Hi spiritbear:

We have a wondercafe.live! every second Friday night from 7.00 and 9.00, and will soon add a WonderSpirit event on the alternate Fridays in-between.

wondercafe.live! is a presentation by a desginated speaker on any topic deemed of importance to the community, followed by a question-and-answer session, followed by on-table discussions. Entry is free, fair trade coffee and tea are avalibale for free, but donations are accepted. Last Friday I did a presentation on THE SACRED UNIVERSE, which I posted here on blog.

WonderSpirit sessions will begin with a half hour meditation or meditative excercise, followed by a round-table discussion or workshop on just about any topic, albeit from a spiritual but non-denominational perspective.

These events are taking place in our church hall. We hope to make our church hall into the spiritual center of our community.

We advertise each event in the local press, on posters throughout our village, by e-mail and by word of mouth. Most of the people who come to these events are not members of our congregation.

Arminius, did I ever ask how many people come to these events?

Hi crazyheart:

There were 26 people at our last wondercafe.live!, most of them from outside our congregation. Our congregation has about 35 members, 20-25 of whom attend regularly. This compares to a population of about 1600 for the village of Lumby.

We have a casual mid week service about twice a month.

the intention is to attract the teen/20's and non church members.

casual, guitars that sort of thing.

Attracts about 30 - 50 depending on the day.  Regular srevice attracts about 300 but this is reaching a new population

Lastpointe:

How did the people attending your midweek service find out about it?

I would be able to connect with the  UC if a local church had something to offer through the week.  As it stands, I have to work every weekend and I'm sure I'm not the only one who would welcome another option.  I keep checking to see what local churches are up to, but so far, there are only Sunday services.  One church has a lunch once a week, but that's about it. 

Timing is a tricky issue. Seems that no matter what evening we select during the week, someone has a problem with it. Do you think there are some evenings that would work better than others?

My church has a worship service on wednesday nights. It's nice because, unlike the sunday service, it is much more intimate and everyone is completely involved. The only premotion I've heard for it is after sunday services, though.

We have an online blog and website, but for people outside the congregation it's mostly through word of mouth.  We believe firmly that quality has to be there before quantity; we're small, but we're strong.

The way I try to describe it to people is that it IS a service, but it is not in competition with Sunday morning.  Instead, it exists to complement and contrast Sundays in both worship style and content.  Instead of a sermon, we have discussion.  Instead of hymnboook songs we have a piano and sing secular music like "Hallelujah" by Leonard Cohen, or "Imagine" by John Lennon.

I don't know about bring in, since we aren't trying to SELL it, but I think what it does is gives people, already part of our large congregation, a chance to go beyond Sunday morning and find appreciation beyond what they always thought might be considered 'church'.

We do have a few members who do not regularly attend church on Sunday, but come regularly to Wednesday nights.  They are sometimes the spouse of a church member, or a friend of the youths, but they obviously find Wednesday night to be more of a taste.

Ours started off as mostly youth, but now it's a fantastic mix of old and young.  We average about 15 people a week, but it's a change-up of faces and we probably have at least 20 or 30 people you could term 'regulars'.

This is one of our focuses at the moment; our Associate Minister does most of the worship leading.  But this is changing.  We have people volunteer to share a devotional with us (we've been reading from The Screwtape Letters for the past few weeks), and we even have people volunteer to lead entire services.  It's really only an hour long, and it's always great to see a different leadership style.  I'm signed up for one on Pacifism in April, and it'll be my third to lead.  By having more people feel capable of leading a service, we're hoping that it will be able to continue on with little dependence on one person.  We do have a dedicated core group of organizers who manage the website, talk about upcoming services, and make sure there's coffee, etc.  But all the details are not yet perfected.

Hope this helps!

Hi spiritbear:

We decided on Friday night because it is the beginning of the weekend.

We have Seventh Day Adventists in our valley, who celebrate the Sabbath on Saturdays and have a Sabbath Eve servive on Friday night. So I jokingly refer to our Friday night wonder events as Sabbath Eve services.

Our service is promoted on our web site and advertised on our lawn sign.

Other than that it is word of mouth amoungst the youth as we don't do any paid advertising

We have a studnet minister this year from Emmanual College so he also spreads the word and we seem to be getting some U of T students as a result of him.

What`s your church lastpointe?

Hey all - bumping this back to life again.

Do any of you churches and alternative services have plans to do something for Holy Week this week?  Immersn is holding a Seder meal on Wednesday.  I get to make lamb - I'm excited!