Every quarter, I have separate meetings with the worship collaboration team, congregational care ministry leads, & the ministry team chairs. In these meetings, we talk about the individual ministries each group represents & the exciting things they are experiencing at Song of Life. In our first meetings of 2025, we talked about how change is unsettling. We are creatures of habit, liking our routines & structures. We want to know the boundaries & expectations in our lives. Even when we know God is calling us into something greater, we cling to what we know, struggling to embrace the new thing. However, as Paul reminds us in his letter to the church in Corinth,
“So, if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation; everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new.” (2 Corinthians 5:17, NRSVUE)
If we are indeed being made new, we must first let go of who & what we have been to become who God is transforming us into.
With this newness in mind, I am excited to announce new worship service times & midweek fellowship opportunities during Lent. We will have three worship service times starting on Sunday, March 9, 2025. The new service will be at 8 am & will be approximately 45 minutes long. The service will be similar to the Classic Worship, offering shorter traditional liturgies, hymn selections, a homily, & time of prayer. We will then shift our Classic Service to a 9:15 am start time, allowing time for fellowship & transition between the services. In order for our praise band, The Way, to prepare, the Modern Worship service will begin at 11 am. We will also have a Lent Fellowship on Wednesdays from 5 – 8 pm, where we will gather at the picnic tables & in the classroom space for a casual time of gathering & conversation. More information will come about these midweek times & we will be reminding you regularly of the changes in worship time.
This is an exciting opportunity for Song of Life to embrace the new thing God is doing here: growing our fellowship of believers. Song of Life has experienced over 65% growth in worship attendance in the last two years. I believe now is the time to engage in forward action because people are clearly finding a place to call “home” with us. You may have already heard me explain church growth patterns, but if you haven’t, I’ll explain it again here. Church growth stagnates & declines when a worship space reaches 80% occupancy. Song of Life is at 80% capacity during our Classic Worship service, seeing an average of just over 100 people each week (with 127 seats, 80% capacity is at 101 people). Put bluntly, we won’t just stop growing in our worship attendance & church participation; we will see a decline as visitors won’t return for fear of not finding a seat. Even our regular attendees will stop coming for the same reason.
Please consider attending this Lent season’s new worship time, checking out the 8 am service. We will keep the adjusted service times, 9:15 Classic & 11:00 Modern, after Easter Sunday, allowing us to keep a space for expanding into a third service as we reevaluate our community’s needs in the coming months. I know change is difficult & yet this change is exciting as we consider the expanding transformative impact of Song of Life on the community beyond our doors.
In Christ’s Love,
Pastor Sylvia