Ah… Sleeping In

—PJ King

Ahh... sleeping in: the great college student's past-time.

You know, there is a reason you find most college students sleeping in (or at least trying to) - and it's not because they're lazy. They sleep in because so many of them are night-owls. Rather than being "morning people" they tend to be more awake and function better in the afternoon and evening.

Mixing night-owls and Sunday Morning church meetings does not seem to work out terribly well. Personally, I struggle (nearly) every week to make it through all of church awake. Its not because I didn't sleep enough the night before, but because I simply have the least amount of energy for my day during the morning. Many people my age seem to struggle with this.

Why do we meet in the morning specifically? I don't know. As far as I can tell its because we've always done it that way. Granted, there's nothing wrong with meeting on Sunday mornings, but I do think it would be worth at least considering other options.

One sleepy Sunday morning, I was wondering to myself why we couldn't meet at a different time. Today, I just wanted to share with you some of the options I have considered in my head1.

Sunday Morning: the time that (almost) everyone meets.

One of the perks of meeting at this time is that most Christians are used to it. Another benefit is that it is easy to eat lunch (out) afterwards with fellow church members. However, this meeting time makes it difficult to have shared meals (at home or at the church building) because of the elaborate planning required to eat something warm soon after church gets out.

As mentioned earlier, a problem for night-owls is that this time is not usually conducive to their greatest mental capacity or energy. Another challenge that this time poses is that it makes it difficult to invite non-Christians to your church services. Something tells me that one would have to have a lot of motivation (like the Holy Spirit) to get you to wake up on a Sunday morning at 7 when you could otherwise sleep until 10.

Sunday Early Afternoon:

A benefit I see to meeting at this time would be that the church could more easily eat together before services (for lunch) as part of their weekly gatherings (such as the agape meal model). A drawback would be that the meeting is in the middle of the day, which would make it more difficult to do other things (such as nap) on Sunday. Another drawback I can think of is the post-lunch slump most of us experience; Sunday afternoons are ideal for napping.

Sunday Night:

I like a few things about Sunday nights. (Previously) living six hours away from my girl-friend / fiancée or (currently) living five hours away from my family has caused me to travel on many a weekend. With such great distances being cleared, I could never make a trip worthwhile and be back home for church on Sunday morning. Meeting on Sunday night, however, would have given me a greater opportunity to be at church each week.

Similar to the early afternoon schedule, gathering on Sunday night would allow for more easily implemented agape meals as part of the standard meeting. Meeting at night would allow for more of the day to be used for tasks (or rest!) than an afternoon meeting. A pro for the night-owls is that the meeting would be during our peak for the day. Of course, that could be a downer for the morning people, so there's a tradeoff involved.

One drawback is that there will be little downtime for the congregation between the meeting and Monday morning. Depending on when the meeting is adjourned, one might be heading straight for bed before beginning the week; that’s not exactly the best transition.

Saturday Night:

Obviously, a Saturday night meeting would not be as beneficial for the travelers as a Sunday night meeting (actually, it's the worst option for travelling). However, Saturday night shares the other positives as Sunday night and has some of its own to consider. The transition to Monday is much better with this meeting than Sunday night, as one would have a whole day between to act as a buffer, and that would be a wonderful thing, indeed.

These are merely thoughts that I have had. Nothing here is intended to be divisive (especially considering that I don't know my own preference yet!), so please don't take it as such. I would love to hear everyone's opinion on this, from the early-bird to the night-owl. Because I don't know of any theological reason to meet at a specific time of day, I think this could be a productive conversation. Leave your thoughts below!

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1 Bear in mind, I'm assuming that the church is only meeting once each weekend. I'm not exactly a fan of meeting on Sunday morning and Sunday evening as some churches do. There's just something about that that doesn't seem to fit in with Sabbath rest for me. As we often say, though, that's another article altogether.