reading about the lights and the security and the musicians and the daycare and the parking and the the buses makes me think that maybe our church services are way over the top ......
cancel the daycare, notify everyone that there will be no buses and the songs will be song solely by the congregation.....
1. Threats to the life of the pastor and some church members make security staff (including plainclothes detectives) necessary for everybody's safety.
2. If there were no separate daycare for the small kids, there would not be enough room for everybody to sit, even in the overflow rooms. Yes, this is true even though we just built a huge new church building three years ago and now have nowhere to expand to.
3. There's no way to get all the cars of all the parishioners in the parking lot, big as it is, so buses bring people in from remote parking lots the church rents. There are just too many people who want to hear the Word.
See, it all sounds simple--just cancel all that stuff!--but then half the people who want to come to a service can't do so. And we're not talking particularly about Christmas services, either. This would all be a problem on the average Sunday. These nondenominational evangelical churches are becoming incredibly popular. This one is especially growing by leaps and bounds because of the pastor's clear, warm, point-by-point discussions of How to Draw Closer to Christ.