The Disappearance of Corporate Worship

Over the years, corporate worship in many churches has been vanishing. The calling of the local church, first and foremost, is to gather for worship, but we do it much less frequently now than we did in the past. Sinclair Ferguson has a test he likes to apply to those who tell him that the worship at their church is excellent. He responds, “The litmus test of the quality of morning worship is the quality of evening worship.”

Before we unpack his statement, let us take a minute to see how far we have come. Most of us who grew up in the church can remember attending church at least three times a week. Sunday morning, Sunday evening, and Wednesday nights were set apart to worship our Savior. In the town where I grew up, the teachers in the public school used to give less homework on Wednesday nights because they knew this was the pattern for many of their students. Coaches would also release the athletes on time so they could go to church and rarely was there another competing event scheduled that night.

Those days are long gone. It eventually came to the point where churches began abandoning Wednesday nights. Some did not walk away from Wednesday entirely; they recalibrated them into nights set apart for other programs: small groups, youth groups, and children’s ministries. These programs are, without a doubt, good things, but we must be clear, even with other programs in place, the church took a step back in deciding it would not meet for corporate worship mid-week.

As we all know, for many churches, the same thing eventually happened to Sunday evening gatherings. Now, many churches in America only gather as a corporate body once a week for worship. The course of 20-30 years has made a significant impact on what the life of a local church looks like. So, what did Ferguson mean when he said, “The litmus test of the quality of morning worship is the quality of evening worship.” For many churches that do have Sunday night services, usually only one-third of the people attend in the evening, and this is a reflection on the morning worship. To put it in more general terms for churches that do not have evening services, he meant that if the worship is so great, why is the body satisfied with such a small amount? The truth is, many churchgoers do not want more of it. Our lack of desire for prayer and the preaching of the word seems to be a symptom of our spiritual drowsiness.

How did we get here? If a spiritual malaise occurs in a church, we cannot lay the blame entirely at the feet of the leadership. Most pastors, elders, and deacons I know did everything they could to keep the weekly services alive, but the people were uninterested. The problem is not that we do not have Sunday evening and Wednesday night services per se’; the problem is that we are no longer hungry for worship.

I get it; no biblical mandate says 6 p.m. Sunday is to be set apart for worship. I also understand that Sunday evening church services were a relatively new development in church history. Please do not misunderstand me. This post is not an indictment against churches that do not have these additional services. Christian liberty is a real thing. The church I attend does not meet on Sunday evenings, and I think it is a great church. Small groups and other gatherings have filled in some of the gaps; however, I cannot help but lament how far we have come as a culture, and with this spiritual malaise in place in many congregations, we now face a new threat—another attempt of the enemy to quench the fire of worship in our hearts: online church.

The Covid lockdowns exacerbated the lethargy of many. Way too many churchgoers are now more than satisfied with watching church from their couches even when they could attend, and this spiritual dullness has continued to hold sway even after the restrictions were removed. Though stats show that the percentage of people who claim to attend worship regularly is only down a few percent (33% in 2019 down to 30% in 2023), 20% say they do not participate in person as much as they used to.

Instead of continuing to abandon worship, may the Lord stir our hearts so we begin to see a resurgence of worship in our land for the glory of our great God.

-D. Eaton