Strange question about Protestant Churches

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ralphinal

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There is a small church near my house. Anyway, they are an active group. Today, the sign out front read “Visiting Children’s home, no service.”

I have no issue with that at all. What I am wondering is if it is common. Do smaller churches “close” because of travel or illness of the pastor or will they normally bring in guests to preach? Does it depend on the denomination? Why not simply have a Bible study or Prayer session?

I assume it was only for the Wednesday night service, but let’s address it as if it is for Sunday
 
ralphinal said:
There is a small church near my house. Anyway, they are an active group. Today, the sign out front read “Visiting Children’s home, no service.”

I have no issue with that at all. What I am wondering is if it is common. Do smaller churches “close” because of travel or illness of the pastor or will they normally bring in guests to preach? Does it depend on the denomination? Why not simply have a Bible study or Prayer session?

I assume it was only for the Wednesday night service, but let’s address it as if it is for Sunday
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My church is rather small and when our pastor was on travel and when he was in hospital we had one of the deacons to preach… They basically took turns… We have 6 deacons, each taking care of about 15-20 members… We have 2 services on Sunday and 1 on Wednesday… we can basically go 2 weeks with nobody having to preach twice… Because our pastor does not have a problem sharing the pulpit once in a while all of them have at least some practical experience preaching.

It’s a Baptist church by the way…
 
ralphinal said:
There is a small church near my house. Anyway, they are an active group. Today, the sign out front read “Visiting Children’s home, no service.”

I have no issue with that at all. What I am wondering is if it is common. Do smaller churches “close” because of travel or illness of the pastor or will they normally bring in guests to preach? Does it depend on the denomination? Why not simply have a Bible study or Prayer session?

I assume it was only for the Wednesday night service, but let’s address it as if it is for Sunday
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Ours is a pretty small Lutheran Church, LCMS. We rarely if ever cancel for any reason. However, if the pastor is not there, and a supply pastor is not available, divine service in its normal form cannot be held. We cannot have confession/Absolution, or the sacrament. A sermon/homily can be presented by, say, the head elder, but it should be prepared remarks by the pastor, as, according to Augsburg, only called and ordained pastors can do these things.
There are some liturgical services that can be sued without a pastor.

Jon
 
I’ve been in big and large churches that were Baptist, Pentecostal, and Charismatic. They all don’t close when the pastor leaves because they usually have many pastors, deacons, etc that will fill in. They may also bring a guest preacher in. It’s odd that it closed.
 
This is a Freewill baptist one.

Thanks for the response. I knew that Lutherans had means to get fill-ins, so to speak. I figured that others had other ideas.
 
I found it strange that a lot of Protestant churches closed when Christmas fell on a Sunday. I can understand not having Sunday school or nursery, but no worship at all on the day we commemorate Christ’s birth? 🤷

In Christ,

Ellen
 
When I was a Protestant there were churches that closed up if Christmas happened to be on a Sunday so the pastor could “spend the day with his family.” I always hated that. 😦
 
MrsHall said:
When I was a Protestant there were churches that closed up if Christmas happened to be on a Sunday so the pastor could “spend the day with his family.” I always hated that. 😦
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Close on Christmas really hurts our “Do not force Christmas to vanish” statements.
 
Here where I live there are some churches that close on Christmas day when it falls on Sunday. I never had a problem with it when I was in my teen years as a protestant though. My perception of this practice started changing right before I started researching the Catholic faith.

God bless,

Jesse
 
We have cancelled a service, not the main one, to “go be of service”. It is usually an organized event with a service theme or helping another church in some capacity.
 
ALLGIRLS said:
I found it strange that a lot of Protestant churches closed when Christmas fell on a Sunday. I can understand not having Sunday school or nursery, but no worship at all on the day we commemorate Christ’s birth? 🤷

In Christ,

Ellen
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Hmm… I have never attended a “protestant” church that has not had a service on a Sunday Christmas. In fact, I have attended a few that had a special service on Christmas when it fell on a Monday through Saturday.

I think the only time I have seen a church service canceled was right after a hurricane and trees and debris were everywhere.
 
I was raised in a very small town (750 people) One Sunday every Summer was “vacation Sunday” and there was no service as the Pastor was on vacation. Services were also cancelled a few time because of bad weather delaying harvests so most people were running combines, etc. and there was not much point as no one was going to be there…or the service would last a half hour tops.
 
JonNC said:
Ours is a pretty small Lutheran Church, LCMS. We rarely if ever cancel for any reason. However, if the pastor is not there, and a supply pastor is not available, divine service in its normal form cannot be held. We cannot have confession/Absolution, or the sacrament. A sermon/homily can be presented by, say, the head elder, but it should be prepared remarks by the pastor, as, according to Augsburg, only called and ordained pastors can do these things.
There are some liturgical services that can be sued without a pastor.

Jon
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The Lutheran Church (LCC - Lutheran Church Canada, the Canadian “Leg” of the LCMS) where I attended in Drumheller, AB Canada did something very similar.

When the regular pastor was away and a supply pastor was available, service was held as per normal. When no supply pastor was available (and this happened often during the winter months as no one ever wanted to travel to our small town during bad weather), one of the elders would read prepared words from the Pastor. There was no call to confession/Absolution and certainly never any celebration of the Lord’s Supper. :crossrc:
 
MrsHall said:
When I was a Protestant there were churches that closed up if Christmas happened to be on a Sunday so the pastor could “spend the day with his family.” I always hated that. 😦
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It doesn’t make much sense. If you enter the priestly vocation, no matter what denomination, it stands to reason that you don’t get Holy Days off.
 
Nine_Two said:
It doesn’t make much sense. If you enter the priestly vocation, no matter what denomination, it stands to reason that you don’t get Holy Days off.
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When I was a kid, my dad - a pastor - *never *cancelled service, that I can recall. There was always a service Christmas morning, regardless of the day of the week. I can even remember, when I was 12, a Christmas eve snowstorm, a foot of snow. He and I hitchhiked the 5 miles to town because we couldn’t get the car out. He held a Christmas Eve service.

Jon
 
We never cancel Sunday morning services. If Sunday is a big holiday we will not have a Sunday evening service. If our pastor is away, we have an assistant pastor preach or else a guest.
 
The little Free Methodist place I was part of until January 2009 didn’t cancel for any reason except extreme weather, and not always then. On a Sunday Christmas there might be only 10-15 people but there was still a service. (But then in January 2009 it closed permanently… and I am becoming Catholic now!)
The “megachurch” in this area doesn’t do anything on Christmas day even if it’s a Sunday, to allow for “family time.” In fact I believe in recent years they haven’t had Christmas Eve services either. They do all the Christmas stuff the weekend before Christmas.
The first Mass that I ever attended was Midnight Mass 2008! I can’t imagine not going back every year!
 
Weekday services and/or ministries might be cancelled. On Sunday some church member will step up.

If something more permanent happened to the Pastor, long term disability or death, the local church members continue to step up until the District Supervisor finds a replacement who the local Church Council will vote for to confirm.
 
I have no issue with the pastor wanting some time off. Even Jesus went off to pray and fast alone from time to time.

This really shows the difference between larger churches, smaller ones, and denominations that have more hierarchy.
 
While the Society of Friends is small compared to some of the larger Protestant groups…we might not open the Meeting House on First Day for various reasons…but in such cases since Friend’s Meeting for Worship is not bound by a building or location, we do “enter into Meeting” each First Day…whether we are with a larger group of Friends…or with just our immediate family or friends because one or more of us couldn’t get to the Meeting House to open the doors…we do “meet for worship”…worship is never “cancelled”…the location may be changed…the quantity of Friends at each “worhip location” may be smaller…but Meeting for Worship takes place.

I’ve had a few Quaker families meet at my home for worship on First Day due to weather…and one time a “re-model” of the Meeting House…they could get to me better than we could get to the Meeting House due to weather…and we could meet in my living room when the Meeting House was under re-construction.
 
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