New 9 a.m. Sunday Service
I have exciting news to share: starting in August, St. Paul’s will offer a fourth Sunday-morning service at 9:00 a.m. in the parish hall. The vestry, staff, and I have been talking, dreaming, and praying about the best way to enable continued growth in our parish, and we believe that a new service on Sunday mornings is the right way forward. There are countless details that still need to be worked out, but we are ready to share this plan in the hopes that you, too, will help us dream this service into flourishing.
At the Annual Meeting in January, I shared that our parish is growing, but our Sunday-morning attendance has been flat. Figuring out how to address that plateau-effect has been on my mind for a few years. Over and over, I hear long-time parishioners say, “There are so many new people in church!” I feel that as well. In a parish our size, the rector cannot be expected to remember everyone’s name, but I have noticed how much harder it has been for me to keep track of all the new faces in church.
The numbers bear that out, too. Over the last few years, we have added lots of new individuals and families to our rolls, and our giving has increased as well, but our Sunday-morning attendance has not grown proportionally. Newcomers and long-time parishioners are all coming to church, but collectively we are coming less often. Since the resumption of in-person worship, our average Sunday attendance has approached pre-pandemic levels, but it has levelled off at a point still below them. I believe that is because the lingering effects of the pandemic have effectively made our worship space smaller than it was.
Before the pandemic, the rule of thumb for churches was a ceiling of eighty percent capacity. Once the church is regularly eighty-percent full, a congregation cannot keep growing without adding new space or new services. In the wake of the pandemic, I believe that ceiling has dropped. I regularly look out at the congregation from the altar and see a “full” church. Before the pandemic, that would mean a congregation of 200-220, but now even 175 feels full. I think our willingness to crowd into a pew with people we do not know has decreased, and, as a result, our Sunday-morning attendance has reached its limits.
When a congregation has reached its capacity, there are four things it can do. It can do nothing and expect numbers to remain flat. It can start a new church in another part of town and send a significant number of members to that new congregation. It can build a bigger worship space. Or it can add new services. Not long ago but before I arrived, our church considered the possibility of expanding our nave. We may return to those considerations in the future, but, for now, without splitting, the only way for us to grow is to add a new service.
Our plan is to offer a 9:00 a.m. service of Holy Eucharist that takes place in the parish hall at the same time the 8:45 a.m. service is taking place in the church. We expect the service to be more casual than worship in the nave, and we think it will last around forty-five minutes. We know that it will include music, but exactly what sort of music and who will be leading it remains undetermined. We anticipate that some people will be eating breakfast at the tables in the parish hall while worship is taking place, but we also think that will appeal to some individuals and families who want to do both simultaneously. In some ways, we expect the service to feel a lot like the Wednesday-night Eucharist, but we hope to expand that familiar format to include more than one reading, some songs or hymns, and wider congregational participation.
We have chosen 9:00 a.m. on Sunday mornings for a few reasons. First, although we considered an evening service on Saturday or Sunday, we do not believe that will give us the best chance to grow. For all its detractors, Sunday-morning worship is still central to our practice and culture. Plus, a weekly evening service would be especially hard on the clergy, staff, and volunteers who must work to make any service possible.
Second, given the already-full Sunday-morning schedule, 9:00 a.m. feels like the best time to allow worshippers to also participate in breakfast or Sunday-morning formation. Third, a 9:00 a.m. start time allows the service to be distinct from the 8:45 a.m. service, which will still be as full and rich as ever. Finally, several people have expressed a desire for a service that is later than 8:45 a.m. but earlier than 11:00 a.m., and studies show that mid-morning services are most popular.
Although space constraints are the primary motive for a new service, there are other considerations behind this decision. If the only thing we were worried about was capacity, having the extra service at 11:00 a.m., when the nave is usually the fullest, would make more sense. While I am sure that this new service will attract some of the people who are already regular in Sunday-morning worship, I believe the primary participants will be individuals and families who have not found a regular home in our existing services.
In addition to providing extra space, therefore, we also want to offer a different style of worship that will appeal to current and future members of the church. Some people want to be a part of St. Paul’s because of who we are and what we represent to the community, but our Sunday-morning services, which regularly last ninety minutes and involve very formal liturgies, are too much for them. Plenty of current members who participate in weekday programs skip Sunday mornings because the inclusive attitude that has attracted them to our congregation is not fully reflected in our worship, and I believe that there are many more who want to be a part of St. Paul’s but have not joined our church because what we offer on Sundays is not appealing.
Do not get me wrong: I love formal Anglican worship and have no intention of sacrificing the hallmarks of our tradition in an attempt to grow the church. In fact, if we were to lose our commitment to the style of worship that has sustained us and helped us grow for 177 years, we would be in big trouble. By offering a fourth service, we allow our current offerings to continue and, in fact, might make it possible for those services to expand their traditional elements, including the chanted psalm, additional hymns, and sung liturgy.
In the end, I expect our new 9:00 a.m. service to grow slowly and steadily. It will take us a while to figure out how to do that service well. Partly, that is because I suspect that most of the people who will come to that service are not already active in worship at St. Paul’s. That means that those of us who are already here—including clergy—cannot fully anticipate what a new service should look like. My guess is that, although mostly familiar, the new service will include elements that those of us who already love Sunday-morning worship would find unattractive, but, in a sense, that is the point.
Six years ago, at a vestry retreat, we had an initial conversation about what a new service at St. Paul’s would look like. Back then, we did not get very far, but we spent a little time wondering whether an alternative expression of worship would be attractive to those people who continually say, “I do not go to church, but, if I did, I would go to St. Paul’s.” As the discussion continued, members of the vestry suggested different elements that they thought might be effective, and, after a while, we had done a fairly thorough job of picturing a new service that many of us in the room would be willing to attend on a Sunday night.
Then, one member burst our bubble with a clever and insightful observation: if we want to plan a new service that will attract people who are not already heavily invested in the life of St. Paul’s, then the members of the vestry are the last people who should dream it up. If we truly want to make space for people who are not already active participants in worship, we need it to be different—with the kind of music, preaching, and lay participation that none of us in the room would anticipate. And that is where the vestry, staff, and clergy can help out.
As leaders in the congregation, it is our job to make space for something new to take hold. It is our job to make sure that whatever we offer is still an authentic expression of who we are but also is given enough room to take on a new identity. We need to be receptive to things we ordinarily would not include in worship, and that means spending a lot of time listening to people who are not already here. If you are the sort of person who wants to deepen your relationship with God, believes that St. Paul’s is the best expression of faithful identity in this community, but have not yet found weekly worship compelling, you are exactly the person I need to hear from.
We have three months to get ready to launch this new service. Some of what we do in the long term will only be discovered after we start, but your ideas, questions, concerns, and dreams are needed now. If you want to be a part of a different kind of Sunday-morning worship in this place, let me know. If you have musical gifts that you want to share, let Jack or Carol know. If you have always wanted to help out with worship as a reader, chalice bearer, usher, or acolyte but have not yet found a place at St. Paul’s, let me know. This may be your opportunity to find a genuine home in this church, and that is the principal hope for this service.
Yours faithfully,
Evan D. Garner
