New Order of Service
22 09 2008The month between our last preview service and our Launch was used for rearranging the Sunday Morning schedule. Based on some of the feedback we received from guests at our preview services as well as, and more importantly, an enhanced direction from God we revamped the service order.
Previously we had a pretty traditional order of service. We started with a welcome, followed by about 25 minutes of worship through music, followed by about a 30 minute sermon, followed by an invitation and offering. Life Groups then came after the worship service.
At LCC we are all about creating Connections between people (as our name indicates). What we were finding in our preview services though is that people would come for the service, get kind of tired after a 30 minute message, and then go home afterwards skipping Life Groups altogether which is an important part of the whole making connections. So with new inspiration from God the new order of service drops Life Groups right into the middle of the service! Here’s the new order of service…
10:00 - 10:15: Fellowship time as people arrive
10:15 - 10:40: Worship Set I includes welcome and pre-invitation
10:40 - 11:00: Message, Part I
11:00 - 11:30: Life Groups
11:30 - 11:40: Message, Part II (More about application)
11:40 - 11:55: Worship Set II includes invitation and offering
Weird, huh??
What this really does is create a time for more in depth focus on the scripture and message in smaller groups while the topic is fresh in the mind. Life Groups take place right in the worship center. When the chairs are setup in the morning we set them up in ‘clusters’ to accommodate smaller groups of about 20 - 30 people with a discussion leader.
Some of the initial feedback after the first week of this is that people like the Life Groups right in the middle of the service. One comment said ‘I always have questions about the sermon that I want to ask the pastor, and with the life groups there in middle I was able to actually ask the pastor in the middle of the sermon!’ That was the Nick’s paraphrased version of the comment, but it gives the general idea.
We do still have some work to do on the new format and everything, but it’s off to a great start.
Have you ever seen anything like this? We haven’t but are curious if other churches are doing something like this so that we might be able to learn from them. Leave a comment if you know of other churches who do something like this.
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So, with the Life Groups during the morning gathering what are y’all doing to keep the ‘connection’ thru the week? Our Share Groups happen throughout the week and the leaders keep the focus on the sermon topic that was shared during the previous week.
There a couple of aspects to keeping the connection through the week.
The first part is through visitation of first and second time guests. The connection part for members and regular attenders comes through what we call ‘Connection Groups.’ These are the mid-week counterpart to ‘Life Groups.’ These will be smaller home groups (10 - 15 people) that dive into other ’special’ topics. These groups likely wont be completely tied to Sunday’s message, but will serve other aspects of spiritual growth as well as for fellowship. Since we are a new church plant we are still working on the Connection Group piece and will actually be launching those in January.