An Exceptional Sunday Service Report

Does your church host Exceptional Sunday Services? Recently, I had the chance to provide some coaching in this area to an area church leader. After our meetings he went back to his team and with great zeal championed several small but key changes in his Sunday morning preparations. Check out this email he sent me a few weeks later . . . .

Hello Pastor Wayne,

Here is an update on our improvements on Sunday mornings. After some great discussion, we implemented a few things.

• Our secretary changed our Service Planning meeting agenda to be more specific and include minutes.
  That alone has made a huge difference. We now better understand how everything breaks down and what needs to be improved. For the first time since I can remember we actually discussed, re-ordered and even trimmed some things in our Sunday Services. That made an immediately and huge difference in our services.

• We began having a service coordinator for every service.
  We have three people serving in that role, I do it most of the time and the other two serve in that role when I am not around.

• We also started a service coordinator meeting.
  This is a short 5 minute meeting where we walk through the whole service with all the key players involved in that Sunday morning service. At this meeting we discuss when music plays and lights go on and off. We talk about what microphone everyone is using and who to give it to next. Our transitions have improved quite a bit now that people know when they are to come onstage and know when to be ready. Everyone sees how efficient we are and also feel’s more part of the team! 

It’s great when we have a guest speaker as well. They see how organized we are and when I go over the details with them about when they should begin and end they actually end on time now. A few weeks ago, a guest speaker who traditionally always ends late (and I mean always) ended on time and his message was actually better than other times.

The main thing that made me want to write this email is that in the past we have been so uptight with ending on time (and often we wouldn’t end on time) that we would often just be stressed out. We have also always been concerned that if we become more organized we won’t leave room for God to move. Well, last Sunday we had an 8 minute altar call during worship. Not to mention 3 prophetic words. God moved, people were touched, and no one was stressed about time because we knew we had it all under control. The service still ended on time.

By becoming more organized and efficient we are not taking God out of the service. In fact we are giving God MORE room to move. If we couldn’t end on time with our previous schedule imagine how uptight we would get when God moved during those services? But now we end early a lot and when God moves we are free to enjoy it because time is no longer an issue like it once was. There is no doubt that all our hard work developing the services has definitely given way to a greater presence of God in our services!

Thank You Pastor Wayne for the help and coaching!