Tuesday 5 October 2010

What Place Sunday pm? The Slippery Soaps!

Looking at our new MAP I found myself considering the question:

"What is the place of a Sunday Evening (and other non-Sunday am) provision?"

Where I am, our Sunday evening service regularly offers one of many delights. We have Taizé Communions, Healing services (with Communion), Compline, Reflective Prayer (ranging from multiple prayer/activity stations through to guided and reflective stuff), Media services (focussing on film, audio and the like), Café Church, theological teaching, discussions and other stuff besides.

Colleagues smile and tell me that they've got shot of the Sunday evening slot a long time ago and that it's "Flogging a dead horse. Better to finish at one o'clock and enjoy the fact that people just don't do Sunday evenings!"

With my Missioner hat on, I have decided to take a look at the (apparently declining) phenomenon that is the Sunday evening service. The first minister I telephoned managed to conceal his mirth at the fact that anyone would even want to do a Sunday evening. The next, told me that the church had always had a thriving evening service and that attendance was about a third of their 120+ ASA (Average Sunday Attendance). Continuing with my telephone call I found an alternating 'On/Off' pattern emerging.

Some who continue with the Sunday Evening service are seeing gradual decline and rising age of attender at their (generally Book of Common Prayer (BCP) evensong) provision. The old would come but they're ill or dead and the young can't get to grips with the 1662 setting. Those who are trying 'Evening Praise' and the like are reporting mixed results, some encouraging and others seeming only to make depression a clerical hobby!

It seems that for many, Sunday morning is church and that anything else is optional. As I have asked, some have pointed to the rise of television and the selling out of the Sunday evening service by the then clergy for the one-eyed monster that is television. Many of the churches found themselves in competition with the BBC televisions (repeat) showing of The Forsythe Saga on BBC 1 in the September of 1968 and some changed service times to enable people to make the journey home before the start. What Forsythe started, 'Upstairs, Downstairs' (ITV) and the BBC's 'Onedin Line' truly finished. Both airing in 1971, These two long-running (68 and 91 episodes respectively) contributed massively to a 'watch the box - evenings in church are optional' public by the time they'd finished (1975 and 1981 respectively).

A vicar who was active in that time has told me that the general feeling was that it was better to maintain and attract people to the 'main' service (am) by giving them concessions that meant Sunday evenings were available for the walnut whips and TV serial.

'The Onedin Line', Upstairs, Downstairs', "The Duchess of Duke Street', 'Poldark', the 'Duchess of Duke Street' and many others have conpired to make Sunday evening a viewing event (although sadly less of a family affair these days) rather than a church event.

Just one part of the equation we will examine. Next we'll have a think about the social attiudes . . .

3 comments:

Charlie said...

Thought-provoking post, but in the end I'm not sure this question is worth too much agonising over. As you say, the "old" evening service is dying a slow and painful death, leading many clergy to put it out of its misery.
On the other hand, the "menu" evening service that you offer in your church is a good strategy to add diversity to your worship and gives people the chance to come occasionally without feeling guilty about it when they don't.
Of course, in the cities and suburbs, the big churches are still running Sunday evening services with huge congregations as they always have done.
Horses for courses? Anyway, I was in church for our monthly prayer celebration last Sunday evening, and I still got home in good time for Downton Abbey ;)

Jill said...

I go every week to sung evensong. It's my favourite service, the one I attend most regularly. We sing a psalm and the versicles and responses. At one time it was the best-attended service on a Sunday. No longer, alas!

Whenever I am anywhere near a cathedral I make a point of attending choral evensong. This is traditional worship at its most outstanding.

The pattern of Mattins and Evensong is a thorough one scripturally speaking, in the prayer book tradition, with perhaps less frequent HC services.

Compline is lovely too, especially if it can be sung. How's your singing, Vic?

Vic Van Den Bergh said...

Singing? Not too bad - have a history of having sung Gregorian Chant, madrigals and plainsong as well as various exotica like singing in experimental stuff for Berio and doing solo and featured stuff as Alto.

These days sing bass baritone and a bit of tenor when the need arises - always used to be handed the music for the anthems and whatever when I visited local choir.

I think we need all forms of worship from delirious? through to Byrd, Palestrina and of course modern BCP stuff.

I enjoy the versicle and responses stuff when I get a chance to visit somewhere that does it.