EDITOR'S NOTE: I just got yelled at by our Saturday evening campus pastor, Charlie Dunn, who said that there are a lot more missional reasons why we're doing the Saturday evening campus than some of the ones I noted below. True. At the core, we are adding a Saturday evening service because this is the best step for the fall to reach people. In addition, we are opening the SUMMIT EN ESPANOL campus on Saturday night as well... which will be a service entirely in Spanish with a live, Spanish speaking pastor that will be preaching the message translated into Spanish and contextualized for a Hispanic audience.
So, the word is out... starting August 15-16 we are moving to a new
service structure at the Brier Creek campus. Saturday night at 6:00pm;
then 3 on Sunday morning: 9:00, 10:45 and 12:30, with a video venue
going on in the Bay during the 10:45 service.
Some of you have asked why we are discontinuing the Sunday night
service when it was working so well... you're also apprehensive about
going to church on Saturday night since currently that serves the slot
of connecting socially with friends... furthermore, many of you have
gotten used to sleeping in on Sunday, and then coming to a great time
of worship later in the day. So why move it? Here are the reasons, not
necessarily in order:
- Having a service on Saturday night saves us a ton of money.
We were getting to the place where we were going to have to put in a
very expensive satellite uplink in place in order to get the message to
our other campuses... currently we send the message by internet to the
Cole Mill Road campus (whose 1st service starts at 9:15) and run a DVD
over to the West Club Campus, whose 1st service started at 11:15.
However, West Club will be adding an earlier service (which means we
can't get the DVD in time to them) and the internet feed just kept
failing at CMR. The solution was satellite... or to do a Saturday night
service here at BCAM where we can record a high quality, reliable
version of the sermon and have it in place at our campuses on Sunday
morning.
- Having a Saturday night service will allow us to extend our evening reach to include families and slacker students. Saturday
night allows families to come to the evening service... when the
service was on Sunday night, many families were trying to get their
kids wound down from the weekend and into bed to start school the next
day. I also knew college students who on Sunday night had to start
cramming in the work they procrastinated on all weekend :) Families and
slacker students of all ages can come to church and feel relaxed.
- We actually haven't discontinued our Sunday night service, we've just moved it to 12:30 on Sunday. One of the
"attractions" of the Sunday p.m. service was those people who enjoyed
sleeping in on Sunday (or had to work) and then go to church later in
the day. Well, you can still sleep in, get up about lunch, and get to
church.
- You're not really "giving up" your Saturday night. Think about it...the service starts at 6 and finishes at 7:30... no college student or young professional I know ever begins their weekend before 7:30 anyway. Now, to be honest... I have a small emotional reaction to this one because I want to say "Build your weekend around God's priorities," but I know that many of you will say, "Well I'll just come on Sunday morning..." And it would really help us for many of you to move to Saturday night. So, I need you to realize that you can go to church and still go out with your friends that night. In fact, this would be a great way to start your evening... invite some of the friends you are trying to reach to go to church
with you, and then go out afterwards!
- You can pretty much guarantee I'll be speaking live on Saturday night.
It will be the first service of the weekend. As the Brier Creek 9:00 am
service will tell you (currently the 1st service), you can also look
forward to awkward jokes that I make only in whatever is the 1st service (i.e. flopped jokes I subsequently realize don't work and
then cut out for the remaining services). The first sermon is always
kind of "the lab" sermon.
- Pastor Charlie and the pm worship team will be leading our Saturday night service.
Charlie has some new uber-fashionable clothes straight from the runways
of France he'll be modeling (think purple and fuschia), and the p.m.
worship team has some disgustingly good musicians. In all seriousness, Pastor Charlie, Jonathan, and their team of leaders is an incredibly dedicated and motivated team. You would find it a great place to serve and a great team to serve with. They get it done, there's no doubt!
As it stands now, Awana and other current Sunday night stuff will STILL continue happening on SUNDAY night.
More information to come... you can keep up to date here, at our new site (if you haven't seen it yet, check out our new site...
all the bugs aren't worked out, but we're pretty pleased with the new
look and navigation.) Also, you can get your daily Proverbs devotional
there... to do as we go through this Still Standing series.
REMEMBER: This doesn't start till mid-August (Aug 15-16, to be exact)... so don't start showing up now on Saturday night.
Summit, this is your time to do, again, what you've always done... time for some of you to choose the hard path, sacrifice your convenience and preference, and do what is best for reaching people. For many of you, that will be moving out of our Sunday morning Brier Creek campus to our Saturday night one (or one of our others on Sunday morning!)
Do
pray for us...we are greatly depending on God to meet our needs for
these services, as we continue to allow God to expand the borders of
our tent. We need leaders of all kinds to step up. In case you didn't
count it... that will mean, counting the video venue in the Bay at the
Brier Creek morning campus and the En Espanol Campus, we will have 10 services on the weekend...
in addition to that, our Church Planting Center
is in full swing preparing those who are feeling a call to be sent out
to plant churches in RDU, the US, and around the world...