On Sunday November 10th Shoreline Church will begin holding two worship services, the first at 9am and the second at 11am.
Why Two Services?
The purpose of this change is to make the mission of our church as accessible as possible to as many people as possible. Our mission is to glorify God by helping people become committed followers of Christ, and our Sunday morning gatherings are a key part of this mission.
After a few months of holding services in our building, increased attendance has caused us to consistently exceed the capacity of our parking lot. Our volunteer parking team has handled this challenge well, but our church leadership does not view this as a sustainable situation.
After discussing the issue amongst our elder team we engaged those in leadership over our Sunday teams to think through this challenge and all other viable solutions. We determined that exceeding our capacity in the parking lot creates safety and liability concerns, and it also creates frustrating barriers for visitors on Sundays.
In response to these challenges we have decided to move to two services in the hope that adding a second service will make our worship services more accessible to visitors and better allow us to live out our mission as a church. Having two services may also create more opportunities for Sunday morning ministry in the future.
Will the two services be different?
The two services will be the same, with both services singing the same songs and hearing the same sermon.
What about childcare?
Childcare and Sunday school for kids ages birth through fifth grade will only take place during the second service at 11am. This will allow our Shoreline Kids volunteers to attend the worship service at 9am.
What about communion?
Our practice as a church is to participate in communion together on the second Sunday of each month. When we switch to two services both services will participate in communion on the second Sunday of each month.
How long will this change last?
We will hold two services every Sunday for one year, and then we will re-evaluate to see if this is still the best approach for our church.
What about those who committed to volunteering?
Leaders of our Sunday volunteer teams have begun discussing with their teams the plan for transitioning to two services. Some teams will carry a greater burden than others but we wanted to give sufficient time for all of the teams to prepare.
As we add a service we understand that we may need more people to volunteer. It is also our hope that those who currently volunteer would add a bit to their service time on Sundays when they are scheduled so that we will be covered in every area of need on Sunday mornings.