Is Preaching Twice a Week Too Much to Ask?

4 Ideas For the Second Service

Preaching twice a week is hard.

When our church planted, I was thrown into preaching twice. I struggled to sustain preaching two passages every week. So I scoured church websites and asked, “How do other churches do their evening service in a manageable way?”

Here are 5 ideas help you preach twice a week:

1) Evangelistic service

Martyn Lloyd-Jones encouraged weekly gospel preaching as good for believers and unbelievers:

• Believers are returned to the gospel

• Unbelievers can be invited every week

This isn’t “seeker-sensitive” churches that avoid offence. Rather it is clearly presenting Jesus. You can see examples at MLJ Trust.

He did this in the evening. For us, we have more unbelievers in the morning, so I do it then.

2) Topical Preaching

Grace Community Church Bedford tend to do something topical in the evening, based on books. (e.g Gentle and Lowly)

I know one church who began evening services by simply reading in the church or pastor’s house.

Of course you could do this without a book.

Once a year, I try to preach a part of our church’s confession. This last year I did a series on the Doctrine of God called Treasuring God.

3) Evening Prayer

Capitol Hill Baptist Church have a briefer evening service with a longer time for prayer for the life of the church.

For us this has looked like making a rota of three things to pray for

• A local church

• A church ministry (e.g. Sunday school, women’s ministry)

• A missionary

Before COVID this was a time of open prayer but now live streams have killed that off. Maybe we’ll go back to it!

4) Shorter texts

Not every sermon has to be on a chapter. I’ve found it good to have a series with shorter texts on the evening.

For example, I preached Titus 2-3 verses at a time.

This not only speeds up preparation, but allows depth of application. That has often been appreciated.

In Titus, I preached a whole sermon for older men from Titus 2:1-2 and older women on 2:3. Older saints really appreciated this longer look.

What about you?

If you preach twice a week, how do you do it?

And if you’re wondering if there’s much point in doing an evening service, you might want to check out 9 Reasons to Love the Evening Service.

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9 Reasons to Love the Evening Service