Love this post from BrianJones.com…..

Should We Start A Mid-Week Believer’s Service?

Recently I received an email from a good friend of mine who is a church planter. He asked…

Brian,
Have you guys ever tossed around the idea of doing a mid-week “believers” type of service. If yes… can you give me a brief reason why you decided to do it. If no… is there a specific reason you haven’t visited that idea?

In the spring we were running 700’s and we are shifting into a new paradigm as a church. I am struggling with just Sunday AM services and small groups as the only vehicles to deepening the congregation.

I would love to hear the fruit of your labor.

Jim

I’ve gotten that question a lot over the years, so I thought I’d share with you my response…

Hi Jim,

We never plan to start a midweek “Believer’s service” unless it is a duplicate of the weekend service.

Don’t get trapped into thinking (I know did at 700-800) that your people aren’t “deep enough” and that one big midweek service that offers “deep” teaching and “deep” worship is going to solve that.

That logic is kinda like thinking that…

1. Our people aren’t healthy because they aren’t eating proportionately and getting enough exercise.

2. We need to fix that ASAP.

3. Let’s offer a meal in the middle of the week for people to “get fed.” In fact, we’ll sort of make it a blowout Thanksgiving meal extravaganza where people get so stuffed they end up loosening their belt buckles and crashing on the couch for the rest of the week.

4. Once that happens we’ll know that we’ve done everything we can to make these people healthy by providing them one big meal a week for the rest of their life that makes people walk away saying, “I’m stuffed.”

That doesn’t make people healthy.

“I’m not being fed” is a term invented by lazy, spiritually obese, self-centered church-hopping religious consumers. Never, ever, under any circumstances let these kinds of people steer your church off course.

Your goal is to help your people become disciples, and you know and I know that disciples aren’t made through “services,” they’re made skin on skin over long periods of time, in the presence of other disciples out and about spreading the kingdom of God.
When people express a desire to grow further, and hopefully all of them will (that is the goal, right?), this is what you need to point them towards, not another “service.”

My advice: teach your Christians to feed themselves, during your weekend services, but make it interesting enough that you still capture the imagination of people far from God.

Can you imagine Jesus thinking to himself, Hmmm. These disciples aren’t deep enough. I wonder if I should start a service for them at the synagogue!?

Later,
Brian