"Considering Evening Services" with Mark Trigsted and Matt Wood

Teaching Elders Mark Trigsted (Redeemer McKinney) and Matt Wood (Grace & Peace Anna) join the show to discuss evening services. The pastors share the experience at their churches and offer advice to churches considering offering them. “So my exhortation is just do it, you know, go for it.” says Pastor Wood. 

To our sister churches in the PCA and throughout NAPARC we welcome your voice and hope you will share your thoughts as we seek to better keep the Sabbath in a world that is openly hostile to the Fourth Commandment.

Links

• Grace and Peace Presbyterian Church, Anna, Texas.
• Redeemer McKinney (PCA)
• Mark Trigsted (@MTrigsted) on Twitter/X
• North Texas Presbytery
• Justin Andrusk & Matthew Lee’s Morning & Evening in the PCA on PCA Polity
• Sunday School - WCF Chapter 21 Of Religious Worship, and the Sabbath Day
• Cornerstone Presbyterian Church | Allen, TX
• Family Worship Bible Guide - Hardcover
• Christ Presbyterian Church - OPC, Flower Mound
• Iain Murray’s Revival and Revivalism
• Seth Miller, Immanuel Presbyterian Church, Post Falls, ID

Churches in North Texas Presbytery (PCA) with Evening Worship

• Redeemer Amarillo
• Grace & Peace Anna
• Bethel Church Dallas
• Lakewood Dallas
• Grace Community Presbyterian Church Fort Worth
• Redeemer McKinney
• Lakeside Southlake
• Fifth Street Tyler

Related

• Presbycast: Church Twice on Sunday w/Dr. Duncan Rankin
• The Forgotten Gift of Evening Worship by Jim McCarthy
• “Top Ten Reasons to Attend Evening Worship” by Danny Hyde
• Why I Love the Evening Service (And You Can Too) by Kevin DeYoung

Like and subscribe, rate and review, and spread the word far and wide.

Reformed Texas (@reformedtexas) on Twitter/X
Eric Wallace (@ecrosstexas) on Twitter/X
Eric's site ecrosstexas.com

Soli Deo Gloria

Transcript

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All right, well, after a brief hiatus, Presbyterian and Reformed Texas is back. And if you needed more proof that this is a one-man, low-budget show, the last two weeks of no episodes is proof of that. But we're correcting that today. We have, yes, we have Pastor Matt Wood at Grace and Peace in Anna, Texas. Texas and we have Pastor Mark Trigsted at Redeemer McKinney. How are you both today? Doing very well. Thank you, Eric. Great. We are. I'm doing well, but never as good as Matt. I aspire to be Mark Trigsted when I grow up. There you go. Yeah, you got a lot of growing left, man. You're just a young buck still. Well, Matt, since Mark is a returning guest, we don't really need to introduce him a whole lot, but I'll give you a chance to introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about yourself and Grace and Peace, if you would. Sure. So I am a pastor of Grace and Peace Presbyterian in Texas. We are a church that was planted out of Redeemer and McKinney. In fact, Mark Trigsted talked about us just a little bit on one of your previous episodes that I listened to. And I've been here for a little over 12 years now. It's been a real great delight to be here. And when I came, you know, just a church plant getting started and to see the church grow and the Lord be faithful and provide for us and kind of grow us up into maturity. I am married for 20 years this summer to Alicia. We have two kids, Elizabeth, who's 13, and John David, who's nine. And man, we're just, we're loving life and excited to be on here with you today. Well, we're glad you're here. And you also have the privilege of serving the Presbytery currently as moderator. That's right. I do have the great privilege to be the Presbytery, the moderator of North Texas Presbytery right now. It genuinely has been a great privilege and an enjoyable job, although this spring is ramping up a little bit for us as a presentation. No doubt. Well, if anyone has any complaints on any subject matter tonight, you know who to talk to here. That's right. I'm learning how to handle that. That's right. Well, the reason I wanted to have you both on here today, and we had hoped to have a few more guests and still may have one or two pop on here as we go on, was to talk about evening worship. And it's a subject that, you know, I know Mark and I have talked about a little bit already and a few other guests and I have mentioned, but to kind of reset the discussion, you know, there was a survey done. Last summer, and I guess it came out in August of 23, Justin Andrusk and Matthew Lee, an article in PCA Polity, that looked at the PCA as a whole and where we are in the United States, and they found that roughly 12% of our churches offer evening worship. Worship and you know there are many in the denomination that have different views on evening worship but 12 is not a huge number north texas at the time that survey came out was sitting right about the same percentage uh 12.8 and that was with five churches offering the evening Now, since that study was done, let me back up. Those five churches, let's give them props. We had Redeemer Amarillo, Bethel in Carrollton, North Dallas, however they're technically listed, Lakewood in Dallas, Redeemer McKinney, Fifth Street in Tyler. Since that time, Matt, you at Grace and Peace have added an evening service that started in January, right? January, that's right. Donny Friederichsen over in Lakeside and Southlake, they've added an evening service. And then Kyle Oliphint at Grace Community in Fort Worth, they added an evening service once a month starting, I think it was in August or maybe September of last year. So right about the time this came out. So we're, you know, we've got eight churches offering an hour. So we're running well above the average for the PCA in North Texas. So, Matt, you're doing something right in your leadership as moderator. Right? on. Let's go. Yeah, but when you hear that number, though, whether it's, you know, 20% of our churches in North Texas now or 12% across the denomination that offer an evening service, I mean, what is your initial reaction to just hearing a statistic like that? I might, my gut, I'll jump in, Mark, not to jump over you, but my gut is, I get, I get it. You know, we just started. I'm in, I'm in year 12. Something that had to do with facility. Part of the reason we were able to add an evening service is because we now have a small building on our property that allows us to add it. But it's, it's not what we're used to anymore in evangelical culture. I grew up with it in Southern Baptist Church in Georgia. So I have some familiarity with it, but most people aren't used to it. And so I get it, but it's also sad to me because what three and a half months has been such a blessing, even just for my own life, my own family, I know for our congregation to worship the Lord morning and evening on the Lord's day. And so it's a mixture of, I mean, I kind of understand, but it's also sad to me that people are missing out on this opportunity. Mark, would you add anything to that? No, other than the fact that we debated it at Redeemer for a number of years before we decided to do it. And, you know, the arguments against it, I think there really are some honest arguments against it, and they're mostly logistical and kind of practical. I remember the hardest argument that we had from one of our elders, and he was just adamant. The reason why he would not support and never would support evening service is that he felt it would lead to kind of elite Christians. That the congregation would be split into those who go to Sunday morning and Sunday night as the super real Christians. Right. And then others that might only go to Sunday morning would be looked at and thought of less. And, you know, I think that was an honest way to look at it. I think it's turned out for us to be wrong. Simply because of what we look at Sunday night as an opportunity for. And it's not to be anything other than just ending the day with the Lord as we begun it, and an opportunity. And we also made it very clear from the start that we understood people, especially in our context, we all have people that are driving a long distance to come to Sunday morning. And we We don't necessarily expect everyone is going to come back on Sunday night. And so when we kicked it off, we thought about it a long time and we, you know, we put, you know, we put a lot of thought into it and we, we did it with a certain attitude. I think that's really helped, but that, that big fear has turned out to be just not, not true. We, we have elders, for example, who come a long way that never come to Sunday night And they're not less of an elder. They're not less influential. They're not less of a Christian. It's just logistically, it's different for them. And so there were some real heartfelt reasons not to do it, but the reasons to do it just outweighed it for us. Sure. And what would be the primary reasons why a church would want to offer the evening service? Well, I'll let Matt answer that. He just did it. I mean, for us, probably the primary reason is more of the corporate means of grace. I mean, we get more of the scriptures being read together as God's people and the spirit being present. Another opportunity to hear the word preached, another opportunity to pray together as God's people. It's again, just like Mark said, this is what we present as an opportunity. We're not condemning anybody that doesn't come to this. We're not going to charge anybody who doesn't come to this. This is an opportunity. It's an opportunity to delight in the Sabbath and to grow in grace together. And secondarily to that, another, I think, really important reason is to support our people in keeping the Lord's Day holy. It is extremely hard to keep the Lord's Day holy. I can vouch. Again, I have a 13-year-old and nine-year-old. We've come through those young years, and it's really hard as a family to set the day apart. But when you have worship in the morning, worship in the evening, as the book ends of the day, it keeps you focused on the Lord and just really helps that. And we've seen that to be true. People that are participating will bear witness. This helps us keep the Sabbath holy, to set it apart to the Lord. And so I would say, you know, those are primary reasons. Of course, you know, scripture doesn't command this, but it does set up a pattern rhythm. We see morning and evening sacrifices. We see Psalm 92, talking about, you know, worship in the morning, worship in the evening. So while it's not a command, we see the scripture would say it's a good thing that we worship the Lord in the beginning of the day and in the day. So. That's well said. I had the opportunity recently to teach chapter 21 on the Sabbath, right? And to look at that with our church as we've been going through the Westminster Confession this year. And you know one of the points i made in that was you know all of all of modern society, in the west in america in particular um but i think it's probably true everywhere in the western world everything is against keeping the salmon we you know we have the the most minute uh, things of any semblance of blue laws exist economically anymore but practically you know You know, those are all gone as well. It's mere formalities at this point. But, you know, everything is geared against keeping the Sabbath. And why wouldn't we, as you said, Matt, give people opportunities, why wouldn't we give people opportunities to better understand how we can set the day apart and keep it holy, right? I mean, we know even offering an evening service, It doesn't solve the problem in and of itself, doesn't change hearts and how we actually think about the day and all the things we do when we're not gathered, but it does give people opportunities to do the things you said, right? To be discipled, to encourage one another, to fellowship one another, to hear the Word, to pray. You know, if you were to have the sacraments during that service, opportunity for that. Yeah. Yeah. I think, you know, to your point, with everything in our culture pushing back against us keeping the Sabbath, I think especially about parents with young kids who are raising their children to be disciples of Christ, to be faithful in the world. The Sabbath is extremely important for us to train our children that the Lord is the most important thing in our lives. And it's going to I mean, almost no family can get through the childhood and teenage years with their kids without the Sabbath pushing back on them at some point. Right. Some kind of activity is going to say, you know, we demand your time on this day of the week. And for Christian parents to say no, which is really hard. I totally get that. But and that's even a help with the evening service, because, you know, it's easy to say, well, as long as we get there in the morning, It doesn't matter what we do in the afternoon, but if you're giving morning and evening to the Lord in worship, it's hopefully a help even in that discipleship process saying, look, this is what we do on the Lord's day. It's his day. We're not going to do these other activities. Right. Yeah. And the four, you know, people, whether they're their families with kids in their activities or, you know, someone's profession that they do have to, they do, you know, they do feel like they are economically do need to work or they feel like this activity, they really do need to participate in it. And they missed the morning service. Well, I guess by having an evening service, you're still giving them the opportunity then, you know, to gather as well. Right. Certainly. Yeah, certainly. Certainly. So the, and Matt, I know you're just a few months into this, but what is, if a church were to look at this and, you know, as I know I've hinted a couple of times on this podcast, I mean, we are seriously considering this at Trinity Plano and studying this and hope to, you know, make a decision before too long one way or the other. If we're going to go forward with an evening service or set it aside for a continued down the road to look at it again. But if we were to offer it, what does participation look like? I mean, are you guys seeing 70% to 80% of your church there? Are you seeing 10% of the church there? What does it look like? I'll give a quick answer. sir. And then Mark, you give your answer because yours is better. But we get about 30% right now. And so, Yeah, I would say we come close to 50%. If we have 400 in the service on Sunday morning, we will tend to have 180, 90 to 200. It depends on a lot of factors, of course, time of the year, other things going on. But when we started, it was probably 20%, and it's been a slow climb all the way. And it also helps that we have people coming from Cornerstone, who was our last church plant that, just for facilities reasons, I think primarily can't offer a Sunday evening. So we've got a handful of them that come every Sunday night back. So that helps with attendance-wise. But yeah, I would say we would be thrilled to have 50%. You mentioned people coming from Cornerstone, and that's the newest PCA church there in Fairview/Allen, Texas. This um but you know i think one of the things that we probably should do a much better job of as pca churches is letting our sister churches know hey we have an evening service yeah we you know we can't offer one don't want to offer one you know the situation you were matt right and you guys are in a school sunday morning yeah until you recently had this new opportunity to put something on your land, you didn't have that opportunity. But, you know, if people were more aware of the options that were there that, hey, this church, you know, 20 minutes down the road offers even service, maybe I, you know, go fellowship with them that evening. And maybe we should encourage churches to look at gathering together to get a taste of what this could look like. Yeah. Agree. Yeah, everybody's welcome. Welcome. Come on. We meet at 5 p.m. We're in Anna, and we'd love to have you. And we're not trying to steal anybody. Just come worship with us even if you need the opportunity. We would love that. Yeah. Mark, what time do you guys meet? Are you at 5 also? Yeah, we're 5 to 6 strict. We, you know, that we, we wanted to make it sure, make sure that, that we, you know, honor people's times and are excited that they're coming. Um, and we, we start at five and we, we end right at six. Uh, those of us who are preaching, I mean, Jordan is adamant about it. You know, you prepare 20 minutes, 20 minutes. And if if you go over you i wouldn't say jordan doesn't have any wrath but he will not be happy if you if it's 6 15 and we're still there right it's not gonna work i will hear it in a staff meeting we're working we're working on that yeah um you know we want it to be five to six and uh so James uh James Poteet is a Ruling Elder at Grace and Peace he's under care of the Presbytery. We actually, our congregation just voted to extend him a call as associate pastor. He'll be examined at the next Presbytery. So he and I are doing every other on Sunday evening. And so, you know, we preach every other Sunday and both of us are learning to control our mouths so that we keep it within the limit. And Mark, you know, Eric, here's a fun story for you. Last time I got to preach at Redeemer in McKinney, Jordan and I do a pulpit it swap every year. I believe I preached for a solid hour without recognizing it. So Mark can testify to the fact that sometimes I get lost on time, but working on it. I didn't hear any complaints. There may have been complaints. I didn't hear any, but were you wearing a robe or not? Oh, I think I did wear a robe. Yeah, that's why. You had the unction. I had the unction. That's right. Genuinely, I had no idea. Anyway, yeah, we're working on learning to preach for 20, 25 minutes. At Redeemer, the two people that preach the longest, and we know it, are going to be Matt Wood and Richey Goodrich. For sure. Yes. You can come and preach an hour anytime you want. That's just fine. But it's good to be, I mean, in the evening, you have to understand people's, people, you know, the attention span is lower. It's harder. I know y'all don't offer nursery. We don't offer nursery except for young kids. There's just a lot of factors where I think an hour makes really good sense for an evening service. Just think of it logistically. No, I'd be, I'd be interested, Matt, to see, and I haven't talked with you about this. If you have seen one of the benefits of evening service that we didn't foresee, and that is, you know, we start at five, we're done at six, but I will tell you routinely, the deacons will be flicking the lights at 745 saying, get out of here. People just hang around. We haven't had that long, but yeah, it is. It's before and after we open up, you know, half hour to an hour before and people around for a half hour to hour after. And we don't even offer cookies. You guys have cookies at the evening. Oh yeah. We always have some. You make people hang around. What's happened is not planned. It's become the largest redeemer small group. It really is. You just see the people pocketing together. And then what I just love is I'll be there. They're 6.30. My wife will be saying, okay, it's time to go. And just the laughing and the loud conversations and the kids running. I mean, it's an awesome ambience there. Yeah, my wife won't ride with me on Sunday evenings because she's like, I got to get home and get the kids in bed. I love it. i love it no that uh that might be trouble if that pattern were to follow at trinity i'm i'm i'm often in trouble with my family already for talking too much after the service yeah yeah so. Besides besides the time constraint which i think is a noble thing right to to respect people's time and knowing that you know the work week and the pressures of life is a known thing on sunday evening um how else would you describe the service i mean is it is it a mere image of Sunday morning with different content is it structured differently um do you typically have the same elements of worship or you know talk about just how the service might look same or different go ahead Matt okay um so ours ours is a little bit different uh for sure we don't do like you You mentioned sacraments earlier. We don't have sacraments on Sunday evening. Of course, the preaching of the word is still central to the service. That's what we're there for. But we have a couple of different things that we don't have in the morning. Number one, we're going through the Heidelberg Catechism just as, you know, confession of faith and by Lord's Day. And we'll give whoever's not preaching, we'll give a very brief explanation or encouragement or whatever from that Lord's Day's question. And answers. We're also reading consecutively through, you know, we've just been doing Romans, but we will read consecutively through some book of the Bible on Sunday evening as well, which is not something that we do in the morning, you know, apart from the regular expository preaching. And so that's another element that we've added in. And then. The one other thing that we do on Sunday nights that's different is we're doing a Psalter reading. And it's just from the back of the training handle. You only have those Psalter readings in the back. We're just going straight through the Psalter. And it's responsive reading of the Psalter. And then immediately following that is a pastoral prayer. And intentionally, we're praying based on the psalm because we're trying to instruct our people and model for our people. Here's how you pray the scriptures back to the Lord. And so that's been a really great part of the service that, you know, we don't do, we have a pastoral prayer in the morning, but to have it based on a Psalter reading has been a really sweet element of our evening worship. And then we sing, you know, we sing four either hymns or psalms mixed in there. And that's the gist of our Sunday evening service. Okay. Yeah. Ours is almost identical. I wish we did the Psalter readings responsibly and did a pastoral prayer, which we don't. We have a call to we have a call to worship we have a uh uh a prayer of thanksgiving we have the reading of the uh we go we're going through the we go through the the uh larger and shorter catechism uh we have and then we have like like uh grace and peace we have a consecutive reading through the scriptures okay and i think at the last count i mean we've read 20 books of the bible or whatever together. And, you know, it's mostly reading. And it's wonderful that it gives, particularly our interns or other folks, a chance to read the scriptures publicly, work on that, because that's a real skill, doing that. And then we try to hold the comments together. To as little as possible. Maybe this is what this chapter is about. Whenever I prepare, I use that family worship guide from Reformed Heritage. It's fantastic. It gives you a paragraph summary of every chapter in the Bible. So I try to give that. This last Sunday was the longest interlude that I had. We were reading, I read 1 Corinthians 11, and the first 16 verses, as you know, 1 Corinthians 11 is basically on head coverings. And it's right in the middle between Paul's two longest admonitions on the Lord's Supper. And we have had four or five, maybe six families join that use head coverings. And so I thought, I've got to say something. About it, you know, and basically took the opportunity to say, look, there's two camps here. There are Christians that do not practice this. There are Christians that do, and you need to know that whatever side you are on, you have got biblical evidence and tradition on your side. Right. Right? So let's just talk about that. And then, you know, then the whole point was, wherever you end up deciding on that, the point is that male headship, both in the church and the home, is not optional. That is the point. And then, you know, Paul ends up there in verse 16 saying, and there will be no contentiousness among us, period. And I said, that's the point. You know, but we try to have comments as little as possible and just try to let the word speak for it for itself. And it's, it's a highlight for me. And when I, when I, when I get to do that on Sunday night, I love it. Have you ever taken testimonies, like during the evening service? You know, so when we have a fifth week in the month, we forego the normal Sunday night service and do a prayer meeting. Okay. So that's kind of our regular. And we have done different things. We've done a, you know, have we done a sing? I think we did do a sing once and testimonies. or what, you know, we'll, but Jordan really changes up the prayer meeting too, to do unique and different things. And, and it's that, that the attendance to that has gone up significantly. The last one we had was the day after our Sunday evening on Easter. And we, do we, do we not have, no, we're going to go ahead and do that. And so what we did is we had, we got 200 sharpies and had people come and we went into the new building that we're building and said you know let's take you around and everybody write verses write prayers and you know inside the sheet rock and on beams all over that place is just it's great oh that's great yeah it's fantastic so yeah uh yeah so we do different things like that on occasion yeah Yeah, that's a great, you mentioned just writing, you know, having them write with the marker, their prayers. Yeah. Just reminded me, we, you know, painted our kitchen, gosh, it's, well, 27 years ago now when my oldest was three and, you know. I've written on the side of the cabinet, or maybe she wrote or whatever, but it was Emma and the date, January of 2003, whenever we did it and everything. I had pulled the oven out recently and just saw that and just made me think of it. How neat that memory that is, right? Yeah. During the construction, the construction firm found a bunch of old prayers from the previous building program that we had. That's awesome. We're on phase three now and so they actually cut some of them out and we're going to also you know tack them in some walls yeah that's great that's awesome well you know you mentioned meeting um the evening on easter uh-huh and so i know matt you can't really answer this question since you just started this year uh but something to think about uh so Mark the um in the past right Just recently, Christmas Eve is Sunday evening. What does your Sunday evening service look like? Is it more a traditional Christmas Eve service? Is it just the traditional, what you do normal Sunday evening? How do you navigate things like that? I was in Wisconsin, so I don't know what we did. Kid um but knowing Jordan we probably had you know some timely hymns yeah no and probably the same uh catechism and uh consecutive reading where we're at and then he would have tailored a, message around something yeah that i would think but i actually wasn't there i was up Wisconsin with myself fair enough yeah what what does uh asked about participation and And, you know, the numbers you gave, I think, are certainly realistic things that, you know, I can't see what would be too hard to get somewhere between 30 and, you know, and seeing it grow like you did, Mark, right to close to 50 now. Now, um, the, would you say the, the officer, uh, participation mirrors that with your elders and deacons, or does that, is it, you know, as a higher participation and, and why ask, right? I mean, the, the, the possible, I think Mark, you mentioned it, right. That, you know, you've got somebody who has a long commute and that's just a lot for them to come back again. But, um, the, um. Just guys who feel burdened already with their service to the church and their careers or whatever. Adding another thing to their plate. How would you pastorally discuss that with them? Yeah, how we have looked at that is, look, everyone has to run their own home. Everyone has to make their own decisions and try it out or it's here for you and do not feel burdened. If, if family issues, if life issues, if it, you know, it's, it's not that big a deal. We, we understand. And I think for the most part, our guys that don't go wish they could or would, if they lived closer and they weren't in different life situations, we've got some with multiple kids and sure. A long way. And we, you know, all the way up almost to Louisville, one of our elders comes and, you You know, so it's, you know, we, we, we don't take attendance. So I, I actually just, I would have to think in my mind of all the guys who is there and who's not, who, who normally isn't, but it's really so much de-emphasized and so little, you know, uh, talked about that. I don't think anybody that would come would, would, would, would come just to be seen. And I don't think anybody would not come unless they had a good reason not to come. So, yeah, it's just the way it was handled from the beginning was just so good that there was no pressure. Like, you know, like Matt said, this is an opportunity, you know, and it's an opportunity not only to close open and close your day with the Lord, but it's an opportunity to schedule your family's life around it. That you just don't go Sunday morning and Sunday night with, without thinking about what am I going to do with those hours in between? And it's, it's just having you focus on the day as a whole. Right. You know, so, and we, we have a lot of people that, that will have fellowship after the Sunday evening service, you know, grab a pizza together or whatever. And we don't discourage that at all. And, um, you know, like I said, a lot of people hang around, you know, it's, uh, the kids love to, especially if it's nice weather in the summer, they'll be in the playground and tell the parents, you know, make them leave. Right. And we've got a kind of a little, little soccer field that our kids have made and there'll There'll be 10 to 12 kids after every service, just having a soccer game out there. And, uh, it's, it's just a, a positive thing. And it's, and, and certainly if anybody felt burdened and this, you know, don't go, I know my wife sometimes, you know, you know, if she has work that she has to do on Monday or whatever, and she's, she, I'm, I'm staying home today, you know, and I'm, that's fine. And she'll watch it on live stream as she's packing to go out of town or do preparing or whatever. And there's, there's no pressure on that. Nobody's ever said, you know, how come Lisa didn't come last night? Well, right. It's, it's, we started it, I think the right way with the right attitude. So we've had none of that come up. And how long have you had a redeemer now? Well, it started maybe Jordan second. Yeah. I think three years or going on four years now. Okay. And the reason why, you know, some of us wanted it for a long time and Jordan wanted it from And it was just getting kind of the session more Jordanized, I think is the word, just more used to that way of thinking when it wouldn't be contentious if we brought it up for a vote in the Session. Because if it was contentious, why would we even want to do it? There had to be positive vibes. And once we got it, the other thing that really helped, and I don't know, Matt, if you did this or not, but Dr. Ferguson, he's famous for his Sunday night speeches when he comes and gives lectures. And I've heard his same speech at RTS Dallas probably four times, five times. Don't tell me how many you run on Sunday morning. Tell me how you run on Sunday night. That's the spirituality of your church, you know, blah, blah, blah. But he told the story when he started off in South Carolina, they prepped for like nine months and they advertised and that Dr. Ferguson was going to begin a series on the book of Revelation on Sunday night. They packed it out. And there were many times, Dr. Ferguson said during that study, there were more people on Sunday night than Sunday morning. Right. And so, of course, Jordan being a copycat, that's exactly what he did. We're going to just book a revelation. There you go. I did not follow that pattern. We've been doing 1 Samuel on Sunday. Okay, well, there you go. But, you know, honestly, logistically, we can't pack it out. Like our whole church on Sunday nights, we would be standing in the parking lot. You don't have enough seats. Yeah, we don't have enough seats for everybody. so we would knock out walls it'd be great you know we would love that but so yeah ours was ours was a little bit different than that we were we did advertise it for a few months ahead of time and encourage people to come uh but we kind of figured it would start out in that you know 20 to 25 percent range and we've been happily you know surprised it's been like 30 to 35 percent that. So great. Yeah. That's very encouraging. Yeah. Yeah. The. Community around us all, since we're all within 25 miles of each other, our churches, you know, is certainly, I would say, no different than the rest of the Metroplex, other than it's, you know, probably a higher income than the Metroplex as a whole. Whole um but certainly we were representative i think of of you know most of uh the churches in in Houston area Austin San Antonio right we're not unique in this um so you know to our to our brothers um around the state in in the major metro areas where you know dual dual income families You know, kids and their activities are the norm. If they were to think, hear this and say, you know, I want to know more. I want to study this more. What are some resources or some things, what are some resources you'd recommend or some things that you would encourage them to think about in helping them navigate the decision-making process? As to, you know, ultimately take it before the session and make that decision and go forth with it. Well, Matt, I'll give that one to you. Oh boy. Thanks. I, uh, the scriptures are the only resource I could, I could point to. And again, I don't think it's commanded, but you see the pattern of worshiping morning and evening. I didn't read any books about it or there may have been an article that came out a year or two that gave a good argument for it, but I honestly can't point to it. But now I will say, Eric, I was fortunate that my Session wanted this before we could do it. And we were all in agreement on that. And so it wasn't there wasn't any argument to be had. We just thought this is a this is a good thing. I will say just things to think about. And I have this, I would say just about the Sabbath in general. General, you know, I get frustrated because everybody wants to find an excuse not to keep the Sabbath. And I just want to turn that upside down. It's like, why, why do you want to find an excuse not to do what God said is good for your life? You know, take what he said is good and do it. I mean, what would my wife think if I'm always looking for an excuse to break the seventh commandment, right? That's not, that's not, that's not going to work out. Right. But, but with the fourth commandment, we're always like, no, you know, God, this is, I can't do it because of this. I can't. And I'm not trying to be, you know, hypercritical in like that. I just. You should, we should at least be thinking about the question that way. Like, why do I want, why am I so desperately trying to find a reason not to set this day apart to the Lord? Why would I look for a logistical excuse not to come back together with God's people and hear God's word again and fellowship amongst the saints? You know, there are reasons that, like Mark said, there's providential hindrances to that. And I get that. But in general, we want to make an excuse to not do it. And I just don't understand because there's a feast for us in the Lord's day and we were looking for an excuse to go grab some peanuts, you know, and I just don't, I don't really understand. And then the second thing I'll say about that, and particularly in our context where there are a lot of young families with kids. Uh, and, and one thing I always want people to think about is if you're not training your children, that the real, that the Lord is the most important thing in their life. Um, then don't come to me crying when they abandoned the church in college. I mean, do right. I'm a pastor, but, but like, I'm going to say, well, you told them baseball was more important than worship. You told them whatever activity was more important than worship for their whole growing up experience or was at least equally as important. Right. And what do you what do we expect to happen with our kids if we let them put everything else on the same level, at least with worship? And that plays into, I think, what do we do with the Lord today? Day plays into this conversation, but I just, I sound like a, you know, raging fundamentalist or whatever, but I just, I did, I think that it's a question we need, people need to be asking, what are we teaching our kids? And why are we trying to make excuses to not delight in the Lord's day? That's well said. Yeah, I don't think you sound like a fundamentalist. I think you sound like a Westminster divine. I'll take that as a compliment. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, again, you know, back to that lesson I taught, you know, a couple weeks ago. One of the challenges I left him with was, you know, what might our lives look like if we began to take the Sabbath seriously? You know we we wonder so much about the world around us and we're so concerned about, everything else you know we we need to pass more laws to to as society says right impose our morals on them yeah and we're so lax on ourselves like if we if we if we took the day more seriously and we did not look like the world what impact might that alone have and certainly would have it on on ourselves and our family, but I think it would have an effect on the world around us. Amen. Yeah. Amen is right. Great way to be radical. Yes. Yes. Yes. We're going to be radical. Let's be radical on the Sabbath, right? Well, and I would say like another good challenge is talk to people in your church that are keeping the Sabbath and see what they think about it, because I guarantee you, it's a joy. The people that are, that are setting it apart to the Lord, it's, it's not a burden. It's refreshing. It takes time. You have to, you know, it takes time to, to, to, to grow into that discipline. But once it's a discipline, it's, it's, it's a, it's a joyful thing. It's not a burden. It's, it's, it's, it's peaceful. It's, it's relaxing. It's refreshing. It's freeing. It's not a burden at all. And it's good people to hear that from, from the mouth of people who are actually experiencing it. So that's another good challenge as well, I think, to our people. You know, we have one elder gentleman in our church that we used to always kid him that the fastest we ever see a church member move is this brother from his seat to the front door when the Cowboys have a 12 p.m. kickoff. But it's really true. when that is what's on your mind and heart, when that is what you schedule your time around. And, you know, to me, even if you are a big Cowboys fan or a sports fan or whatever, you know, with the technology now, there's no reason you can't, you know, tape that thing and, you make sure that you don't hear the score and you you can watch it you know sunday night monday morning or whatever and and i promise you'll get the same enjoyment out of it except you can skip through the commercials it's even better so you know but particularly in dallas you know it's uh it's it's it's a problem yeah do you have you had um obviously you know we're in the more affluent areas. I mean, have you seen golf like the Masters this past weekend? Is that an issue for anyone as much as the Cowboys? I don't think so. I've never heard it come up. Greg Lewis, on the way out on Sunday night, said, Scottie's running away with it. That's the only data point I have on that. Right. Yeah, I mean, there's people that love it and want to watch it. I haven't done nearly as much as the Cowboys, at least in the early part of the season. Now, toward the playoffs, nobody's in all that big of a hurry. Right. Because they're not in it. Yeah. They're eliminated after the first round. Those of us who are more sanctified like Saturday football better anyway. So, yeah, you know, it was 1990. The last time the Cowboys were in the Super Bowl was like, what was it, 95 season? Yeah, 95 season, January 96. And Dave Sherwood at Christ Pres. in Flower Mound that weekend had a, it was right after Iain Murray had written Reformation and Revival. And he had a, he had a conference at his church with Ian Murray and I went, um, and I remember asking Iain Murray, uh, and during the question and answer time, I said, you know, you guys have, have soccer over there. You know, I'm sure you, you've heard it talked about that, that, uh, you know, next weekend, you know, is, or this coming Sunday is the, is the Superbowl and, you know, all that i i said what's what's your take on that the differences between you know US and and uh UK and and Iain murray said there is no difference they're they're both idolatry. He's right exactly yep there's a difference for yeah because it's still an idolatrous heart, man yeah it's very true and unfortunately it is you know you mentioned Matt raising your kids right I mean that's something easy for us to neglect as well and letting, our kids become so enamored with sports especially on Sunday in the NFL that truly does become idolatrous us. It really does. You have to, my son loves the Rangers. I do too. Um, and, uh, it's been a fun, you know, last year was a real fun year to be a Rangers fan. Uh, oh, I'm sorry, Eric. I should say the Texas Rangers, not the hockey team, but I know where you went. I know. Yeah. We certainly don't, we don't want to sponsor or think about the New York Rangers, although they are named, they are named after the real Texas Rangers. So, Hey, we have to give them props for their naming, but there you go. But we have to have that conversation. Look, if this is making you not want to go to church, that's problematic. It's a great opportunity to talk about idolatry. I mean, it should raise those questions for us, you know, and give us an opportunity to disciple our kids for sure. So it's harder when they're playing sports and you have to have the conversation of, no, you can't play on the Lord's Day. We know this is not what we do. And that's a harder conversation. I mean, right. I have a lot of sympathy for, for parents, um, having to navigate that. It's, it's really hard. Um, but we just have to set the standard from day one. If that's our conviction, we have to set the standard from day one and stick to it. And, and, you know, let's be honest, how many of our kids are gonna, uh, be professional athletes or even collegiate athletes. And so like, this is not the thing to wrap your life around. No, there's no doubt there. Trigsted had the genes for that. He's the athlete in the group. Well, my dad told me when I was in fifth grade, sixth grade, he's like, look, I hope you want to go to college. I'm a teacher and that's the only income. And if you want to go to college, you're going to have to get a scholarship. End of story. I'll help you. Good luck. There you go my dad was my high school football coach too yeah yeah and he coached you up well didn't he no he was a great he was a great coach man he was he was a legend in Portland Oregon when I was growing up and he he got this job in Lewiston Idaho as the head football coach in this town he was a hunting and fishing guy and man they he had the time of his life and we we moved there when I was a freshman in high school and, and, uh, they, they lived in that house until they both died. Yeah. Wow. Very good. Well, brothers, I thank you so much for the time we've had together, uh, today talking to the subject. Um, are there any, uh, you know, last words you'd want to share with um with churches and uh our people on this subject matt just do it just do it it's that simple like if it's a wrestling thing if it's not i mean yeah i'm not commanding it i'm not if it's not in your dna okay we can talk about that but like if you're just wrestling with well people tom or can we get the the all the stuff together just do it and and it's finally we don't We sing a cappella on Sunday nights because I don't have a piano player on Sunday nights. It's fine. You know, it's totally fine. We can't have a nursery right now because we don't have space for it. It's fine. You know, just, you know, the Lord's people love to worship the Lord. They love his word and they love to gather together with his people. So give them the opportunity. So my exhortation is just do it, you know, go for it. And I think it'll be great for you. It'll be a great joy for your church. Yeah. Yeah, I would say I've lived through two. Um now i want to say revival but that's really not the word in north texas presbytery the first one was the controversy or controversy over weekly communion this would have been back late 90s early 2000s when the percentages probably were pretty close to the same uh as they are right now with sunday night churches that have sunday night service right It was way less than half of the churches in North Texas Presbytery practiced it. And we had kind of the same arguments about that. And I saw a change where I would—I don't know what the percentage is, but the majority, I think, of the churches in North Texas Presbytery have it. And that's one of those things, when you make that part of your DNA, you don't go back. And I think Sunday night service is the same way, especially if you start off with the right attitude about it. We will never go back to not having it at Redeemer. I can promise you that. And I couldn't tell you one church that actually started having Sunday night service that stopped. Maybe there is. I don't know of one. Right. So I would say exactly like Matt, go for it. You know, Seth Miller, starting out his church in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, started day one with Sunday morning and Sunday evening worship. He said, you know, wherever we find a place to meet as a plant, the number one priority is that we can have it all day. And he was maybe a month, six weeks into it. And there was one week when he and Zoe showed up, and I think there was like three other people. And he's like, I'm not going to lie to you. It was, it was rough, right? Yeah. But, but we're starting out this way and this is what we're going to do. And now there's, you know, there's, they had over a hundred people last Sunday and they're, they're growing and it's exciting and all of those things, but, but that's in their DNA from day one. That's just, you know, so yeah, go for it. Yeah. Yep. Well, awesome. Well, gentlemen, I thank you again so much for your time today. Day and uh certainly you both are invited on anytime you've actually given me a great topic idea um and matt may you definitely might uh be part of that discussion on uh you know church planting and um what uh facility issues look like in the coming with real estate prices and you know school participation and and the like and yeah call seth he'll be on with you yeah well Well, I mean, he's not here in Texas anymore, although he still is a member of North Texas. He is ministering out of bounds. That's right. Is he still a member of our presbytery? He is at the moment. Yeah, he is a stated supply. Gotcha. Okay, very good. Now I'd love to talk about that 12 years in, and we're still in a rented facility, so I could tell you all kinds of fun stories. So, yeah. No, it's been a joy. Thanks, Eric. This has been a fun conversation. I appreciate you. Good deal. Well, thank you guys. And listeners, we will catch you next time. Thank you. Bye.