Sermon or Discussion for Evening Service???

For anyone who might read this, I would like to have your feedback with what you think I should do. Since I have been at this church, I have been going through the Heidelberg Catechism in our evening service. I wanted to do this as it is something that has been neglected I think over the last number of years. But also, it helps my preaching schedule. I have been here a year and a few months, and we are getting to the end.

For the last number of weeks instead of having an actual "sermon" I have been leading a discussion based on the specific Lord's Day. I did this because we were dealing with the Ten Commandments and I felt it served as a good discussion starter. The discussions were based on Ethics class from Seminary as well as my Catechism class I taught in Ontario. Some discussions went better than others. A lot of good and challenging questions came out of our discussions.

Of course with doing something different there is different feedback. Is it good or not? Well, I have of course heard the "negative" side of the feedback from a few of the loyal second service attenders. But to my delight there are a number of people who really enjoyed these discussions.

Now the things that I am faced with, we are finished with the Ten Commandments. Now do I go back to preaching a sermon, or do I continue to lead discussions. The last section deals with Prayer, and the Lord's Prayer, specifically. Some might lend to good discussion.

Now some of the reasons why I did the discussion on the Ten Commandments. 1. They bring up things that we deal with all the time, and it can open our eyes to the wider meaning of the command. 2. I had the discussions pretty much made up from catechism a year ago, and it made it less work. 3. Smaller crowd makes a discussion easier to do.

I have found that after the discussions, often times the discussion continues in the foyer. Rather than the first thing out of people's mouths "well, have you started seeding yet?" "Is the weather going to hold this week to allow us in the fields?" I hear more people continuing the discussion, even if it is joking around, they are discussing it and it seems to be applied more. I don't know.

The thing I struggle with is whether or not to lead discussion. Was it done in an attempt to get more people to come to the evening service? Possibly. Did it work? Not necessarily. I must say that lately we have had a good turnout, 20-30 people. The numbers thing really doesn't bother me too much, I have come to accept that fact that people just don't come. Why that is, is probably another blog post!

Anyway, I guess what I am looking for is what people think. There are positives and negatives. I am just interested in what other people think about this topic.