Use of Church Buildings and Day of Week to Meet for Worship

[Ernie]

Wife:
Ours isn’t super fancy. In fact, it’s actually rather crowded and would never be able to work for a school or dining area, but we use it Sunday mornings, sometimes Sunday evenings, Mondays for neighborhood children outreach, and Wednesdays for prayer group, and sometimes other days for special events. It’s been there for ages, and I think it would just confuse the homeless people if there were multiple churches meeting there. It might work for some places with high Anabaptist populations, but I don’t want someone to come at the wrong time when I invite them and end up going to some random church.

I get that.

[Ernie]

That sounds like an excellent way to put a damper on the fellowship aspect of church life. In order to accomodate something like you are describing our meetinghouse would need to be about twice as big as it is now - I hardly see how that fixes anything.

It might not work very well for your building. But in cases of necessity, people can make do with all sorts of situations and still have a grand time. But as someone mentioned earlier, traditionalists are not going to want to have church from 2:30-7:00 PM.

With the Mormon churches, there is an hour for the whole group being together. Then an hour of Sunday School/small groups. After that you can stay and visit for an additional hour in the Sunday school rooms before you need to leave. If they only have 2-3 congregations meeting at a location, they can space the services out more and then there can be two or more hours for fellowship.

[Ernie]

For many Anabaptists, I think it simply comes down to convenience, traditionalism, sectarianism, and territorialism.(rather than creativity and stewardship of resources)
Anabaptists (and most people) can do all sorts of inconvenient and things with lots of hassle if they believe in it.

[ken_sylvania]

That sounds like an excellent way to put a damper on the fellowship aspect of church life. In order to accomodate something like you are describing our meetinghouse would need to be about twice as big as it is now - I hardly see how that fixes anything.

It might not work very well for your building. But in cases of necessity, people can make do with all sorts of situations and still have a grand time. But as someone mentioned earlier, traditionalists are not going to want to have church from 2:30-7:00 PM.

With the Mormon churches, there is an hour for the whole group being together. Then an hour of Sunday School/small groups. After that you can stay and visit for an additional hour in the Sunday school rooms before you need to leave. If they only have 2-3 congregations meeting at a location, they can space the services out more and then there can be two or more hours for fellowship.

I guess dairy farmers could be considered traditionalists...

You're right, in cases of necessity people can make do with all sorts of situations. You could raise your family in a one-room shack if necessary - but you aren't because you believe the advantages of living in a larger house are worth the cost.

In fact - why not invite another family to share your house? They could use the bedrooms during the day and the kitchen and living room at night while you and your familty could do the opposite. It seems to me that is more-or-less what you are suggesting.

[Ernie]

In fact - why not invite another family to share your house? They could use the bedrooms during the day and the kitchen and living room at night while you and your familty could do the opposite. It seems to me that is more-or-less what you are suggesting.

We are leaving our home tomorrow for several days. We offered our house to someone else to use while we are gone. I am suggesting something similar for churches.

[Soloist]

I'm curious about the set up. Had you already left the auditorium and were in smaller groups where you could stay for an hour after small group time? Or did you need to exit a room to make space for others.
With the Mormon churches, there is an hour for the whole group being together. Then an hour of small groups. After that you can stay and visit for an additional hour in the Sunday school rooms before you need to leave.

Wife: Well, most of them no, but the Mega Church in Oregon had a separate coffee shop area as well as an area for the deaf church. That church spanned several city blocks though, and I wouldn’t call it economical. It seemed like those churches, you didn’t actually get to know people, unless you went to youth group or gotten into one of the small Bible studies, but they literally had thousands of people going to them, although the one I grew up in probably didn’t have much more than 1000. I know that along with Mormons, Catholics do that set up, but again, the churches are pretty big, so economics wouldn’t necessarily be for it. There might be times when it’s useful though, and there’s some places that use a high school or other venue. I know of a Nationwide church that drives several hours and rents a building once a month just for one lady.

Zehr’s old church was the place where all the different Anabaptist groups would use for weddings, funerals, homeschool graduations, family reunions, comforter knotting‘s for churches that didn’t have enough space, special events, conferences, youth meetings, volleyball games, ect in addition to having a church school and a Monday night program for neighborhood children. I know one of the other churches there bought an old church, there’s another in a podunk building that might have once been used for a store or something, and another in a barn that is also used for someone’s farm produce and occasionally a guest house for visitors. These are mostly in surrounding towns, so they probably get different visitors by spreading out. Maybe if churches are like-minded enough to be willing to share a building, they should consider doing a church plant to one of the dead zones in America.

[ken_sylvania]

In fact - why not invite another family to share your house? They could use the bedrooms during the day and the kitchen and living room at night while you and your familty could do the opposite. It seems to me that is more-or-less what you are suggesting.

We are leaving our home tomorrow for several days. We offered our house to someone else to use while we are gone. I am suggesting something similar for churches.

There's a church local that after they reached capacity divided themselves into the "morning group" and the "afternoon group." I have no objection to that if that's how they wanted to do it, but I really wouldn't want to be part of the "afternoon group." Maybe I'm a traditionalist, I don't know.

[RZehr]

America’s aging houses of worship face a stark choice: sell, redevelop, or pray for a miracle.
https://slate.com/business/2023/07/chur ... erian.html

It is a story replaying over and over in cities across the United States, where older churches have been hammered by neighborhood change and maintenance costs, coinciding with a national trend of plummeting religious attendance across faiths. Over the past decade, the share of Americans who attend weekly services at a church, synagogue, mosque, or temple has fallen to 30 percent, after hovering for half a century at 40 percent. Overall membership has fallen even more precipitously, and less than half of Americans now say they “belong” to a religious organization. A pair of studies has suggested that thousands of U.S. churches close each year (though a smaller, significant number are founded).

[Neto]

In fact - why not invite another family to share your house? They could use the bedrooms during the day and the kitchen and living room at night while you and your familty could do the opposite. It seems to me that is more-or-less what you are suggesting.

We are leaving our home tomorrow for several days. We offered our house to someone else to use while we are gone. I am suggesting something similar for churches.

There's a church local that after they reached capacity divided themselves into the "morning group" and the "afternoon group." I have no objection to that if that's how they wanted to do it, but I really wouldn't want to be part of the "afternoon group." Maybe I'm a traditionalist, I don't know.

During the times we were on the mission center (not in the village), we always attended the mission afternoon gathering. (The men took turns "preaching".) Some people attended church services in town in the mornings. We did occasionally, but usually if we attended morning services it was at one where the local (basically poor) people attended. (A former WBT missionary couple owned the building, where they also conducted a school during the week. Most of the people who attended there were children, or the parents of the school children. There was one couple who owned a car. We borrowed a mission vehicle when we went.) We also held Thursday night prayer services on the mission center, and very few missed those meetings.

In the sense of congregational finances, I've often thought that congregations here need to prepare for a time when tax exemption might no longer be the law. I think that a lot of congregations would not be able to stay afloat in that kind of economic environment.

[mike]

America’s aging houses of worship face a stark choice: sell, redevelop, or pray for a miracle.
https://slate.com/business/2023/07/chur ... erian.html

It is a story replaying over and over in cities across the United States, where older churches have been hammered by neighborhood change and maintenance costs, coinciding with a national trend of plummeting religious attendance across faiths. Over the past decade, the share of Americans who attend weekly services at a church, synagogue, mosque, or temple has fallen to 30 percent, after hovering for half a century at 40 percent. Overall membership has fallen even more precipitously, and less than half of Americans now say they “belong” to a religious organization. A pair of studies has suggested that thousands of U.S. churches close each year (though a smaller, significant number are founded).

It's not just in cities, rural churches have the same problems. It does present opportunities for churches that are growing or expanding to new areas. I know of numerous Anabaptist churches that are using churches that were no longer needed by other denominations, in cities and towns and rural areas.