Saturday Launch

From one of our listserves in answer to the question, Is it okay to launch our plant on Saturday?

My original vision was to launch on Sat night. The first problem with that was location. There are many places you can not rent on Saturday night because they make ten times more money from liquor sales. I often joked we could have a cash bar! You couldn't get a church on Sat night, though.

My second problem was effectiveness. From my conversations with church plant leaders (of course limited and two years ago), Sat night launches aren't terribly effective. I try to be a student of Church Plants and I can't think of a church that only meets on Sat night and very, very few that meet on Sun night. The convincing conversation came from Pastor Dennis Hall at Friendship Community Church in EPA, who said he had tried and tried to get a Sat night service up and running.

The third problem and nobody wants to talk about it much is finances. If you launch on Sat. night, your per person offering will be very low. If that comment makes you bristle I understand, it bothers me too. You simply have to make a decision about what kind of church you are going to have (and what kind of budget.)

It is our philosophy to build some stability with a Sun morning service and then expand from there.

A response:

I agree for a Sunday morning time of worship.

We launched with a Sunday Afternoon time (2:00 pm) for three years, then changed to a Sunday morning. We found a noticeable growth with the Sunday morning time. People have commented that they expect to be at church on Sunday morning and have the rest of the day for family activities.

From Bill Easum

You will always reach more people on Sunday morning.  The only churches I see pulling off a Sat. service are those very large churches that are full on Sunday morning