Sunday Retrospective - May 5, 2008
By Paul on May 5, 2008 in Sunday Retrospectives
Don’t have one.
By this I mean that it was Youth Sunday. The youth praise band led, did a really fine job. Anna and I sat about midway back in our worship center. I came away from yesterday morning with some observations.
- We have too many chairs out. It makes you feel like you’re the only one in the room when there are so many empty seats around you. I mean, I KNOW how to sing, but I felt self-conscious singing, because it felt like I was the only one. We need to do something about that.
- Apparently, we haven’t done a good job of communicating to our folks that their role in the back rows is just as important as ours in front. It’s hard to worship when two different conversations are going on around you, and people are leaving their seats to go interact with other people…WHILE worship is going on. We need to do something about that too.
- I’m looking forward to when our new building is usable. That means we won’t have to keep taking up chairs for AWANA and events, and then putting them back. We can do more to make our room a more “permanent” worship space. That should help a lot.
- I enjoy just worshipping, without “working”. I should do that more often.
I am glad that know that Ingleside is not the only church in the world where people walk around during the music portion of worship. It’s like everything up until the sermon is optional for participation. People are coming in all the way up the sermon (and often during). Education is the key, but I wonder if it’s a product of society. In reality, the only other time people sing together in public is at the 7th inning at the Braves game. Maybe they just don’t understand the importance of valuing the music/worship time.
Scott | May 5, 2008 | Reply
You can learn a lot from sitting out there with the crowd.
We try to have just enough seating each week, which means our number of chairs changes often. “Just enough” is 120% of the total anticipated. Sometimes a little less like Sunday! The appearance of a full house will cut down on the disconnect of many.
Rick L. | May 5, 2008 | Reply
Sunday was great. Our service however, went 1.5 hours. Way too long. Kids got done 20 minutes before and were just hanging around outside endlessly waiting. We had plenty of empty chairs, but people did a great job of sitting together in the middle and not spreading out.
Audra Krell | May 6, 2008 | Reply