Starting a New Worship Service

• When your attendance fills 50-80% of your sanctuary’s seating.
• When you want to reach a new group of people.

Barriers to overcome

• The desire to be one congregation; to know everyone.
• Thefear of the new service changing the old one/s (e.g. choir no longerparticipating each week, some people no longer attending the olderservice, having to change the time of the older service).

Steps to take

• Clarify why you are starting another service.
• Clarify your target group.
• Recruit a planning team that is made up of a majority of people that is like this target group.
• Design a service that is tailored to the target group.
• Determine the time, place, and proper attire for participants.
• Recruitleadership, especially music and child care (if the target group haschildren). Leadership should be similar (e.g. in age, education,economic level, culture, etc.) to the target group.
• Set your initial attendance goal and develop a marketing strategy to meet that goal.
• Develop an intentional visitor follow-up and assimilation strategy.

Rules of Thumb

• The majority of churches adding an alternative service experience at least a 20% worship increase.
• The best time to reach most unchurched people is still Sunday morning.
  1. The majority of mainline attendees prefer services that end by noon.
  2. Typicallyif the service is targeting charismatics, Hispanics, orAfrican-Americans, services can be over an hour; otherwise, thepreference commonly is sixty minutes.
  3. Few parents with small children arrive at church before 9:00am.
  4. Early services--8:00 to 8:30am--attract more senior adults.
  5. College students and young singles prefer services scheduled at 10:30am or later.
  6. Unchurchedyoung couples with preschool children show up in larger numbers at"contemporary" worship services scheduled simultaneous with Sundayschool.
• The best time to start a new service is anytime between September 1st and the first Sunday of Advent.
• Changing worship schedules each summer (even in smaller churches) will result in a lower overall worship average.
• Most non-Sunday morning services (in Protestant churches) will average no more than 50 people.
• Saturday-night services tend to attract:
  1. older persons who like a slower pace,
  2. childless couples,
  3. pilgrims, seekers, searchers,
  4. young never-married adults,
  5. two-church couples,
  6. recent empty-nesters,
  7. former Roman Catholics (typically 30% of those who attend).
• However, one out of six unchurched adults work on Sundays (according to George Barna).
• Worshipattendance will typically drop 50% the second week of a new service(especially if you rely on telemarketing to do the initial inviting).
• Dependingon your sanctuary’s size and community, the minimum needed to launch aservice that will grow is between 100 and 400 people. (These figureswill drop to between 50 and 200 initially.)
• The younger your target group...
  1. the larger the initial service’s attendance must be,
  2. the more important (and louder) the music is,
  3. the faster paced and more visual (few readings, more drama, dance, & video) the service must be,
  4. the more casual the service must be (including dress),
  5. the more celebrative (as opposed to meditative) the service must be,
  6. the more expressive and participatory the service must be.

Experiences of Other Churches

• Sometimes the leadership (including for the music) emerges after the service is launched.
• Usingprofessionally-produced music accompaniment (e.g. CD’s or I Worship) inlieu of a live band or a keyboardist has been done successfully.
• Churches have successfully started new services without existing members (or choirs) participating.

Resources

• Use of song lyrics: Christian Copyright Licensing, Inc. (CCLI)
• Use of video clips: Motion Picture Licensing Corp. (MPLC)
• Book on starting new services, entitled How to Start a New Service, by Charles Arn (Baker Books, 1996).
• A workshop on successfully launching new worship services is offered each January by Ed Fenstermacher. Check the Ministry Development brochure for dates/times.