Mount Olive Lutheran Church
Notes from Alternative Worship Discussion Sessions
held in June-July 2009
Subject of Discussion Sessions:
The following is a listing of the notes taken during discussion sessions on alternative worship that were held in June and July 2009. This summary has been assembled based on notes taken during the discussion phase. The scribes (note takers) present at those meetings did their best to record all opinions expressed during the meetings.
Notes from Discussion Sessions
80% of the people in this area don’t attend church. We need to target those people. I believe this worship service might do that.
I like the three services on Sunday’s. I’m concerned regarding the time constraints. If services are too close together, it gets very crazy.
Statistics have shown that when 80% of the pew seating is taken, it’s too crowded and people go elsewhere.
I believe it should be on Sunday’s. Time management will be very important and we will need to keep on schedule. Pastor Suellen will definitely need help and this additional expense needs to be budgeted for next year for sure.
Would a part-time person be enough help for Pastor Suellen? Maybe we should be budgeting for a full-time person.
I already consider our services informal. How much more informal can we be with the alternative worship service. No robes, more lei people participating in the service. Prayers would not be formal, more off the cuff.
Like the idea of just doing two services on Sunday, one traditional and one alternative. We could then see how it goes.
We should go with the statistics and go with the three services on Sunday. Sunday is a day for worship. I don’t want to loose fellowship time as they currently don’t participate in adult education.
Having two services on a Sunday wouldn’t solve the problem. Saturday evening doesn’t sound like it would be well attended. Concerned regarding alternative worship service as there are already other churches that offer one. Can we get them into our services instead of one of the other churches?
I think we need to have the services on Sunday. I understand the time crunch is a concern. The logistics of parking, education hour etc. concerns them more.
Sunday has always been the day for worship and I believe it should stay that way. Parking situation can be eliminated just by cutting down tree in lot next door and expanding parking lot.
“I like the idea of having the third service on Sunday, but I am concerned regarding the time crunch with 3 services and trying to fit fellowship and Sunday school.”
A statistic (no reference provided to validate) that “People shy away from a service when 80% of the available space is taken.”
“Agree that all the services should be on Sunday. We need to change the service times to allow time for other activities on Sunday. We will need an additional pastor to add a service.
Question: “Would a second pastor be enough if the second pastor is only part-time”. (No definitive answer provided as this would be a separate topic for HR and council)
Question: “We talk about the alternative worship service being “informal”. How much more informal will this be from the current service, which is already informal? (Pastor addressed question with examples)
Question: “How long will the alternative service be?” (Pastor suggested that it could be as short as 45 minutes)
“My preference is to have all the services on Sunday.”
“We need a 3rd service regardless of whether the service is an alternative or traditional worship style, and we need the staff to do it.”
“I think we should have just two services, and see if the alternative worship service has enough interest.”
“I would prefer to add the third service on Sunday evening so that all the services are on Sunday. I would prefer that the third service be on Sunday evening so that the morning schedule can remain unchanged. I don’t want to be rushed by squeezing services (all three) into the morning.”
“I would prefer all three services on Sunday morning, but I am concerned about bible study.”
“A 7:45 service is too early. This is especially true for families with children that prefer the earlier service.”
“I feel as though we need to have the service on Sunday. What gets in the way for me are all the logistics issues that this will create. People will come to church regardless of the time offered, but I am concerned about whether there will be time for fellowship, time for bible study, parking spaces available with a compressed schedule of services (the “logistics”). Set a time and let’s go…..that will force us to deal with the logistics issues.”
“I definitely agree with the sentiment that we should have 3 services on Sunday; Sunday is church day”.
When will the services be (on Sunday)? Don't get hung up on exact times. Set-up, fellowship time and education hour will tweak the starting times.
What were the results of the dialog phase? Core values of our members were evident. Members were concerned with education, families at worship and fellowship time.
The minister's role in a church is to preach the word of God and administer the sacraments. Other aspects of a service are just extras.
Research shows Sunday is the day people wish to attend church. They feel a good time is 9 or 9:30 a.m. Filling Sunday first is a priority. Only 10% would attend a Sat. evening service, for instance.
Mount Olive is moving from a pastoral church where the minister physically handles the ministerial responsibilities to a program church because of our growing numbers. The pastor in a program church becomes a trainer and leader to lay members. We're staffed at the present time for membership decline.
We're dedicated to education. This must be protected for children and adults. Education will be protected. It might spread out to other days or weeks of the month.
What concerns became apparent as members imagine 3 services?
Will there be a sermon and a Gospel reading? Yes
What about parking? We basically own the whole block the church and barn are on.
Will we have enough volunteers to man 3 services? This will be a great opportunity to get more members involved. Many people wait to be asked instead of volunteering.
Are we really running out of room? Yes. When a church is 80% full for a service, it is perceived to be full. Members and visitors don't want to be stuffed into the pews.
Would this put a strain on our pastor? Yes, Pastor Suellen cannot officiate 3 services on a weekend.
MTO is here for people who aren't here, so a time close to 9:00 am becomes logical
Fellowship and education draws us to church.
Do we have the financial means to add staff? Yes, currently a 50% position is included in the budget.
What would the dynamics be for an alternative service? An easier to follow service with a sermon and sacraments. Some of the extras wouldn't be present. Songs would be upbeat. Words for songs would be on a screen. It could probably be a shorter service.
An alternative service might bring in the "drop and run" parents who just drop off their children for Sunday School.
Three services will cause each service to make some adjustments. Sunday School and adult education times will be readjusted also.
Alternative worship parents may want their children at worship with them. Will they have to choose? Not necessarily. Options could have children in the sanctuary at the beginning and/or end of the service.
The staffing issue is too big. We can't burn out our pastor. Let's change one of our 2 services to alternative worship.
We have funds to hire a part-time clergy person. We need a leap of faith to move forward and will need to be creative to get this up and running without new fulltime staffing.
Staffing has to be figured out first.
If alternative worship service will be shorter, maybe it should be the first service on Sunday morning to help free up minutes for later in the morning.
Let's add a 3rd traditional service to bring back inactive members.
If we're going to add a 3rd service, it might as well be an alternative service to give people a choice. Statistics show that inactive members will not necessarily come back to their former church. Perhaps we should exchange members lists with sister congregations.
We cannot take a worship service away from the members who are attending an early or late service. We can only add.
Maybe we should eliminate Sunday School and make our services more educational. Children could sing favorite songs in the front of the church. The children's sermon could be a bible story and parents could spend the church time together.
My young adult daughter became very excited thinking and talking about how wonderful and inspiring an alternative worship could be.
We are here for the people who aren’t here. If prime time is 930, then that would seem the logical time to add a service for the people we are trying to reach.
I fell like one of the things that drew me to this church is the fellowship. The prime time for that is between the services. The education is also very important. So, then you would have to choose if you wanted to do the alternative service or the education.
I’m still struggling with the logistics of having three services on a Sunday. I also wonder budgetarily can we “staff up” to handle another service. Will that cost be offset by the increased people. It is a good idea to have this other service, but do we have the honest true means to do this at this time in Mount Olive.
I also wonder if we have the means to do that. Do we end up falling behind because we are overstretching with the third service?
I am strongly against having to choose between being in church with my children and education hour. I would feel sad to be in church without my kids.
I think when we discuss alternative worship and the education hour, that we have included some time for the children in the alternative service.
Is it possible to send a questionnaire to the entire congregation about how it would change the dynamics? Like if we went to two services instead of three? Pastor Suellen – this is the “questionnaire” so that a face to face discussion can happen instead of writing things that you wouldn’t say in person. We want to foster open communication.
We are talking about when to add an alternative service. Since I usher and “count heads”, we are rapidly approaching the point where we would have to add a 3rd service no matter what we do.
I don’t want to get lost is choosing between church and education. If we hadn’t started dropping off our children off at Sunday school we wouldn’t have started going to the adult ed classes. Can’t we start trying to do something to keep those “drop and run” parents?
Clarifying question from Pastor Suellen: would you be attending the alternative service and still wanting to attend with your children? Yes – we would probably want to attend the alternative service, but also would want to have our children in Sunday school and church.
Having gone through a space expansion with another church, I know that if you get to 75% of the space capacity, you do look full. That brings us back to adding another service. We are like every church – our finances are in a precarious balance. We continually make appeals for money. When can you no longer do that without giving and getting a negative impression?
I do not have the solution for the education hour and how to appease most of the members. My strongest opinion is to have the contemporary service in the middle. If we changed one of the other services to an alternative service I think it is a danger for us.
I feel like there is some “wiggle room” since the alternative service could be shorter that would also give is some time for additional fellowship.
It is an interesting dilemma. Whatever happens is you can’t please everybody. The main thing holding us back is the staffing issue. I don’t see anyway we can do this without having more staff. Without additional staff we would need to replace a service. If we could solve the staffing issue it would ease our minds, but with the economy I don’t know how we could do it.
We have built into our mission plan funds for an additional part-time person. There are all sorts of creative things we can do – like refinancing. We have to have faith. We took a leap of faith when we bought the property next door. We’ve been able to do things in this congregation. We can say to our finance people that we need to make this happen.
I’m wondering if everyone is leaning toward 3 services, if the alternative would attract more families, what if we had it 1st? Then people could come to a traditional service at 9?
If we are trying to reach the un-churched, and statistics show the time to reach them is 9-930, then if we offered the service earlier would we really reach them?
I really appreciate that pastor said she couldn’t do 3 services, so we really have to look at staffing. I understand that it take a lot of time to do the switch between the traditional and alternative services that has to be worked out.
It seems to be from all the facts that there should be a third service. Maybe we should concentrate on getting a third service first and then work on an alternative service. Pastor Suellen – why not diversify.
Just thinking about bringing the family into church and into the service. I struggled with that. But then I think about this and tweak our education hour so that we can offer things at staggered times?
The thing that I loved about when I went to a contemporary service with a friend was the people. They really got into it. We need to do that.
I think we need to do 3 services, but the logistics and staffing is the stumbling block.
Is 730 too early to start the early service?
I think all of the services should be alternative.
Remember that some of the visioning money is going towards more mission.
I’m all for the alternative service. But, I will say that I don’t see that an alternative service is something to bring in the un-churched. We are growing. The alternative service is a plus. For our teenagers to continue coming here that would be fantastic. If it would bring other people, great. Or would it just mix it up a little with those that is here that’s great too.
If we put the alternative service between the other two, it would allow those at the traditional services to see and meet those at the alternative service; this would enhance fellowship.
Volunteers already often go to more than one service on a Sunday; putting both types of services on the same day would be good for them because they could attend both types.
If we put the alternative service at 9:15, would the 10:30 service phase out? A possible scenario is that so many people would enjoy the 9:15 alternative service that attendance would dwindle at the 10:30 traditional/blend service. Space would still be an issue. If the 10:30 service declines, we could decide what to do about it at that time. We do seem to need three services.
Why 9:15 for the alternative service? Research indicates that people are most likely to show up at that time.
We don’t want to take either service away. Some comments such as, “If they take my service away, I’m leaving,” have been heard from members. A 9:15 slot for the alternative service seems to be a good compromise.
It’s difficult to have an opinion without enough information regarding specifics. How would an alternative 9:15 service work with the education hour?
Families would be prime candidates for the alternative service- we would still have options for what to do. We need to keep the sense of welcoming kids in worship.
Some churches have kids in the worship service, then the kids leave for a certain part (to attend Sunday School), and then return at the end of the service. Or, we could keep the children in the service for the whole time.
Details of Sunday School have not yet been worked out; we have to grow into it to see how it would work.
Services can phase out. Alternative services often grow to be the biggest service at other churches.
Perhaps the 8:00 service would be very traditional (no Praise Team, for example). A possible Sunday schedule could be Traditional Service/Alternative Service/Blended Service, each at its own time.
Some people don’t think that there is a reason to have a third service. What’s working now is fine, so why change?
The alternative service at 9:15 would get young people involved in the electronics, singing, etc. It would be fun for young people and encourage involvement. The service would work at any time, but a 9:15 time would allow getting to know those at the other services.
With a 9:15 alternative service, the worshippers would see everybody else. Fellowship and family are always important.
Adding it as a third service on Sunday at 9:15 sounds good, but logistics such as parking need to be worked out.
I like the idea of an alternative service at 9:15. Music and God is epic. The possibilities are exciting. Teenagers would be into it because it would be modern and relaxed.
There are pastoral staffing issues, which the council is exploring. This would be on the horizon regardless of the alternative worship plans.
If we put the alternative service at 9:15, we need to address the issue of education. But, we are not taking anything away. We are adding something, and families need to make choices about what is best for them.
In a Program Church, there should be multiple things to do at the same time. Choices can be made about participating in different services and activities.
Perhaps weeknight evening study groups, for example, could fill the role of education, or classes could be held at 8:00 and 9:15. Kids Club-type activities could take place on weekdays.
A Program Church mindset is open to new possibilities, and not all of them will happen on Sunday mornings.
The Saturday service originally seemed like a good idea, but, with data showing that only 10% of a congregation generally attends on a Saturday, my mind was changed. Maybe we could add another day for worship in the future.
Services on other days of the week are generally not well-attended.
For those who are often out of town on Sundays and would like to have a service on another day of the week, attending services elsewhere (in the town in which you are visiting on Sunday) is still an option.
The 3 services on Sunday schedule will allow for fellowship between early service and alt. worship and again between alt. worship and late service. We'd have a chance to meet new prospective members.
The 3 services on Sunday with its compacted time schedule will allow members to attend more than one service on Sun.
I'm concerned for parents choosing worship with their children or having them go to Sunday School.
Could we make alternative worship become a family worship service where children stay and become part of the service?
There could be 3 very distinct services:
Very traditional with the service coming out of the red hymnal
Alternative worship with praise team type music and a casual service
Traditional/blended service like we have now
Our 2 services work now so why change it?
Alternative worship could be more appealing to our youth. They would have input into the service and could help with the technical aspects. It could become joyful and vibrant.
It's very exciting to be growing, but what about parking?
Aren't we going to need more volunteers and more staff?
As we move from a pastoral church to a program church because of our growing numbers, we will have more options for adults and children so they don't have to choose. We want to add, not subtract programs. This can include adding small groups for children as well as adults. This could happen on Sunday, morning or evening or during the week.
I like the idea of a service not being on a Sunday morning, but not if only 10% of our members would attend. This might have to wait until we are even bigger.
A former church had a Monday evening service for those who don't like getting up early on Sunday morning.
I feel that one of the things that drew us here to Mount Olive is the fact that the Education hour is between the services. It would be hard to choose between the education hour and a shorter worship service for families with kids.
I struggle with 3 services on Sunday, with the logistics and stress on Pastor. Budgetarily, do we have the means to increase staff? Will the increase in membership make up for the cost of staffing. Do we have everything together to put on an alternative worship?
Do we have the means or the membership? Having children in worship is so important to me. I want to be in church with the kids for the whole time.
When we discuss alternative worship and the education hour, it is important that Sunday School children could be with their parents.
What about sending out a questionnaire to the congregation with various worship times and asking them how it would change their worship dynamics?
If we have the 3rd service at 9:15, we would lose the Adult study hour. But can we do more for the “Drop and Run” Sunday School parents?
Having gone through space expansion at a previous congregation, 70% of the legal seating capacity is the maximum seating. Above that people find it unpleasant to join.
I do not have the solution for the education hour, but feel that the middle service should be the alternative service. If you change either existing service, I feel it will be very difficult.
It is an interesting dilemma. It appears to me that the main thing holding us back is the staffing issue and the possibility of burning out Pastor. Option now would be to put alternative worship in an existing worship and then solve the staffing issue.
I am on the Finance Team and I believe there is money for some type of part-time staffing. It takes faith to leap forward. Our debt is currently at $250,000, which has been halved in 2 years. We have been able to do things and if we put our heads together, we can come up with some creative financing.
The alternative service would be shorter and would attract more families. What if we change the 8:00 service to the alternative service and keep the education hour at 9:15, with a 9:15 traditional service?