The conversation has continued around the role of the increasing incursion of other activities and priorities into the space and time that was once sacred - Sunday morning.  In a relatively short period of time, we've gone culturally from a place where society and law reinforced the sacredness of Sunday as a Christian day - through Blue laws, businesses generally being closed, etc. - to a time when Sunday and even Sunday morning is fair game for scheduling pretty much anything.  No longer is it just the allure of a leisurely morning in bed or at the breakfast table reading the paper.  No longer is it just the pressing excitement of a football game starting close to the adjourning time for worship.  Now youth programs are routinely scheduling practices and actual matches on Sunday morning.  Attendance is mandatory.  

Parents seem to feel pressured to oblige.  Everyone else is doing it.  Which means everyone else's kids will be able to put down on their college applications that they have been in competitive sports for 20 or 30 years.  Perhaps they'll even get a scholarship - and Lord knows that help in paying for the skyrocketing costs of higher education is huge for parents these days.  And so more and more, churches that already struggle to attract or keep or bring up youth and young families in the church are losing them to these activities that are perceived as so vital to a youth's development and future aspirations.

Pastors are understandably concerned.  Any time a choice is made for something else over and instead of Christian worship, there's huge concern.  What prompted that choice?  What rationalization allowed that choice to be made?  How do parents justify it to themselves, to their children, to their Christian community and to their pastor?  Is this a sign of weakening or decaying faith?  Is salvation at risk?

Any of this is possible - and pastors have reacted with understandable passion.  As spiritual overseers, we are tasked with asking hard questions and delineating dangerous shifts in cultural norms and patterns, particularly as they impact and adjust the lives of our parishioners.  We have to give an account to God one day (Hebrews 13:17) of how we conducted our ministry.  That burden lies far heavier than the stole or microphone that a pastor may put on for Sunday worship.

The question in my mind is where the battle is in this example.  Is the battle over Sunday morning, or is the battle over worship?

In other words, are we reaching a point in time where we need to rethink Sunday morning as the preferred or only time when we offer Christian worship?  What would this mean for the Church?  It's a difficult question.  No small number of congregations have experimented with worship on alternate times and dates in addition to Sunday morning worship.  Saturday evening, Sunday evening, midweek services - I'm sure there are lots of opportunities for worship if people will take them.

The challenge is that there probably isn't a better time in the week than Sunday morning.  Not just because the Church demands it, but because our culture is still more used to that idea than not.  If there's a time of the week that is lightly scheduled still, it's Sunday.  Saturday is already packed with practices and errands and chores and all manner of other activity.  But I think that culturally we still hear a distinct echo of a time when Sunday mornings were for Church.  While that echo is fading quickly, it is not yet gone.  I can't think of another time that would be more or even as convenient for as many people as Sunday morning.  

But that may change.  And so I tend to be cautious about arguing for the sanctity of  Sunday morning, and more interested in arguing for the sanctity of worship - the importance of this opportunity we have to receive in tangible forms the grace and forgiveness and love of God.  To hear His Word, to study it, to be challenged by it; to taste the goodness of God in with and under bread and wine.  This is what matters.  This is what is important.  Not when it occurs, but that it occurs, and that we continue to make this a priority in our lives.

I tend to think the burgeoning emphasis on children being scheduled to the gills in every conceivable form of after school and weekend endeavor is going to fall on it's face.  I can't imagine how families do it already.  The demands are incredible, and what began as a good and enjoyable outlet has now become a harsh taskmaster, demanding sacrifice after sacrifice in exchange for tenuously defined and unproven benefits both here and down the road.  Does the Church just ride out this cultural upswing, waiting for people to crash and burn and realize that the Law remains the Law whether it's culturally driven or theologically?  That we can't possibly do it all, and that we need to take time to be reminded that we don't have to?  

I don't know.  In the meantime, more young families are pulled away from Christian community.  More congregations with already strapped budgets and more pastors with already too much on their plate will see a need for additional services.  That may be a good shift, or it may not.  But that's the nature of lived apologetics, lived theology - we're always seeking to keep grounded on the essentials, while remaining pliable with the optionals.  But after hundreds of years of tradition and practice, optionals take on an essential look and feel.