Why do people go to the worship service they do? There are many variables of course. Some go because of the time of the service, early or later in the morning, Saturday or Sunday. Others may attend because of the worship format of the service: Traditional; Praise/ Contemporary; Blended. Still others may attend a service because of certain services offered like the Nursery and Children’s Church on Sunday during the Praise Service (10:30am). During the summer months many Trinity members choose the Saturday evening service because of the venue, outdoors! For many of us, whether we’d admit it or not, it may simply be a matter of routine. “That’s the service we’ve always attended!” And, given our busy and diverse schedules today, it may change from week to week depending on what else is going on, like a Buffalo Bills home game (especially if they start winning)!
Very few people believe that the worship of God must be restricted to just one day, the Sabbath Day. The Jews and the Seventh Day Adventists still hold to the Old Testament Law of observing the seventh day of the week (Saturday) as the Sabbath. However, as Jesus said in correcting the distorted Sabbath view of the Pharisees, “The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.” —Mark 2:27 The point Jesus made is that the Sabbath was not instituted to enslave people, but to benefit them. The spirit of Sabbath observance is continued in the New Testament observance of rest and worship on the first day of the week, commemorating and celebrating the resurrection of our Lord. Quite frankly, every day is the “Lord’s Day” and we are called to worship Him 24 – 7! It is beneficial, however, to have an intentional time for corporate worship of the Body of Christ, the Church. But it could be on Saturday, Sunday, Wednesday or any time and day of the week!
At Trinity we have recently expanded the number of options to gather for worship. We still offer the two Sunday morning options of a Traditional-Blended Worship at 8:00am, and the Praise/Contemporary Service at 10:30am. Recently we have added a Saturday evening service at 5:00pm. The format has yet to be fully determined and will be somewhat dependent on the music resources available. Some weeks we have a piano accompaniment and other weeks we are led via a digital hymnal (which isn’t too bad, actually). Overall attendance for the three services has grown slightly more than when only two Sunday services were offered, for the first month. Especially exciting is that some people are attending on Saturday evening who were rarely attending worship at all because they could not come on Sunday morning! Praise the Lord! The average Saturday evening attendance has been 38 people so far. What matters more than which service you attend, or whether it’s because of the time, format or whatever, is THAT YOU WORSHIP THE LORD REGULARLY. We gather to give praise and honor, glory and thanksgiving to our Lord, and to be fed in the nurture of His Word and Sacraments. Sadly today, more and more people are worshipping less and less! Hopefully the additional option will help Trinity members and guests be able to gather for worship more often and more regularly. Weekly! We eat food daily and we’re supposed to exercise three or more times a week. It seems that we should crave spiritual nourishment and exercise our gathering together for worship at least once a week!
Come, let us worship the Lord . . . on Saturday, Sunday, regularly, often!

~ Pastor Dennis Krueger