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The Birth and Propagation of the Split Service

I know what you are likely thinking from the title. What I am not advocating for is the removal of worship time, but rather the relocation of worship time from 3 hours that are arbitrarily spread across a day to 3 hours that are completed all at once in the morning. I believe this to be better stewardship of time, physical energy, emotional energy, focus, and physical resources. I would encourage you to suspend judgment temporarily, read these arguments from a detached, calm mental state and then decide if you agree or not.

If you agree or disagree, let us know in the comments below.

Origin of Split Services

There is some disagreement about the origin of split services in the church today. I tend to subscribe to what I believe is the most likely, probable, and believable situation in any discussion. When it comes to the origin of split Sunday night services, I believe the following: the industrial revolution theory.

At the time of the industrial revolution, the majority of the population was working 12-hour shifts in factories every single day of the week. There would be a morning and an evening shift for these factories so they could maximize productivity. They were also working most Sundays. What this means is that it would be impossible for some people to attend once-daily worship services. There was much less leniency for work-related absences in previous times.

What is the solution for this? Split day services! Worship provided on Sunday night!

The people who had the morning work shift could attend service in the evening. And the people with the evening shift would have their mornings free for the first session.

This was a great tool that allowed people to attend services when they otherwise would have been unable to do so!

Notice that never was it expected that people to attend both services. It was literally impossible. They could not take off work because they quite possibly did not have the physical means to do so.

Fast forward to the modern day, and the creation of the 40-hour workweek. 12 hour-long shifts were done away with, and most people had their weekends free. But the evening service remained, even though there was no longer a legitimate reason for its existence. Not that there is never a legitimate reason to continue to worship God, but rather because the practicality of the Sunday night service was no longer there.

In the past, twice-daily services existed with the expectation and understanding that half of the congregation would be unable to attend one of the services.

Split services were a necessity. Now it is a luxury to meet twice per day, and some people have made this a mark of righteousness to attend both services. They have made it into a divinely constructed necessity in a pharisaical manner.

“Here we are on Sunday night; the people in attendance are the cream of the crop”

A Literal line I heard from the pulpit one Sunday night. Not that it isn’t true, but this is the general attitude: those who attend Sunday night are more righteous than those who attend only on Sunday morning.

This attitude is a problem because we know that we have the liberty of individually governing churches to meet when we decide. Worship time [but not worship day – which must always be Sunday] is one of the things that is left to the discretion of the church elders and requires discretion and thought when establishing it because there are no requirements for it.

The modern split service remains a fossil and Relic of the past, and it is simply a form of tradition. This isn’t a bad tradition, some people love it, and each church has a right to opt into doing it based on the authority and governmental structure of the church by which the elders make decisions, but it has become a tradition of men that some have decided to bind on others as proof of righteousness.

Let’s now discuss why meeting once per day is better stewardship of time, physical energy, emotional energy, focus, and physical resources.

Time

I advocate for more time to be spent actually worshipping God. What Sunday evening services have turned into is an entertainment session complete with pastries, cookies, and bribes. I mean, how can we get people to attend evenings at night anymore if there isn’t a free meal involved? If we get lucky we will attract some people off the street who have no interest in God, but a large interest in a free meal, so we can lie to ourselves and say we are “engaged in evangelistic outreach to the community“. What we are actually doing is enabling.

Additionally, the reason it is a poor stewardship of time is because of logistical time lost. We lose time Traveling, preparing, getting dressed, and with all the other logistical factors involved with transporting yourself or your entire family to the local Gathering Place.

Physical Energy

Human energy wanes as the day goes on. This is not shocking. Why then would we give to God those hours when we are least energetic, and resultingly least able to concentrate during worship services? Yet we have made it noble to assemble and offer a low quality, low energy, low focus hour of worship to Go and call ourselves “the cream of the crop” for doing so.

Emotional Energy

It isn’t enough to talk about the poor use of physical energy, you also have to make comments about the emotional energy that is consumed dealing with other human beings and with all of the difficulties at the end of the day.

When you reassemble in the evening for a 5 p.m. service, you are exhausted emotionally which leads to a depletion of focus [which is the next point] as well as emotional energy.

Additionally, you have to consider the reality that most people are sad or even legitimately depressed about the fact that they have to return to work the next day. They have to return to their day jobs. To get there on time they need to be in bed within the next 5 hours.

Do you think people who are in such a state of mind are well suited to enter a place of worship at this time?

And of course, that is not to say we shouldn’t work on managing our own emotional states and improving ourselves to the point where we can manage our emotional energy and focus only on being in the assembly. But it is to say that we should work together to the greatest advantage by positioning the hours of worship in the most optimal times when emotional energy is at its highest.

This is in the morning when we still believe the full day is ahead of us. When we take the 1 hour in the evening and shift it to the morning, when emotional energy is at its highest, when physical energy is at its highest, when the focus is at its highest,  and when our time is being used in the most optimal way possible, we vastly improve the quality of worship that is offered to God.

This allows us to offer our firstfruits, not our worst fruits.

If you’re interested in offering a garbage sacrifice to the Lord in the form of the worship of the emotionally exhausted, then by all means continue worshiping in the evening. If you want to offer a better sacrifice to God, and not be like Cain who gave less in his best to God in Genesis 4.

Focus

As emotional and physical energy themselves fade, the ability to focus is also drained and reduced as the day wanes. Focus drains as we use it throughout the day complete with the drainage on emotional energy and logistic details of living and transportation to and from the meeting place, the focus of the individual is left in a less than ideal position for an evening of concentration.

Physical Resources

It would be a better use of physical resources to have a combined morning service. Both in the resources needed to continue the maintenance of the church building itself [electricity, air conditioning], As well as the physical resources associated with Transportation and logistical resources for attending [gas, clothing, food].

Why waste twice the amount of physical resources when you can use one.

Reasons to replace late-night services with more extensive morning services

Give the first fruits, not the worst fruits: The late night is the worst fruits of a Christian’s day. They have the Sunday night blues, are exhausted from the day, and are arguably in no condition to worship God in spirit and in truth.

Just move the evening hours into the morning! What I am advocating for is not reducing the amount of time we are worshipping God. In fact, I would Advocate for an extra hour or two placed in the morning in addition to having only morning services. The average Church meets for two hours in the morning and 1 hour in the evening, so why not have 4 hours in the morning? Not only would you have more hours being spent doing what you think is necessary to do, but the hours offered would be of a better quality.

There is no longer a reason to have split morning and evening service. Again, this was the result likely of the Industrial Revolution, and arose out of necessity, not because it was supposed to be what was most beneficial to God. This was a requirement born of necessity. In the older days, people never would have conceived of a split service. By that, I mean in the days when transportation was much more difficult [horses and buggies], and the journey to the gathering place for worship services was multiple hours long, people would have been literally unable to attend services twice each day. It would have been unfathomable to suggest that people meet twice under these circumstances. Again, we have the freedom to choose what time of day to meet on the first day of the week, so why not make those meeting times productive?

I mean he wants, you also gain the advantage of being able to keep the momentum of worship going. It is extraordinarily difficult to meet in the morning, have a large. Of rest in the afternoon, and then require people to meet again in the evening and after rebuild the momentum that they spent during the morning hours preparing. Why not build a scenario where people would have to meet once, meet longer, and make that meeting more productive all at the same time? This can be done by meeting once in the morning. In my mind, it makes perfect and logical sense, and any alternative is silly, It is founded on traditionalism rather than on rationality inefficiency, and the willingness to offer God the best sacrifice possible.

Meeting once per day would provide better stewardship of individual time. Not because we’re spending less time worshipping God, but because we’re losing less time to the logistics of travel, preparing, getting ready to meet, concluding the meeting, dispersing from there, and engaging in the social aspect of the meeting. Each one of those units takes time and actually costs more time there would have been spent otherwise.

The proper, effective offering of praise to God requires emotional energy, physical energy, and focus levels. This praise is a sacrifice. It requires the best of our efforts, and this is an effort that cannot be maintained across an entire day.

Many times when we argue about politics, we forget the primary purpose of what we’re arguing about. The purpose is simple: We want to change the way the government functions in order to achieve some result.

That’s the entire purpose of political discussion of any kind. There is an end in mind whenever we are discussing politics – Or really anything that requires adjusting human behavior or regulating the laws surrounding human society. The politics associated with the formation and continuation of those laws exist for the betterment of society.

Therefore, when it comes to arguing politics, we need to remember that we’re actually arguing about an end result.

We’re trying to prevent negative situations from happening and promote positive events in society as a whole. Therefore, it would be beneficial when beginning a political or religious discussion to start with the end in mind. We need to clearly define the end result we’re after.

It could be that we and the person we are discussing politics with have totally different ends in mind. Having different goals would lead to confusion and difficulty throughout the entire discussion. Yet many people do this in their regular discussions! They are arguing about different problems or about different goals.

But if we can get on the same page with what we’re trying to achieve, we can have a better understanding of why a person thinks their approach is best or why we think ours is best and how to explain it with rationality and civility. 

There are also people who think there is no reason to be involved in politics. These people tend to be cowardly in their beliefs, and lack initiative in their personal affairs. They’re too lazy to study politics or they’re too fearful of losing friends if they choose a side.  There’s no honor in this type of cowardly behavior.

All that is necessary for evil to Prevail is for good men to do nothing

Edmund Burke

We should define the desired outcome anytime we’re discussing any matter of importance. This applies to both the political affairs of the world as well as the various politics of the church. 

Make no mistake about it, there are political maneuvers made in the church.

The church has a political structure. It has an overarching government which is God, as well as an internal government through the eldership, and secondarily through the deacons.  As much as the people who are anti-politics would like to deny it, the church is a political structure, and it mimics the same pathways by which humans enact government upon themselves because the group is still comprised of human beings!

When it comes to politics in religion, people need to get into the habit of discussing outcomes instead of details about politics.

The details of overarching politics are important, but they are often lost due to how rapidly people divide into camps. This demonstrates that they are not at all concerned about what the truth is, or about what is the best way to achieve an outcome,  but rather about being right.

When discussing politics, before you even begin the actual discussion, you need to clearly define your outcome.

What is the result you are trying to achieve through politics and is that outcome beneficial or even good for society?

Whether it is the society of the church or the community itself, the same applies. You MUST define the desired outcome. Otherwise, there is no point in discussing anything.

You are enacting policy, whether on the church or communal scale, in order to achieve an outcome. Therefore you have to agree upon what that outcome is – that makes discussing ideas much more straightforward. 

Now sometimes people have different ideas for desired outcomes, and that is fine. But at other times people actually agree on the outcome even when they differ by political party – meaning they differ in the way they think those outcomes are to be accomplished.

Most people would agree they want their church, community, state, or nation to be a better place. If we then agree on that, we have to agree on HOW it must be made better.

What part(s) the government is currently defective, why is it defective and how do we improve it? Can we agree on those smaller components of the path to a better church/state? If we can, now we just have to discuss the methods for how to get there. But without that initial discussion about the specified desired outcome, there is no point in any argument or discussion.

We cannot have a logical argument about how to get to a specific destination if you are trying to go to Florida and I am trying to go to California. There is no point arguing about the best way to get there because we are trying to get to different places. If that seems like a basic thought to you, remember that many people argue about the church or state politics without clearly defining the desired outcomes. 

Keep in mind the big picture of what you’re arguing about.

This is the whole point. People get too involved in the details and forget that they’re simply trying to influence an end result. If we forget that fact, we simply devolve into screaming matches that change nothing. There’s no benefit to having those screaming matches, and no honor involved in them.

Define your outcomes. Get on the same team as the people you’re arguing with, and they’ll be much more receptive to your message.

Not everyone accepts the yelling and screaming protocol. While some people might like it, and I’m one of those people, I know I’m a rare person in this matter. And you likely are too if you like this kind of tactic. But when was the last time you changed your mind about animal rights because e vegan screamed at you?

You have to Define what is more important, the emotional satisfaction of proving someone wrong about their stance, or actually getting the results you want in your community or church. Think about this while you argue outcomes, not politics. 

When discussing politics, remember that delivery is everything.

You may have the correct viewpoint, but if you do not learn how to express those viewpoints with the correct delivery, it will benefit nothing. People long to be manipulated – we call it “seduction. Many times politics is just mass-scale seduction. People long to change their minds when seduced properly. Deliver your answers and explanations softly, carefully, tactfully, and tactically. Guide people gently to your side. By doing this, you can win people without making enemies at the same time.

The book of Psalms contains a psalm of Moses. Embedded in that psalm is one of the most practical and sobering verses you will find in scripture. It teaches us a very important lesson: that your days are numbered.

“Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom”.

Psalm 90:12

We know factually that we are going to die. Our days are numbered. This life is quickly coming to an end. And it goes faster the more life that we live. Each passing year is faster than the last.

What this verse actually teaches us is to remember that we are mortal. This is also the ancient stoic technique of meditating on our mortality. And by meditating on the fact that we will soon die, we act in a wise manner in our daily lives.

Think of individuals who have life-or-death events happen to them. What happens to those people?

Suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, they have the clarity that they have lacked for the last twenty years. All of the nonsense of daily life melts away, and only what is important remains.

These people suddenly overcome problems they never had been able to defeat before, and sometimes they have lasting character changes.

You do not need a life-or-death situation to happen to you for you to gain this same perspective. All you have to do is remember that your days are numbered.

Remember that this life is quickly coming to an end, just as quickly as it began.

All that matters is the fact that you were created by God, and you have to find a way to make yourself acceptable to Him. You have to find a way to become right in His sight. You will not do this through works of your own merit. No, but He saves you and does all the work for you. You will not be able to justify yourself, but you can find justification and clothe yourself with it through God.

So in your day-to-day life, remember the fact that life ends. Do not place too much emphasis and importance on the physical parts of this life. Though they are important, and we do have to live here on earth, this is not where we are staying permanently. Therefore live each day as if it were the last day, and you will behave with much more wisdom.

Number your days, and gain a heart of wisdom. Act with that same wisdom every day, as long as you live and you will have an easier time maintaining the correct perspective.

Learn the way to make yourself right with God through the process of salvation:

1. Hear
2. Believe
3. Repent
4. Confession
5. Baptism
6. Faithful Living

One of the most common traditions at the start of the new year is setting new year’s resolutions. People often make resolutions with the intention of improving some aspect of their lives, such as exercising more, eating healthier, or saving money. However, despite good intentions, many people struggle to follow through on their resolutions and end up abandoning them within a few weeks or months.

There are a number of reasons why new year’s resolutions often fail.

One reason is that there is nothing significant about the new year. It is simply another day, and the passage of time does not magically improve a person’s ability to change their habits or achieve their goals. While the new year may provide a sense of motivation or a fresh start, these feelings are often short-lived and do not necessarily translate into sustained behavior change.

Another reason why resolutions fail is that they put too much emphasis on motivation.

Motivation can be fickle and is influenced by a variety of factors such as stress, mood, and external events. Relying on motivation to sustain long-term behavior change can be unreliable and can lead to disappointment when motivation fades.

While it is certainly helpful to be motivated when trying to achieve a goal, it is important to recognize that motivation alone is not enough to sustain the effort and discipline required to make lasting changes.

Resolutions are also often too big and too difficult for people with low levels of discipline.

This is talking about most people. Setting unrealistic goals that require significant effort and discipline can be overwhelming and can lead to burnout or frustration. For example, if someone who has never exercised regularly before resolves to work out for two hours a day, six days a week, they may quickly become overwhelmed and unable to maintain this level of commitment. Similarly, if someone resolves to save a large percentage of their income, but does not have a plan for how to achieve this goal, they may struggle to make progress.

Resolutions can also build a false sense of hope.

People may feel optimistic and motivated at the beginning of the year, but when they fail to meet their goals, they may become discouraged and give up. This can lead to a cycle of setting and abandoning resolutions, which can be frustrating and demoralizing.

So, if new year’s resolutions are so prone to failure, what can be done to set meaningful goals that are more likely to be achieved? Here are some tips for setting goals that are more likely to succeed:

Start small.

The smaller the goal is, the easier it will be to get started and build momentum. For example, instead of resolving to exercise for two hours a day, six days a week, try starting with a goal of exercising for 5 minutes a day, three days a week. This will be more manageable and will give you a sense of accomplishment as you build up to your larger goal.

Make the goal action-based instead of outcome-based.

This means focusing on the steps that need to be taken to reach the goal rather than the end result. For example, instead of resolving to “lose weight,” try setting a goal to “exercise for 30 minutes a day” or “eat a serving of vegetables with every meal.” These actions are within your control and can help you make progress toward your larger goal.

Don’t get obsessed with the goal, be obsessed with the process.

It is important to enjoy the journey towards your goal and to appreciate the progress you are making. Focusing on the small wins along the way can help you stay motivated and engaged.

Devote small amounts of time to your goal each day or week. Rather than trying to make a large, overwhelming change all at once, it can be more effective to make small, incremental changes over time. By devoting just a few minutes a day or a week to your goal, you can make progress without overwhelming yourself.

Learn how to be more intense, for shorter periods of time.

Rather than trying to sustain a high level of effort and discipline for long periods of time, it can be more effective to work intensely for shorter periods and then take breaks to rest and recharge. This can help you stay focused and motivated without burning out.

Make the goal about identity and lifestyle change instead of just about the outcome.

By focusing on the long-term benefits of your goal, such as becoming healthier or more productive, you can create a sense of purpose and motivation that goes beyond just achieving a specific outcome. This can help you sustain your effort and discipline even when faced with challenges or setbacks.

New year’s resolutions often fail because they rely on factors that are difficult to control. To set meaningful goals that are more likely to be achieved, it is important to start small, focus on the process, and make the goal about identity and lifestyle change.

Rather than worrying about planning, massive goals, and motivation levels, the most important thing is to just get started. By taking small, incremental steps toward your goals, you can build momentum and create lasting change in your life.

Monkeypox is being touted as the new Covid variant among some groups. But these groups tend to leave out one very important point about the disease that we will discuss later.

When God issues a command, it is generally for a good reason. When God commands men to avoid having sex with other men [Leviticus 17:22], it is for a specific reason:  to protect them from the practical consequences of homosexuality.

God does not blindly create commandments to arbitrarily limit human fun or enjoyment on the earth. Everything He does is for a specific purpose. He is not interested in making life on earth as miserable for humanity as possible. 

We have written before about the practical consequences of sin. Which is the idea is that everything we do has consequences that are not only spiritual but also physical while we live on earth. Sure, there are eternal consequences for the way we conduct ourselves on this earth. But there are also practical consequences that affect our day-to-day living on earth. 

When a man commits adultery, he does not only sin against God, but he damages his own reputation, character, and likely his wealth in the form of alimony or child support payments. Those are the practical, earthly consequences of the sin of adultery.

So when God makes commands, He is not trying to limit our enjoyment of life, He is trying to protect us from the practical consequences of our actions. 

That leads us to the discussion on monkeypox. If you pay attention to the mainstream media, you will likely have noticed an interesting spin on this new disease. Much of the media is trying to spin monkeypox into the next covid. They already have people in the habit of chronic fear, so it is likely that many people will simply fall in line to whatever they are told. If the average person is told to fear monkeypox, they will do so without question. The average man will give up his freedom for nothing. 

But there is an interesting twist on monkeypox: it is a homosexual sexually transmitted disease (STD). This is the fact that many groups touting monkeypox as the new covid are leaving out. 

What this means is that the only way to acquire this “scary new disease” is through homosexual contact. You wouldn’t know that simply from listening to the mainstream media though. If you have not learned to think for yourself, you would be paralyzed with fear to hear about this “next covid”. 

Look at this block from Apologetics Press.

n August 4^th, 2022, the Biden administration declared a public health emergency in response to the outbreak of “monkeypox.”¹ The World Health Organization (WHO) had already done so in July.² Rashes with painful blisters, facial, genital, mouth, throat, eye, and anal lesions, scabbing, swollen lymph nodes, severe rectal pain, kidney damage, heart inflammation, fever, chills, flu-like symptoms, excruciating pain while eating or going to the bathroom, and throat swelling significant enough to prevent drinking are common with the disease, some leading to hospitalization, permanent damage, scarring, and even death.³ New Scientist reported that “the vast majority of cases have been in men who have sex with men, according to the WHO. It reported that 99 per cent of cases have been in this group in the UK, US, Canada and Spain…. The disease is more likely to occur in people who have had multiple sexual partners recently.”⁴ Rarely is it the case that our brazenly immoral society stumbles across the biblical solution to a problem but, to their credit, one of the solutions being advocated by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is homosexual abstinence—at least temporarily.

Monkey Pox: Homosexuality Is Bad for You, and God Called It Again,
Jeff Miller

This is truly incredible. A generation of people has been brought to their knees through fear. They have been conditioned to feel fear and they have forgotten what it is like to be free.

But the main point is this, there are practical consequences to sin, including the sin of homosexuality. When people engage in this sin, they put themselves at a serious health risk. We have known this for years, as other STDs presented en masse in homosexual populations. 

It comes back to the idea of the guardrail versus the fence when discussing the commands of God. Do you view the commands in the Bible as a fence preventing you from doing what you enjoy? If you do, you will have a difficult time viewing the commands of God as a guardrail protecting you from the negative consequences of your actions.

Shift your mentality. Embrace the fact that God commands things to protect us from their consequences. 

When God restricts different food sources in Leviticus 11, it looked like He was placing arbitrary culinary restrictions on the Israelites. But we know now based on scientific evidence that this was done to protect the people. Because those different food sources, if not cooked correctly like the way master chefs prepare them today, result in sickness and disease for the people who eat them. Bats are toxic to eat and can cause neurodegenerative diseases, as different African countries are discovering. 

The point is that these food restrictions were to protect people. Similarly, restrictions on sexual activity, heterosexual or homosexual, were designed for the protection of human beings, not for their torture.

I would argue that many people today are homosexual because of social contagion. There are few true homosexuals. The majority of them have adopted this perversion because it is “hip” and gives them instant status. The person who engages in homosexual behavior is simply trying to become valuable in any way they can. What faster way to go from an insignificant person to one of the most protected populations in the country than by adopting homosexuality? 

I’m not saying some people do not have legitimate desires for members of the same sex; I am saying that the people who are truly homosexual, if there can be such a thing, are few and far between. And the fact that they have genuine desire does not make the behavior correct.

We are not supposed to engage in every single behavior that we desire to engage in. It’s something called “discipline” – resisting what we want for what is of greater value.

Should a man engage in sex with a woman he is not married to because he desires her? We know he should not. And we know this because we know that we are not to give in to any and every desire we have. We are called to resist the urges of the flesh if they oppose the teaches that come from the mind of God. 

If you want to avoid contacting monkeypox, it seems to be a very simple solution. Simply avoid having homosexual sex.

There is no need to overcomplicate it. God protects man from disease by teaching that he should allocate all his sexual desires to his wife only. Not to rob man of fun, but to protect man from all the consequences that come from sexual promiscuity. 

Monkeypox is a practical consequence of homosexuality. And it is a consequence that can be avoided if men will simply listen to the commands of God.