Noon on Sunday

The basic assumption of most worship planners is that an hour of worship on Sunday morning is all anyone wants, or can stand.  It would not miss the mark too much to say that most preachers work within the constraints of this assumption.  Jokes and true stories abound of people making a production out of shaking their watches at the noon hour as if to suggest it must not be working, or maybe as a reminder to the preacher that it is time to say the benediction.  One time conscious preacher I knew had someone in the balcony noting the number of minutes given to each act of worship within the service so a more efficient  and time conscious service could be offered.   

It always seemed to me that worship was over when it was over.  I found ways of stretching the expected hour to give more time for worship.  For example, I would start the service at 10:50 with those ten minutes being devoted to greeting one another and parish announcements.  Of course, sometimes we still would break that noon barrier with some of the sermon unpreached, but I told my crowd when I began a sermon late into the hour that any preaching after noon was free so they had no worries.  On a more serious note, worship is one of those things which does not need a stop watch, or an alarm to call it to a conclusion.  This is not to say that some worship services run far too long due to a lack of planning, verbal rambling, and preaching that runs past a multitude of stopping places. 

Without taking advantage of people's time and without ignoring some of our culture's expectations, it is true that worship is about God and what He is doing in our midst.  He may be the author of time, but He is not the holder of the clock on Sunday morning.  Many a movement of the Spirit has been snuffed out because the preacher wrestled control of the service back from the Spirit so the benediction would send happy people out of the sanctuary at noon.  Sometimes worship simply takes longer than an hour.  There is no need to fear it.  Rejoicing that God is at work in our midst is a better response.