Why do we do Sunday Morning Services

by Tim Swanson
My mentor, Jeff Merry, asked me what the purpose of Sunday morning services at MVBC was. Certainly a good question, however, I took about three months to give him an answer.

When I was growing up, I attended El Camino Baptist Church. Back then Sunday morning was about making the best out of something my parents forced me to attend. I had friends at church and I didn't wander far from them. I remember sitting next to my best friend, Dan, in "big service". I always knew when we were getting too loud because his mother would slap him in the back of the head then reach past him and slap me in the back of the head. This was preferable to Sunday school where there were our volume was adjusted by flying expo erasers and the occasional Bible came sailing across the room. During my teenage years, church became token to freedom. When my parents didn't trust me as far as they could throw me, I was always slipping into the proverbial blind spot at church and get into trouble.

After I graduated high school I continued my church attendance. At an age where 90% of people leave the church, I continued to attend. At that age church was mainly about one thing - meeting girls. However, in that same frame of time I joined a band with a few guys who were really intriguing. They were all in their late teens and early twenties and they went to church because they wanted to be there. They really seemed to have legitimate relationships with God, and they did church music because they liked connecting with God.

I kept an open ear as I began working at churches as a young adult. I wanted to know what other people’s reasons were for going. People talked a lot about, “getting fed” and whether or not a church “had good worship”. I didn’t really relate with that.

When I started working at Moon Valley Bible Church, I still didn’t have a good fix on the purpose for Sunday morning services. The best I could figure was that it was primarily about fellowshipping and God’s people connecting with each other. But if that were the case, then why had I heard so many presentations of the gospel during my years as a church goer? If Sunday morning was about the gathering of people who already believed, then why did we preach salvation?

Then, not too long ago, I read a book by Andy Stanley called Deep & Wide. In the book he describes his philosophy behind Sunday morning services at North Point Church in Atlanta, Georgia. He says that every church needs, “a God honoring, mouth watering, crystal clear vision.” At his church the vision is - building churches that unchurched people love to attend. This was an important discovery for me. His church was not about gathering believers, the whole program at North Point was centered around reaching out to people who still need to believe.

So I considered all of this as I looked for my answer to Jeff Merry’s question - What is the purpose of Sunday morning services at MVBC? Our Sunday morning services certainly are not entirely about the unchurched. The Bible prescribes the fellowshipping of believers (Hebrews 10:25).  As I review the things we've done and the things we are planning on doing, there is this element of balance between the Sunday services being for people who already belong to the body of Christ and also for those who have little or no interaction with Jesus. It is for that reason that our staff landed on the vision we did for planning Sunday morning services. We want to consistently create the church service that is, “so good you want to share it.” In that way, we become about the people who are already of our church and the unchurched in their lives.

During our planning meetings today, we camp on the phrase, “so good you want to share it.” In everything we do, we ask ourselves - is this, “so good you want to share it”? It is our conviction that God wants the people who gather for fellowship at MVBC begin to become vocal about their relationship with Christ to their unchurched family and friends. And when they do, they will have a safe place for them to belong, believe & become followers of Jesus.