Multiple services on Sunday...

I think that we've yapped about the topic of multiple services on Sunday sometime before (although that may have been back when Rotundus was still running PHP Nuke). Anyways, thus far, of the churches in Calgary that I've checked out not a single one has had multiple services on Sunday (I'm excepting the case where they have multiple services due to overflow). I've basically come to the conclusion that outside of the CanRC multiple services on a Sunday is rather uncommon.

On a semi-related note, have any of you ever met any people who would label themselves as messianic jews? Sounds like it would be an interesting group to interact with at some point - believing in Jesus, yet maintaining a lot of the old Jewish holidays and customs (it probably should be added that yet, at the same time, such groups - at least the particular groups that I've read about - seem to condemn those who don't hold to such practices). There is such a group in Calgary (and, as one might expect, they meet on Saturdays), so I may stop by there one of these days.

Comments

I've basically come to the conclusion that outside of the CanRC multiple services on a Sunday is rather uncommon.

I'm pretty sure the Free Reformed Church has two services, and the URC probably does as well. Indeed though, outside of the Reformed churches multiple services does seem to be uncommon. The obvious benefit is for situations where some people can't attend the one service because of their occupation (farmer, nurse, police officer, etc.). Possibly the more important reason is that the day has been set aside for worshipping God so why not go twice? In the past we had three services - an evening service in Dutch.

On a semi-related note, have any of you ever met any people who would label themselves as messianic jews?

I haven't even met anybody who labelled themself as a Jew let alone Messianic Jew. Would definitely be interesting to have them explain things from their perspective though.

The obvious benefit is for situations where some people can't attend the one service because of their occupation (farmer, nurse, police officer, etc.).

That's definitely a potential advantage of having two services. The question though is just how much easier that might make things. Having only one service on a Sunday would allow you to move it to basically any part of the day, so that you might be able to find a convenient time for them (I think that milking, for example, is generally an early morning / early evening sort of job so a service later in the morning might work out well).

For a lot of the emergency services jobs, though, I'm not sure how much of a benefit this would prove. I think that a lot of those tend to deal in 12 hour shifts. In that case, you might be better off having a service Saturday evening and then a second one sometime on Sunday (> 12 hours apart). In a case of a young family, where parents might alternate staying home with an infant, there are definitely some advantages to a dual service arrangement though.

I haven't even met anybody who labelled themself as a Jew let alone Messianic Jew. Would definitely be interesting to have them explain things from their perspective though.

Well, I've yet to set foot in a pentecostal church, and the Jewish group that I've found in Calgary seem to fit into that mold. Thus, if I show up there it might be a dual shock.

It might be interesting this evening to go and do a bit of a writeup on some of the churches that I've set foot in here in Calgary, though. There've definitely been some differences from the CanRC way of doing things that you are used to - some of which I'm neutral about, some of which I think are good, and some of which I'm not really in favour of.