Help! Do You Know of Any Large Churches Who’ve Recently Added Saturday Night Services?
- Posted by: Todd
- Posted on: Thu, February 22, 2007
- Viewed 218
- (40) comments so far
And, one more thing; while we’re on the topic of “Saturday Night” services… Does your church (or are there churches in your area who) have a Saturday night service? How well are they attended? Are they strong or week in your community?
Please take a couple moments to share your leads and experiences.
Warren thanks you. I think you… the whole world thanks you (well, at least a few of us in the world appreciate it!) 
Thanks,
Todd
I've been asked by my friend and fellow Leadership Network colleague to pass on this question. We're looking for any large churches that used to hold Sunday only services that have recently added a Saturday night service. There is a church of a couple thousand who is hoping to make the leap, and would like to talk with similar churches who have already done so. Are there any churches in your area who fit into this category? If so, could you please help?
Comments
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JHPW on Thu, February 22, 2007
Our church used to have Saturday night service as our only weekend service. I believe we were the only ones in the community doing this. However, we are not a large congregation, and we had so many of our people with conflicts with school sporting events much of the year, that it was taking too big of a toll on attendance. We have returned to Sunday morning, but hope to revisit this again someday as we grow.
Dave Kendall on Thu, February 22, 2007
My church isn’t a “large” one (around 400), at least not by “megachurch” standards, but we are in the same boat- we are looking into adding a Saturday night service sometime in the next year or so.
We’re located in a rural community an hour east of Cincy so there aren’t many other churches in my immediate vicinity that have Saturday night services, however there are a handful in Cincinnati. Here are three that i know of:
Vineyard- Cincinnati
Eastside Christian Church
Crossroads Community Church
I have attended the first two during a Saturday service and they were both attended pretty well. Vineyard is probably around 70% capacity. Eastside interestingly started with a Saturday night service, did away with it for a year or so and then just recently added it back. I’m not sure the reasoning, but I’m guessing there must have been some growing interest. I’m happy for the change because it allows me to go and “spy” on them on Saturday night while still attending my home church on Sunday morning. They had a lower attendance, but considering they just added it a couple months ago, i thought it was a good showing.
Anyway, I hope this was a little help.
Jeff Wilson on Thu, February 22, 2007
We added a Saturday night service just over a year ago due to space needs. We average around 450-500 in attendance. That would include adults and students in the service and preschool and children in childcare. We are evaluating the service next week to see if we feel led to continue it and if so how we can make some changes to increase the attendance.
We currently average 2800-3000 on a typical weekend. LifeChurch.tv is our neighbor, so you can say Saturday night services are strong in our community.
Big Chris on Thu, February 22, 2007
It has been a while since they added Saturday night services, but one that is doing it well is Eagle Brook Church - a multi-site church in Lino Lakes and White Bear Lake Minnesota. http://www.eaglebrookchurch.com/index.html Eagle Brook Church opened their Lino Lakes campus December 3/4th 2005 and have been growing at a remarkable rate. They had a big campaign before they opened their new campus trying to convince people to move to Saturday night services. It was called “It’s alright I went Saturday night!” and they had a them song, video and drama presentations to encourage people to move, weekly explanations on why there was a need and so on. Bob Merritt is the Senior Pastor, Dale Peterson is the Ex. Pastor and Scott Anderson is the Executive Director of Operations. Since the mid 90’s they have gone from a 300ish person church to this Easter they will push 12-15,000 people I would guess.
Big Chris
http://mrclm.blogspot.com
djchuang on Thu, February 22, 2007
Well, I’ve started indexing churches in the metro Washington DC area that have Saturday night worship services, for the occasions when I want to attend a worship service to accommodate my travel schedule or what not. My list has churches of all sizes, at: http://www.djchuang.com/2006/evening-worship-around-washington-dc/
brett maxwell on Thu, February 22, 2007
<a href=“http://www.eriv.net>Riverview Church</a> near Lansing, MI has 2 Saturday night services and 3 Sunday morning. The first Saturday service was added 3.5 years ago, and the second a year or two ago. We have 2000+ each weekend and I would estimate the two Saturday services are at 70% of capacity, whereas two of the Sunday services are at full (or over) capacity.
Dan on Thu, February 22, 2007
Hey I was going to post, but Brett, fellow Riverviewer, already did. Anyway I met you briefly at the multi-site conference with my co-pastor Noel Heikkinen. Our saturday services, like Brett said have about 300+ each of the two services. We’d love to talk to your friend.
hope that helps!
Dan
Steve Hawthorne on Thu, February 22, 2007
Hey there! I’m worship pastor at a church of 2000 in north jersey. We added a Saturday night service due to space issues about a year ago. While it is growing, it HAS taken some time to catch on. it is currently our second least attended service (the worst being the traditional service). We do a duplication of our contemporary Sunday morning service. Everything is the same, except we need a larger children’s ministry on Saturdays. with that in place, we believe it will take off. We have had a lot of great feedback about it, and have heard many comments about how it helps those with fluctuating schedules, and especially those with kids in sports, etc.
feel free to drop me a note if you have any questions! [removed]
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thanks!
Jan on Fri, February 23, 2007
The Grove in Riverside, CA has a Saturday 5 p.m. service that used to be very successful.
http://thegrove.cc/ (haven’t been there in several years)
Magnolia Avenue Baptist Church also in Riverside, ditched their Saturday service for lack of success. http://www.magonline.com
Chris on Fri, February 23, 2007
Waterloo Pentecostal Assembly in Waterloo, ON
http://www.watpen.org
Jonathan K. on Fri, February 23, 2007
I live in the Oklahoma City/Edmond area, and while LifeChurch.tv has long had Saturday evening services (two of them), in the past year or so Henderson Hills Baptist (http://www.hhbc.com) has added at least one Saturday evening service, and Victory Church w/Pastor Mark Crow has gone from one Saturday night service to two of them.
Most recently, People’s Church (http://www.peopleschurch.tv) has added at least one or two Saturday night services, and they have almost 2000 people there, reaching megachurch size.
Personally, I have friends and acquaintances who attend these churches, but I attend a smaller church of about 120 people in Edmond. We do not have a Saturday night service, but I know the Saturday night services at the 4 churches I mentioned above are very well-attended, in addition to normal attendance on Sunday mornings. We are looking to go to double services at some point in the future because of church growth, but that’s a difference subject.
Blessings,
Jonathan
Bryan on Fri, February 23, 2007
We are a church of 650 in worship attendance located in a small town of 4,000 in rural Missouri. We presently run two Saturday evening services at 5:30 and 7:15 and three Sunday morning services at 8:00, 9:30 and 11:15. Our auditorium seats about 200-225, so the multiple services are necessary to allow us to grow. We, too, were somewhat concerned that Saturday evenings wouldn’t catch on since no one else (except the Catholics) does Saturdays in our area, but the first one (5:30) has been wildly successful for more than a year, prompting us to add the 7:15 three weeks ago. So far, so good. We’ve made a big deal out of promoting this as a viable option and lots of young families particularly enjoy it so they don’t have to get the kids up another morning of the week. The Saturday services are identical in content to our 9:30 and 11:15 Sunday services (fully contemporary) and are complete with children’s ministry for all ages. It’s been a great experiment and very rewarding! Now we have no idea what we’d do without Saturdays—even if we did have enough space to fit everyone in on Sunday. The people love it!
Scott on Fri, February 23, 2007
Our church has done Sat nights for a long time. But we’ve recently converted it to more of a “coffee house” feel (simple guitar, bongo, bass, singer worship) with round tables, low lights, candles - and more interactive discussion rather than uni-directional message.
It’s gaining in attendance. The passion behind the move is to offer journey stop for people to process the gospel into their 7 day-a-week lives.
We’re not big (200+), but I thought I’d pass along the info.
Rob on Fri, February 23, 2007
We ( http://www.rivervalleychurch.org ) have been doing a Saturday night service for three years and this weekend we will be adding a second Saturday service because of space issues on Sundays. When we added the Saturday service we faced the staffing and work load issues and gave all of the pastors an extra weekend off each quarter. They are allowed to miss work, but they need to attend at least one service at another church. It keeps them fresh and lets them see other churches.
Saturdays have been a huge success for us and if you can get the momentum going I say go for it! One other church I know that is doing Saturday nights well is Rock Harbor in California.
Randy Elster on Sat, February 24, 2007
We tried a Saturday night service without success for a couple of years here at NorthStar Church in metro Atlanta. We ditched it and went back to just three Sunday. I think there are things we would do differently if we tried again. I think it’s best to offer all the programming you have Sunday morning on Saturday night as well…PLUS more. Otherwise Saturday night will be seen as the ugly stepchild of Sunday morning. If you can pull it off, offer two on Saturday night. That way the average attender can attend one of them and serve during the other hour. And back to the PLUS part….do something that makes it compelling for people to come to a Saturday night service vs. Sunday morning, esp. in neighborhoods where this is a new concept.
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