Make Evening Worship Great Again!
February 29, 2024
Dear CPC Family,
Beginning this Sunday, CPC will expand from monthly to weekly evening worship services at Beth Shalom at 5pm.
My goal in this letter is to explain why the CPC session made this decision and how we pray that evening worship will be a growing blessing to individuals, families, and the whole church.
“A well-spent Sabbath we feel to be a day of heaven upon earth,” wrote Robert Murray McCheyne, “for this reason we wish our Sabbaths to be wholly given to God. We love to spend the whole time in the public and private exercises of God's worship, except so much as is taken up in the works of necessity and mercy. We love to rise early on that morning, and to sit up late, that we may have a long day with God.”
Biblical Foundations
The Bible clearly calls God’s people to treat the Sabbath as a day unlike any other in the week. On this day we cease from labor, trust God to provide as we rest, and devote the whole day (rather than the hour, or the morning) to Him. Here are some highlights of the biblical teaching:
Most generally, the Sabbath day has been a gift for the people of God since God blessed the seventh day in Genesis 2:2-3. As Geerhardus Vos put it so well, the Sabbath, “has faithfully accompanied the people of God on their march through the ages.” (Vos, Biblical Theology, 139)
From the resurrection of Christ on the first day of the week (John 20:1), Sunday was set apart as the Christian Sabbath. The resurrected Jesus appeared to his disciples most often on Sundays and the day of Pentecost was, likewise, a Sunday (50 days after the resurrection).
The pattern of Scripture shows a morning and evening rhythm for Sabbath worship. The Old Testament people of God were commanded to worship by offerring both morning and evening sacrifices (Exodus 29:39). Jesus’ Lord’s Day appearances happened at both morning (John 20:14) and evening (John 20:19). The early church certainly gathered for evening worship (Acts 20:7).
Based on the biblical teaching, to use the words of our Directory for Public Worship, “It is highly advisable that a congregation assemble for public worship at the beginning and the ending of the Lord's Day. God … sanctifies the entire Lord's Day to himself and gives his people in it a foretaste of their eternal enjoyment of him and his people.”
Putting It Into Practice
When it comes to Lord’s Day observance, each Christian and each family has a large degree of liberty in how they put into practice what we believe about the Sabbath. The nature of the Sabbath as a gift from God is clouded when the day is weighed down by detailed rules, expectations, or man-made burdens. In other words, your elders are not the Lord’s Day police! Our role, instead, is more positive. To mix metaphors, we want to build up the bookends of the Lord’s Day so that they’re like a trellis for the vine of growth in grace.
What does this look like in practice? As a session, we expect members of CPC to gather with the congregation for public worship on the Lord’s Day unless providentially hindered. This is simply what it looks like to follow through on the fifth membership vow to “participate faithfully in this church’s worship and service.” We want you to be in worship regularly for your own spiritual health and because your presence is a blessing to the body of Christ. When it comes to our expanded worship services, we warmly encourage attendance at both the morning and evening services of worship.
For members: we want to grow together in calling the Sabbath a delight. I want to encourage you to do an experiment and simply see what happens when you make a regular habit of morning and evening worship on the Lord’s Day. Simply commit to the habit and watch for how the Lord blesses you through the ordinary means of grace.
For those providentially hindered from regularly coming to morning worship: our hope is that regular evening worship will enable you to experience, once again, the Sabbath as “an oasis in the desert of earthly cares” (B.B. Warfield).
For outreach and evangelism: the less formal and shorter evening service might be a good introduction to CPC. Consider inviting to evening services both non-Christian friends exploring the Christian faith and Christian friends from other churches who are interested in what a Reformed church is all about.
For the harried: certain stages of and stations in life can stretch us thin. Parents of young children, caregivers, and others can find that “duties of necessity and mercy” (Confession of Faith 21.8) take up so much time that making it to morning worship alone is a great victory. Far from burdening you, our hope is that evening worship will bless you! Consider, for example, that parents caring for a sick child can take turns on Sundays so that both parents can be in worship.
Our hope in expanding evening worship is to see more prayer, more praise, more reading of the Word, more preaching, and more fellowship at CPC. We believe that these are the ordinary ways that God blesses his people on their pilgrim way through this life. So let’s confess with Psalm 92, “It is good to give thanks to the Lord, to sing praises to your name, O Most High; to declare your steadfast love in the morning, and your faithfulness by night.”
In the Father’s Love,
Pastor Andrew