5 Reasons “Church at Home” Worship Service Times are Shorter

Last week I posted a poll on Twitter asking pastors to respond about the length of the weekend worship services at their churches during this season – the season when we are not gathering physically but are relying solely on online worship services. It is one thing to stream your physical worship services and quite another to rely solely on streaming your worship services.

There were three options for response in terms of length of service compared to “back in the day when we used to meet with people physically in the same room:” shorter, longer, or the same. More than 500 pastors responded and the overwhelming response (74%) was the services are shorter. A few brave souls (2.4%) are having longer services and the rest (24%) have worship services that are essentially the same length. So why are church services that are exclusively online shorter? Here are five reasons.... Read More

When churches started to move their services online, a pastor of my acquaintance announced that he would be doing Morning Prayer every day and Holy Communion every Sunday online. At the time I thought that his plans were very ambitious. I also wondered whether many people would actually view the services because he planned to use Morning Prayer and Holy Communion from the 1928 BCP, services that the younger generations and members of my own generation, including myself, experienced as rather lengthy. Online these services would be experienced as even lengthier.

I had been watching videos of the online services of a local Methodist church. Without the congregation and in an empty sanctuary, except for the pastor and a small team of musicians, its services which were shorter than the 1928 Prayer Book services felt unnecessarily long. So did the online Lutheran services the videos of which I had also watched.

When I launched an online service for attendees of my church, I decided against using the 1928 Prayer Book services. I pared back the number of liturgical elements in the service to a confession of sin, an assurance of pardon, an opening prayer, a single reading, a short homily, prayers of intercession, the Lord's Prayer, and a concluding prayer and employed liturgical texts from two more recent Prayer Books (A Prayer Book for Australia; Common Prayer: Resources for Gospel-Shaped Gatherings).

In addition to these elements I am using a hymn or worship song at three different points in the service--before the confession of sin, before the prayers of intercession, and before the concluding prayer. I am also using an "anthem"--a video of a choral piece--before the opening prayer and the reading. For Mother's Day I have added a special thanksgiving for mothers after the last hymn and a choral benediction--a second video of a choral piece. Otherwise, the service follows the order that I used on the preceding Sundays.

I developed the order of service from my knowledge of the chapel services of church schools; the worship patterns of cell groups, house churches, and the like; and the Services of the Word of several more recent Prayer Books and my own experiences as a new church pioneer.