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.
