Describe the worship
styles and types of music you are using.
Answer:
Our single worship service has
been blended for several years. In the last year or so, we have introduced more
of the praise and worship songs in addition to the praise choruses we had used
before. We've used the iWorship DVDs to introduce and sing some of these songs.
We formed
a new worship team which includes a praise band (piano, keyboard, acoustic & electric
guitars, electric bass, and electronic drums). We had preview services on Jan 25 and Feb
22, plus on several Sundays since October the band played for one or two songs.
We did a "practice run"
our new schedule
(8:30 am
Traditional Worship, 9:30 am Fellowship Time, 9:45 am Bible Fellowships/Sunday
School, and
10:45 am The River—Contemporary Worship),
on Mar 7, without advertising it to the public.
This gave us all
an opportunity to make the change to that new schedule before we had guests join
us the next week for our public launch. The 8:30 service became our traditional worship, returning to more of
what our worship service was like a year or so ago, with
more hymns and a few praise choruses and with piano and organ accompaniment.
We will still occasionally use DVDs and other media. The
10:45 service was our third
preview of the new style—mostly songs
in the praise & worship genre, with occasional hymns played with a different
beat. We've found a great web site that provides hymn charts for praise bands (www.hymnchartslite.com),
and it has been a great asset.
The River publicly debuted on Mar 14 following an
extensive media campaign. We also formed
an extensive First Impressions Team
to welcome and follow-up on guests.
The Sunday
after the second full preview service, we asked people to indicate which worship
service they were either definitely planning to attend or leaning toward. The
breakdown of people indicating one or the other service was about 40%
traditional, 60% contemporary, with quite a few still indicating they are unsure
or indicating they will attend both. That was about the breakdown on Mar 7 when
we started the new schedule and before we had publicly announced the new
service.
Question: How did you promote the new service?
Answer
Question: Why do you call your new service "The River"?
Answer: We wanted to give it a distinctive name. We use John 7:37-38
(especially from The Message) as the basis. Jesus says,
“If anyone thirsts, let him come
to me and drink. Rivers of living water will brim and spill out of the depths of
anyone who believes in me this way, just as the Scripture says."
We believe Jesus is that
River who gives eternal life to all who put their full faith and trust in him
and who spills out of our lives.
Of course,
there are many references to "rivers" in the Bible, so it seemed like a rich
metaphor. Also, there are a lot of songs about rivers. We sort of
adopted as our theme song "The River Is Here" because it is lively and it talks
about the spiritual benefits of coming to the River of life—Jesus.
We also
were open to giving a name to our worship team. One member suggested "Dry
Gulch Creek," but we weren't sure that really conveyed the image we wanted. Then
our moderator suggested "River's Edge" and it has stuck. We also got
matching polo shirts with the River logo and the church name on them.
Not really
a reason for selecting the name, but it has a local connection as well—Waterloo
is located on the Cedar River and the area is sometimes referred to as the
Greater Cedar Valley.
Read my blog
on what has happened thus far and links to related pages.
If you'd like to draw on some
other resources on starting new services, we have some online at New Life
Ministries at
http://www.newlifeministries-nlm.org/online/faqs.htm#Worship .
One of the
best printed resources is a book by W. Charles Arn,
How to Start a New Service,
also available from New Life Ministries (http://www.newlifeministries-nlm.org/products/new_service.htm)
or through your local bookstore.
And visit our church web site
at
http://hammondavenuebrethren.com.
