Making the Move to Sunday

As a regular Saturday night attender myself for years and years, this seems like the perfect place to talk about the decision that has been made to discontinue this service on August 23rd. If you’ve been around Oak Hills for a long time, you will remember that when we moved onto our property in 1993 and changed our service times from Sunday afternoon (right during nap-time!) to Sunday morning we experienced a swell in attendance that caused us to worry about overflowing the portable space where we met (currently the Youth Auditorium). So, the Saturday Night Service was born. Committed Oak Hillians were asked to consider moving to that service to make room for the new people who would find Sunday morning more convenient.

My family made the transition to Saturday night (hey, it was still better than Sunday afternoons!) and we became firmly fixed there as different family members began volunteering in Guest Services and in the children’s Prime Time programs on Saturday night. As our children got older, we established some traditions around Saturday night, too. We began having a family movie night after the service with an easy late-night dinner that became a favorite time of ours.

But while we have enjoyed sleeping in on Sunday mornings and the relaxed feel of the Saturday night service, there has also been a sense of disconnection from the rest of the Oak Hills family. We don’t seem to have those spontaneous get-togethers with friends like we used to when we were all together on Sundays and ran into a family that had the afternoon free to go grab pizza or pull together an impromptu BBQ. We have frequently met people at retreats who have attended Oak Hills for years but who we have never even seen before. There has been a loss as well as a joy in attending church on Saturdays.

The decision to let go of our Saturday night service has not been taken lightly. In fact, the Elder Board and staff have discussed it often over the years. Since the year 2000, when we moved into our permanent building, we have not really needed the space but didn’t want to take away an opportunity from anyone whose work schedule might keep them from attending on a Sunday morning. But as attendance has dwindled over time, the cost in terms of volunteer hours and lost community feel have outweighed our desire to keep the service going. We believe that it will be a very good thing to have the church gathered together on Sundays. I know that when I let my family know that we were going to have to transition back to going to church on Sundays there was something like a sigh of relief and an expectation that we will meet up with people who we haven’t seen in a while.

For this feeling of community to take root, though, we will have to plan to linger a bit after the first service if we decide to go to that one, or come early to the second service if that is where we land. The only way to see the whole church together is to mingle between the services. So the challenge for us Saturday nighters is to relearn to wake up on Sunday mornings and to come fresh and ready to worship and delight in the people who make up Oak Hills Church…and see who sits in our seats at these other services…and be prepared to meet some new people and greet some old friends. I think it is an exciting opportunity to develop closer connections with each other – I’ll see you there!