It’s a thoughtful gesture to give up their Sunday Worship to do this, but it would be better to do this on Saturday, and still have the peace of worship together on Sunday. When I was on a committee with a Methodist Church we were given a list of people who desired company at a nursing home for mostly seniors and we each ,6 of us, could pick 3 or 4 names. You must be mindful of each person, and treat each as indivduals, and according to how ill they are. It is always necessary to call if you are going to indivdual homes of Seniors to ask if they would like company, not just pile in on them. What you think is a blessing for them, may not be, to them.

This sounds interesting.
I don’t know if such programs exist in American schools, but back when I was in Jr. High I was an active member of the “Senior Link” program. After school the group would go to visit with elderly people in a retirement home not too far from the school. Although we could visit with anybody who signed up for the program, we were assigned one ‘buddy’ to send cards to on holidays, usually folks with no other relatives (or relatives who cared). As I lived just around the block from the same retirement home I was able to spend more time there, independently. We also organized activity days for the seniors, which was always lots of fun.
It was a good program. The supervising teacher was overjoyed to actually have a guy sign up! I continued a friendship with my ‘buddy’, as she passed away years later.

Yes, why do you need to CANCEL SUNDAY WORSHIP SERVICE in order to do this community service? Like it’s one or the other? Why do you have to do it during the time that is reserved for worshiping our God as a group? Are other times too inconvenient for us to do community service, so we’ll just use up the time that is reserved for worshiping our God and Savior? I don’t get it. Churches today are too much into gimmicks. Focus on God, then the other things will come naturally without having to sacrifice what God wants us to do: Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together (see Hebrews 10:25). Oy vey.

I don’t think I would consider this to be “cancelling Sunday worship” so much as envisioning the congregation to view service as an integral part of worship (see James 1:27 and Romans 12:1). It’s also a matter of pushing the congregation to get their feet wet in community service without an additional time commitment.
Let’s be honest – in many (even most) churches, your attendance for a service project on Saturday is going to be MUCH lower than for your normal Sunday worship service. Sadly, for many people it really IS one or the other. Far too many American Christians seem to think that showing up on Sunday mornings and putting a few bucks in the offering plate fulfills the demands of the Gospel, and the organizations noted in the article are trying to change that, in a small but very practical way. I’m not going to fault them for that.
If they wanted to cancel corporate worship altogether in favor of community service, I’d be the first one to protest – but to dedicate a solitary Sunday morning to helping a congregation to see and address the needs of the lost and dying world just outside their church’s doors is hardly unbiblical.

This article said the Minister is canceling Sunday Worship services and using Sunday as time to help people who need companionship and help. It isn’t just one Sunday a month SRB. Six days of work and Sunday is to be a day of rest. Remember who said that? People need to replenish their bodies, and minds at least once a week. Even medical people are seeing people who go to Church at least once a week are healthier than people who never rest.

This is an interesting gimmick. It certainly gets them attention and it accomplishes something. Of course, it does discount the value and significance of worship. It seems to me that the best system would be to gather for worship and then to go serve, or to take the service to the people they would serve. But everyone has their own congregational style. I wonder how long the energy for this can be sustained

Jesus didn’t say anything about sitting in pews being bored to tears by some preacher telling you how you are going to hell. Jesus’s ministry was based on helping the poor, healing the sick, and challenging the religious establishment to remember the important things such as justice and mercy rather than focusing on proper forms and rituals. Jesus healed on the Sabbath, why can’t we mere mortals reach out to the poor on the Sabbath?

Henrietta22, you need to re-read the article. These churches are following a 5-week program, with services being cancelled on only the last Sunday of the program. It’s not even a once-a-month thing; it’s intended to be a one-time (or perhaps an annual) event.
And Mr. Chavez, I know a lot of preachers, and while some of them may be boring at least some of the time, they certainly don’t spend every Sunday telling their congregations that they are going to hell. Your comment seems to be based more on false stereotypes than on personal experience. That said, you’re right about Jesus doing good on the Sabbath, and that there’s no reason why we shouldn’t as well. But it was also Jesus’ custom to attend weekly worship services – where many of his healings took place – and I would suggest that we follow his example here as well.

Thanks SRB, for pointing out that scanning too fast is not a good thing. What a big deal for nothing, one Sunday and all kinds of committees to accomplish this? So Church-like. I thought this was about giving up ones worship period. Had visions of people having heart attacks and such.

We are participating in Faith in Action, as well, at St. Paul’s United Methodist Church in Lawton, OK, except that we are doing ours on Sunday, Oct. 7. We will have a worship service that evening, combining our usual two morning services into one. The idea to “cancel worship” is a way to attract attention to the church’s desire to be in mission–it’s a way of getting the attention of people who might otherwise have become cynical or for whom the church is “invisible.” I think the real test of this approach will come in the follow-up: does our church continue to be a place of mission and outreach? Right now, we are thinking of making this an annual event, if it goes well.

Check out cancelchurch.com