What you might not know about Sunday morning

In a recent post reflecting on our day at Nags Head Church I received a comment about the amount of planning that must go into a worship service. So I got to thinking that perhaps I could go into some of what makes it happen.

Now, I'm speaking about the church I serve. Our worship gatherings don't "just happen". There is a lot of intentional thought, planning and work to get to that hour and fifteen minutes (that we do twice a Sunday morning). I also know that isn't so in many churches because I've had the experience of sitting through some "worship" services that were obviously put together at 10:55. And it showed.

And before someone asks "Where's the Holy Spirit in all this", let me say that being guided by the Holy Spirit doesn't have to happen on the fly. He can be just as involved weeks and months prior to the gathering as He hopefully will be during the worship.

Ministry at NHC is done by teams. It's our understanding of God's design of the church that ministry happens when the people are equipped to serve and empowered to make it happen. I can count at least 7 volunteer teams who work to make a worship gathering come together. And that doesn't include paid staff.

Their efforts cover everything from cleaning the facility, setting up the auditorium, printing publications, staffing our nursery, kids church check in teachers and staff, our hospitality team that puts out coffee and pastries, our first impressions team who greets and mans our welcome center, tellers who count and deposit the offerings, musicians and techs who lead our worship make sure it can be seen and heard... And that's off the top of my head. There are probably more. Hey, somebody has to stay until everyone leaves and lock up!

A rough guesstimate would show that on any given Sunday some 50 volunteers are involved every week. And keep in mind our church membership is about 160 right now. Those 50 are right now serving about 300 worshippers each Sunday. So, if you have a larger church, the numbers of those involved should grow as well. But even if our numbers were smaller, we couldn't pull it off with much of a smaller volunteer staff.

Many of those 50 have preparation work to do. So there is planning, scheduling, and work done in advance of Sunday. For example, our worship arts team meets every Thursday night for an average of 2 hours to rehearse the music for Sunday, then they come in an hour and a half early on Sunday to again go over the songs. On top of that, they're listening throughout the week to new music and practicing on their own.

And for us, this happens every Sunday, much of it totally behind the scenes. In addition, who knows how much time is spent praying for God to use their efforts to communicate His love?

I've said nothing about the weekly work in getting a sermon ready, or the planning done weeks or months in advance to plan a series, or search for the right songs or videos to illustrate a point in the message.

So if you're one of those who just shows up on Sunday and never considers what goes into "producing" a worship gathering from the human standpoint, I hope you'll have a greater appreciation of those who work hard to serve the Lord and you. It doesn't "just happen". Better yet, I hope you'll realize that, if you're a part of a local body of believers, that there's probably a hole that you could fill in making Sundays an even better experience for the worshippers who attend your church.

Get involved! It's not just for the "pros". Most of what is done at NHC is done by volunteers. There's a place for you.