At the beginning of the Lenten season, we combined our 9 am and 11 am Sunday services and began worship at 10 am with both our Chancel Choir and Faith Rising Band. This has been a positive change with more energy and excitement. When we made this change, we shared that a decision about our 4 pm Saturday service would be made the end of May. At the Church Council meeting on May 18th, the Council approved the recommendation from the subcommittee who had worked on this, as well as from the Worship Committee, that the 4 pm service be discontinued at the end of June.
This has been a difficult decision ever since we began the conversation last summer by analyzing the March 2025 worship survey results. The Saturday service began prior to the pandemic, under the pastorate of Rev. Caleb Hong and Rev. Caitlyn Nesbit. At that time, this service was completely different from the Sunday services and the hope was that it would attract younger individuals and families. That did not happen. When Faith UMC no longer had an Associate Pastor position, it became more challenging to have the Saturday service be completely different.
Although the Saturday service has provided a group of 12-20 people with an intimate service and a convenient time for them, the service has not brought in new people and has been challenging for several reasons.
First, we only have live music on the first Saturday of the month. The other three or four Saturdays we have recorded music, including a recorded “Word in Music” from the choir or band. This is not ideal, particularly when we have a first-time visitor. Funding a musician weekly is not feasible at this time and when seeking a musician for this service in the past there were no positive results.
Second, it is quite challenging to lead worship in such a large space with a small number of people. Despite asking people to move forward in the sanctuary, people tend to migrate to the back half of the room. Again, for a first-time visitor, it appears as if we are a congregation that isn’t thriving and they may not give us another chance by coming on a Sunday.
Third, although suspending the service will not provide a huge financial savings, it will impact staff and volunteer time and energy. It is a lot for our AV volunteers, puppet team and lay worship readers to come to worship services on both Saturday and Sunday. Our communications staff person, Anna Hopper, spends at a minimum, 90 minutes preparing the videos of the recorded music and lyrics for the songs we sing on Saturday.
In addition, although Pastor Jenny preaches the same sermon at both services, the energy spent on Saturdays is significant, and by discontinuing that service, her energy can go toward other ministry priorities.
This decision was not taken lightly. Great care and difficult conversations were had by the Church Council subcommittee, the Worship Committee and the Church Council. If you have questions, please feel free to see Pastor Jenny or Bob Lazarz, Worship Committee Chair.