Monday Morning Insights

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    Church Seven Nights a Week!

    From their website:

    Have you ever needed to pray or worship during the week?  Have you ever wished there was a place to go where you could release your burdens and focus on something bigger than your problems?  They gyms, bars, and retail stores are open every day.  Why not the church?  Why not our church?

    Wow.  They actually do a worship service (with a little different flavor) EVERY night of the week.  What a neat concept.  And what a creative solution to their overcrowding problem.

    I believe they started this experiment in January.  It’ll be interesting to see how it goes. 

    To be honest… it makes me tired just thinking about it!

    But what a great idea… and one that probably works in the high-tourism based economy of Florida, where many people need to work all weekend.  What do you think?

    You can check out their website explaining more here...

    I find this remarkable... The Church of Pembroke Pines has some problems with growth. They just didn't have enough room in their small worship center to accomodate all the people attending (if I heard right, their main meeting room only holds about 500 people). Their solution: Let's have church seven nights a week!

    Comments

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    1. Camey on Thu, April 19, 2007

      I think the church should be open 24/7 - 365 days a year. This comes from my beliefs on worship, prayer, and etc. Resisting urge to ........ (Got my heart pumping!)

    2. nora on Thu, April 19, 2007

      I love this idea, but I would be interested in hearing how they are staffing these without driving their staff and lay leaders to exhaustion.  Otherwise, I think it’s a creative way to help people worship!  I’ll be interested to see how it works out in the long run.

    3. Danny on Thu, April 19, 2007

      Bravo…Bravo….


      I am excited by this concept.


      I would love to be involved in something like this.

    4. Ray Fowler on Thu, April 19, 2007

      I lived in South Florida for ten years just north of Pembroke Pines, so I know this area well. Although my theology of the local church and preferred style leans more towards the whole body worshiping together, this seems like a bold and creative step for the church, and I pray God uses it to reach more people for the kingdom.

    5. Justin on Thu, April 19, 2007

      I wonder if perhaps the main message is recorded such as it is at some multisite churches like Fellowship, or if each of those pastors listed for each day speak?  I guess those guys might just oversee each day’s service and there is a separate team for greeting, worship, etc. for each day. 


      Either way, it is a really neat idea!

    6. jawbone on Thu, April 19, 2007

      If the pastor has to be there 7 days a week, then all church members have to be there too! http://www.mondaymorninginsight.com/images/smileys/smile.gif


      How evangelistically effective will this be?  Will members just choose their service of convenience?


      I like the thought, but echo Nora’s comment.

    7. Ray Fowler on Thu, April 19, 2007

      Justin,


      I poked around on their website a bit, and my understanding is that all services for the week get the same message, either live or by video (so that the teaching pastor doesn’t have to teach all week long.)  But the host pastor for each night sets the tone or style for that service.  They are asking 600 of their members to commit to a specific night service each week for the first year in order to make more room on Sunday mornings.

    8. Chris Dillingham on Thu, April 19, 2007

      Why haven’t we been doing this already? People like to sleep Sunday morning. Ask any online service or TV producer, and this is the time they’re available. I’m glad these guys are working through the hindrances of staffing and logistics to make this available for their population.

    9. Kevin on Thu, April 19, 2007

      I’m the administrative pastor at the church that is doing 7 Nights of Worship.  Thanks to a Google Alert I found this discussion.  I hope I can answer a few questions and clarify a few things.


      We prayed and planned for 2 years.  Let me give a brief sketch here of how we are doing this and direct you to my blog for more info…


      Background:


      We had 4 services Sunday morning on the campus doing 7 nights of worship today.  We also already had a Saturday evening service.  The auditorium does seat 500 with 100 additional in a spillover room with a movable wall.  A year ago we started Wednesday and Friday nights.  In January we started Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday.  We transitioned Thursday from Youth only to Youth and adults.


      How we implemented:


      <ul><li>First, we re-defined success.  50 people is great!


      </li><li>We built separate teams for each night.  These teams of servant-leaders are overseeing first impressions, Tech, Greeters, Children, Prayer and Worship on their night.


      </li><li>A nursery is provided every night with 2 paid workers, but 3 nights currently feature a children’s program through elementary.


      </li><li>Thursday night featuers a separate teaching time for students


      </li><li>We identified godly men to be host pastors and we increased our lay pastor team (deacons) to help on each night.  Deacons are committed to a single night.


      </li><li>One of our staff pastors at least attends just about every night.


      </li><li>All elements of the service are live, except the message.  We generally do a video playback of the message delivered by our teach pastors the prior weekend.  Saturday is a live service starting the week of worship.  We do sometimes feature live teaching on the other nights.


      </li><li>We use black curtains and a different screen configuration along with table and chairs to create a coffee house atmosphere making the auditorium more intimate.  The space feels full with 50 people, but can be quickly adjusted up.  Some nights have 200 in attendance.


      </li></ul>


      In closing


      We felt led by God to do this to give people more options and times to worship and to continue creating capacity to reach our community.  We simply cannot afford to relocate and build a bigger building.  We are working toward a multi-site ministry model and we do have a campus in a neighboring city.  The teams on our nights are also a place where we can develop leaders for future campus starts.


      We are committed to making this work, but we are constantly re-assessing our progress.  We have grown our support staff significantly to help in this effort, but our reliance upon servant leaders in our church has helped tremendously.


      I hope we are able to add a few more staf members and more teaching pastors so we can do more live teaching on the nights, but we find video is working well.


      We’ve invested into our facilities in a major way to make this happen.  However, we started 6 congregations inside our existing facilities for the same cost of starting one campus.


      Visit http://www.cmsconsulting.org and search on “7 nights of worship” for prior posts on this topic.


      May God guide you in your ministry as he has us in ours.


      Kevin McCord


      http://www.7nightsofworship.com

    10. Kevin on Thu, April 19, 2007

      A quick follow up…


      We see many guests attending the nights.  We did not yet acheive our goal of 600 attendees and members leaving Sunday, but we are pleased at the response.  We see different people visiting our church on the nights.  Many single men (divorced dads) visit our nights.


      We are a church with 60 active nations of origin in attendance.  We already were a bit unusual int hat we don’t have a lot of programs.  We have a very basic ministry model.  We have children, youth, and small groups.  There are not auxilliary efforts happening like radio, TV, or a school.


      We already had a teaching team due to vocal cord problems experienced by our Founding Pastor. 


      So, we were uniquely positioned to adopt this form of ministry.  We are a 15 year old Baptist congregation.  We are part of the Southern Baptist Convention, but as you can see, we are a bit un-conventional.

    11. Leonard on Thu, April 19, 2007

      Is the theme song 8 days a week?  This is an awesome Idea, thanks for having the patience and courage to hear God’s plan for your local church.  May your tribe increase.

    12. Peter Hamm on Fri, April 20, 2007

      This sounds like it works well in theory, but in practice are there going to be some individuals who have an inordinate amount of responsibility an inordinate number of days pwer week?


      What happens when one or two of the teams gets thin with volunteers leaving? Can you possibly have good effective backup people in place for all those positions, like technical?


      I’m not ready to start applauding yet.

    13. Kevin on Fri, April 20, 2007

      That’s a very good point Peter.  It is one our pastoral team spends a lot of time considering.  Only time will truly tell if we can do this in a sustainable fashion.   We’ll know much more in a year’s time, but even then we’ll need 5 years to get this established.


      In part these nights of worship are separate congregations.  They manage their own needs like a new church plant.  In part we monitor and assist with their needs.  In theory (as you point out) they have the best of both worlds.


      We did hire an evening tech person as well as evening houskeeping and evening child-care.  These staff people compliment the volunteer teams.  We hope to hire an evening receptionist who will staff our small bookstore and answer phones. 


      It doesn’t take that much to put on a 50 person event.  Many churches have events throughout the week and churches with schools are even more committed to events throughout week days.  We don’t have that reality.



      There are three people currently doing more than we want them to do.  The Tech Director, The Worship Director, and the Facilities Director.  While we have hired assistants for each they can only transfer so much knowledge.



      I do want to agree, without any sarcasm, with your comment.  We aren’t ready to applaud anything yet either.  After two years of planning we found that most of our immediate concerns were fairly easy to address operationally by rethinking our expectations and releasing some of our resources and creativity.


      The real challenge is to find and enjoy the opportunities that come from having smaller, more intimate worship gatherings.  I can’t wait to see these congregations within our church begin to form an identity and develop some of their own ministry.  We are hoping to strke a balance between a single, united church and allowing each Night of Worship to express its own personality and style.


      On a final note we rely heavily on part time ministers and interns as well.  The intern program is new and growing, but we are putting a lot of energy behind it.  We’re starting a school for the arts to help us develop internal talent.  We also have a team concept for our ministries.  As an example, a church our size would probably have a full time children’s pastor or director.  We have three part-time children’s ministry team members one of whom is the director.  This model is applied in youth and worship as well.  3 people puting in 75 hours can cover a lot of our needs and do so in a way that one person putting in 50 hours could not.


      Forgive me for writing so much.  That’s partly just my personality and partly a reflection of how much time and thought we’ve invested into doing this thing God put on our hearts.


      Sincerely,


      Kevin McCord


      Administrative Pastor


      Church of Pembroke Pines

    14. Camey on Fri, April 20, 2007

      Kevin,


      Thank you for explaining more in detail about your church. More importantly, about being found faithful to do what God has laid upon your hearts. I look forward to hearing more about how it grows and stretches over time.


      One of the things that I truly value about what your church is attempting to do is with all the staff, volunteers, and such. I think there is much to be said for having so many faces that speak for a church instead of just one or two. Personally, I think the church stands to be much healthier.


      Okay. I must stop here or else I will have to ask for forgiveness as well. Thank you again for taking the time to explain. It was greatly encouraging to say the least. Praying for all there in Florida!


      Romans 15:13,


      Camey

    15. Gabrielle on Sat, April 21, 2007

      Nora, to address your concern of staff and lay leaders being exhausted…......as Facilities Director of the “7 Nights of Worship” church, I can tell you that we are so excited about what is happening at our church.  The feeling my team and I have is shear JOY!  It’s understandable that there would be concern about the serving members, but we are fueled by this concept and the possibilities of the outcome.


      It’s electrifying to be part of such an innovative endeavor!


      Gabi

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