The Mid-week Service

The Sunday evening service is pretty much a thing of the past. This was generally the time where the dedicated Christians pressed in closer to God and expected to be moved by the Holy Spirit's prompting. I'm not sure if it's because people got too busy to attend or the generations that came are largely gone. In any case, there's been a shifting of priorities. And it may lead to a loss of the mid-week service.

My church has dedicated workers who serve in children's ministries, week after week and year after year. The flannel story boards went away decades ago. In their place are contemporary teaching methods and the use of technology. Our kid attendance is actually going up on Sundays, but has been crashing on Wednesdays. Are parents burned out working to keep a roof over their heads and putting food on the table, not to mention helping their kids with their homework? I get it, but the kids are really missing out.

I'm getting ready to sit down with our workers to discuss a possible remedy...Web Wednesday. Right Now Media has hundreds of quality, Christ-centered videos for kids. What if we made them the core of Wed night classes? For the kids who actually come to church, they also get activities, games and hand's-on Bible time. And the kids who stay home - at least they see the same video that the other kids watched.

We still have a mid week service. It consist of adult Bible study. (my kids are the youngest people in the church at ages 22 & 20) so no childrens programs needed.

Admin wrote:

I'm getting ready to sit down with our workers to discuss a possible remedy...Web Wednesday. Right Now Media has hundreds of quality, Christ-centered videos for kids. What if we made them the core of Wed night classes? For the kids who actually come to church, they also get activities, games and hand's-on Bible time. And the kids who stay home - at least they see the same video that the other kids watched.

Of the 3 ladies who teach kids on Wed night, two are former teachers and the other is a biologist. Hmm. What if homework plays into the reason why so many parents don't bring their kids to church on Wednesday? What if they could drop them off a little early for some quality tutoring? I could help, too.

A couple of years back, because of the COVID scam, kids could only go to school two days a week. (It might have been worse in your area.) The rest of the time, they did online work away from school. At our church, we hosted kids on their "non-school" days and helped them with their work. It was a major help to the parents. And we got a very close look at the lame curriculum. I remember thinking how far behind academically the kids were getting. I doubt they've caught up yet.

Admin wrote:

I'm getting ready to sit down with our workers to discuss a possible remedy...Web Wednesday. Right Now Media has hundreds of quality, Christ-centered videos for kids. What if we made them the core of Wed night classes? For the kids who actually come to church, they also get activities, games and hand's-on Bible time. And the kids who stay home - at least they see the same video that the other kids watched.

Met with the teachers today and found out something interesting. The kids that do attend on Wednesdays all come from broken homes, so they show up every other week. The ladies just plan on teaching the same lesson for two weeks, so it works out well that way.

But what to do with those kids who rarely, if ever, attend? The teachers feel that providing them with an online lesson option will only give their parents an excuse not to consider bringing them in person. There's some validity to that. Kind of like the COVID adults who never resumed going to church. I also floated the "homework tutors" parental incentive, but it fell flat. So did picking up the kids ourselves - too much liability.

The ladies did suggest another idea: asking the pastor to consider using his weekly e-mail to highlight the importance of bringing their kids. Many parents don't realize that one hour on Sunday just isn't enough to counteract what the culture does to them.

Although I think that Wednesdays will eventually go the way of the Sunday night service, I'm not ready to give up. But I hate to think that an entertainment extravaganza may be the only thing that can catch their attention.

MID-WEEK LAUNCH.

A few years back, I added a cavalry fort theme to what the ladies were teaching on Wednesdays. Everybody had fun with it. And then we put on a VBS with off-the-shelf curriculum, which was a huge success. I remember standing next to the pastor on the last day, asking "What about next year?" He suggested going with the cavalry. So, we wrote our own program and have used the cavalry/protecting the settlers theme in three different historical periods since then. Next year will be Space Station Challenge.

As far as children's ministries go, our VBS programs have become our signature dish - what we'ere known for inside and outside of the church. So, why not expand our signature dish year-round? We can still use the ladies' choice in curriculum, but the activities, games and crafts would be space-related. I could even bring a telescope from time to time. And beyond our own kids, what if we made it known to all the unchurched kids who have attended our VBS camps?

Waiting to hear back from the ladies.