The concluding post to the series on Sunday evening worship.

My memory of the second service is mostly of popcorn. 

My home church, Jubilee Fellowship, held an evening service until 2008, when I was in Grade 11. Which meant I spent most evening services in the church basement at “Kids Church,” either as a kid, or as a teenager corralling those kids.

I say “corralling” intentionally, because the reality of Kids Church, as I remember it, was of mild chaos. Unlike the morning’s Sunday School, there was no lesson or curriculum plan. Just a room full of rowdy kids, a Veggie Tales movie, and bags of microwave popcorn. 

The popcorn was popped in the kitchen upstairs, which was right off the back of the sanctuary. One Sunday, examiners from the classis showed up to listen to the sermon of our incoming pastor, a candidate for ministry. That Sunday my friend and I were in charge of the popcorn, and we felt no end of pride when we found out a few weeks later that the examiners had commented in their feedback that the smell of buttery popcorn had predisposed them to a favourable review.  

As in many churches, the second service at Jubilee was sparsely attended, ever more so as the years went by. I feel quite fondly towards those 5pm services. When I imagine myself in the sanctuary at night, I remember it feeling homier than it did in the morning. There was a feeling of camaraderie and community within that smaller group of people. 

The smaller group meant two things: an informality and the possibility to try new things, but also a more limited set of volunteers. Jubilee has always been a more contemporary church – in my childhood this meant guitar-led singing of hit songs like “Shine, Jesus Shine,” “Shout to the North,” and “Lord of the Dance” during morning worship, beamed on the wall from an overhead projector sat in the middle aisle. 

On Sunday nights we often only had a pianist, which meant that almost everything we sang came from the hymnal. Sunday evenings were thus a strange combination of being more informal than the morning service, but also more traditional. 

Except when AsOne led worship. AsOne was our in-house contemporary worship band, complete with bass, electric guitar, and drums, and starting in the early 2000s, they led worship in the evening service once a month. When the second service ended, they migrated into the morning service, and over time the worship band became the default style of musical leadership. 

I don’t have any memories of sermons from the second services. . . probably because I was often downstairs under the tutelage of Bob the Tomato instead. Before writing this blog, I emailed my childhood pastor asking him what he remembered of the second service, and his first word in response was to say that the question made his heart rate increase. Writing two sermons a week, he said, fits in the category of “unrealistic expectations.”

Having never had to write two sermons a week, I’ve always thought this an outrageous feat. I’m glad if, come Friday, I have one sermon I feel reasonably good about preaching. To try and shorten that work into 2.5 days and then crank out another sermon in another 2.5 days. . .on top of everything else a pastor is supposed to be doing…I can’t imagine feeling good about any sermon, ever. 

And yet. . . I have wondered how much more ground I could cover with an extra 52 sermons each year. I’m not one for topical sermons, preferring to preach lectionary texts or work my way through a multi-week series on a book of the Bible. But there is a need for teaching on certain topics that you can’t always get to through the lectionary, and that can be taught better when you have a bit more flexibility in preaching style. 

My conflicting feelings are perhaps best summed up by a conversation I had with my parents last week, asking them their feelings about the second service. My mom, who, as church administrator, went to the second service faithfully, if slightly grudgingly, quipped, “I always thought having two services was as logical as going to the grocery story and going through the first five aisles and then going back later in the day and doing the last five aisles.” To which my dad replied, “But if the Heidelberg Catechism is in the last five aisles, if you don’t go back, you’ll miss something.”

I suppose the solution is to put the Catechism in the first five aisles too. . . but there’s only so much you can do in a morning service expected to only last one hour and fifteen minutes! 

In the end, the second service was canned at Jubliee Fellowship, in favour of Life Groups – small groups that met every other Sunday evening to discuss the morning’s sermon and fellowship together. More people participated in Life Groups than attended the second service, and some of these groups are still going strong!

I’m glad those groups continue. . . because what I remember most about the second service is how it shaped the day. A typical Sunday consisted of church, going to the home of a friend for the afternoon, going back to church at 5pm with their family, singing hymns and eating popcorn, and then heading home for pizza.

In the late 90s/early 2000s, our sabbaths weren’t very strict – we could watch TV and play games and have adventures – but having a second service meant what you could do in a day was somewhat limited. In an age of productivity expectations and FOMO, such a limitation would be, for many of us, a gift. As it is, I still often make popcorn and watch a movie on Sunday nights – just minus the singing French Peas.