Why is FFBC Going to Two Services?

Lord willing, Firm Foundation Bible Church will begin holding two Sunday morning worship services on September 1, 2024.

In the wide world of evangelicalism, there are various reactions to this sort of idea that range from apathy to alarm. To my knowledge, the members of FFBC have not expressed either of these extremes. In fact, it’s been pretty quiet on the feedback front.

As elders, we’re thankful that the flock the Lord has entrusted to our care seems to trust our wisdom in this, but as we routinely emphasize in our membership class, we are committed to communicating clearly. This is especially the case when it comes to big decisions like this that will affect the entire congregation; it is good to over-communicate. So, rather than leaving things to assumptions, let me address the reasoning behind the decision and why we think going to two services is the best move for Firm Foundation at the present time.

The decision to move to two services has not been easy. We as elders do our very best to be anything but pragmatic.

While our record is likely far from perfect, we try to ask “why” before moving ahead with anything new or before changing the way we’re already doing things. We have determined that holding two services is the best course of action only after many hours of careful, prayerful deliberation, and I know I speak on behalf of my fellow elders when I say that not one of us is excited about the idea. The reason comes down to the simple fact that we are outgrowing our current facility. We have been tracking attendance and gauging what is our reasonable capacity for many months, and the time has come to act before the facility becomes too crowded.

“The reason comes down to the simple fact that we are outgrowing our current facility.”

Of course, there may be some who are concerned that we are trying to grow our numbers or “build our own kingdom.” But anyone who knows anything about FFBC knows this could not be further from the truth. For anyone who visits our Sunday morning service (or any other function of FFBC for that matter), it is immediately evident we are under no illusion that we are “cool”! Nor will they detect any hint that we’re trying to appeal to modern trends with our drab, gray curtains, our false ceiling tiles, and our makeshift baptismal tank–not to mention our traditional music and my personal insistence upon a coat and tie when I enter the pulpit. You’ll never find us dimming the lights or preaching sermonettes or playing on emotions.

If our goal was to simply grow our numbers, we’re definitely not doing a very good job of it! And yet, we are called to reach as many people as possible, and by the Lord’s grace our numbers are growing to the point we will eventually have to turn people away. No right-thinking Christian would want that!

Even so, some who have their own ideas of how large a church should be may still think we’re trying to “build our own kingdom” because we could always plant a church to ensure FFBC remains a “small church.” But there is no instruction or even precedent in the New Testament concerning what size a church should be. For example, the church in Jerusalem had well over 3,000 members (see Acts 2:41), and many other early churches were so small that they met in homes.

But even if we were to plant a church, it must be admitted that a church might still be trying to build its own kingdom by planting churches. It all depends on your motivation. If anyone wonders about our motivation, a visit to our Sunday morning service will reveal that we pray corporately every Lord’s Day for the advancement of God’s kingdom in our own area and around the world by specifically interceding for like-minded ministries. Or they could visit our midweek prayer meeting sometime and they will discover that we again pray for God’s kingdom to be advanced in the Quad City area by praying for other churches (the Quad City area here in central Yavapai County is comprised of Prescott, Prescott Valley, Chino Valley, and Dewey-Humboldt). Or they could visit one of our two monthly elders’ meetings that is solely dedicated to mutual sharpening and the shepherding of the flock where we again pray for the specific needs of sister churches.

I can say that in my private prayer time I daily intercede for other churches in our area. In fact, just this morning I prayed for our brethren at Canyon Bible Church of Prescott that the Lord would bless them in their building campaign, that He would keep them unified, and that He would continue to use them to reach people in this area.

“Even if we were to plant a church, it must be admitted that a church might still be trying to build its own kingdom by planting churches. It all depends on your motivation.”

But the reality is that while there are many, many churches in the Quad City area, there are only a handful that are committed to genuine expository preaching that unpacks and applies the word of God one verse at a time, and that hold to a clear, uncompromising reformed position on the doctrine of soteriology (salvation).

By God’s grace, we are committed to these things here at Firm Foundation Bible Church, and by His grace He has blessed us with people who truly love and care for one another and who enjoy vibrant, life-on-life fellowship. There are many Christians in this area that want to be a part of what we have here, and we are going to do our very best not to turn one of them away.

On the whole, the little we have heard from the congregation, whether positive or negative, tells us that no matter how we all may feel about moving to two services, we’re all committed to reaching as many people as possible with the truth of God’s word, and we all agree that something must be done if we’re to continue to make that possible at FFBC.

As we’ve learned recently from our sermon series on the book of Ruth, God graciously provides the needs of those who take refuge in Him, and He typically does so through ordinary means. This applies not only to us as individuals, but to us corporately. We need to work hard and be persistent and recognize that we depend on others and plan and be willing to take biblically informed risks, and as we do, the Lord will provide all our needs in His time.

Even as we’re acting in this decision to move to two services, we are continually praying for the Lord to provide some other way and we’re actively looking and planning so that we’re ready if/when He does so.

A larger church facility is our first choice for dealing with the space dilemma, and we’ve been looking for such a place for many months.

When we learned the charter school on Florentine Road across the street from our current location had closed and the property was up for auction, we did our best to see if we could get our hat in the ring, but the price was just too far out of reach. After some months, Prescott Valley Charter School purchased that property, and we immediately began talking with them about the possibility of leasing space. But after several months of checking in with them, they informed us earlier this year that leasing from them would not be an option.

In the meantime, we’ve had Jesse Lopez, a local realtor and friend of the church, actively searching for something that will suit our needs, and we’ve gone out and looked at multiple properties. In every case, there have been insurmountable roadblocks. Either the building was too small or too large, and all of them were too expensive. Only one has had the potential of meeting our needs closely enough that we’ve been willing to entertain it, but not only is the price still out of our range at present, there is a tenant who has a 10-year lease on the full run of the building.

In fact, one of our elders has even tactfully contacted several other local churches in Prescott Valley who have large properties but seem to be dwindling in attendance to find out if they might be willing to sell or lease to us, but so far no one has been interested.

Some may be thinking, “Okay, so if no properties are available, why not build our own?” The answer is that we are looking into that option as well.

In fact, we are actively searching for a plot of land somewhere in or around Prescott Valley that might work for a future home for FFBC.

But building is a long-term solution. It takes a lot of planning, a lot of time, and a lot of money since land is not as inexpensive as it used to be. We’re happy to plan, but what we don’t have a lot of right now is time and money. While we look toward the future and search for a piece of land that will accommodate our needs, we still have the clear and present issue of too many people and not enough space in our current situation.

If nothing is available to buy or rent, why not plant a church? With a growing population in the Quad City area, and only a handful of churches committed to the faithful exposition of God’s word, certainly there is a need for more solid churches, isn’t there? Why not plant in Chino Valley or Paulden? Why not Prescott, or Dewey-Humboldt, or Mayer, or even the north end of Prescott Valley?

The fact is the elders have entertained this idea as well, but planting a church is no small undertaking. It requires a lot of resources to make it happen, such as a building(!), operating costs, and the salary of a pastor. The best way to plant a church is for an established church with an abundance of members and resources to send out a big enough group of people who are committed to the new work that it is largely self-sustaining from its inception.

Even though we at Firm Foundation are outgrowing our current facility, it is because our facility is not very big! We are only seven years old as a church and barely in a place where we have some stability. So, to plant another church at this point would be extremely risky. We’re willing to take risks, and we’re certainly interested in planting churches, but all of this must be tempered with wisdom, and wisdom says it’s probably not yet the right time.

“The best way to plant a church is for an established church with an abundance of members and resources to send out a big enough group of people who are committed to the new work that it is largely self-sustaining from its inception.”

We are wide open to suggestions because we really are committed to leaving no stone unturned in our quest to discover what may be the Lord’s means of provision. For now, we’re where Naomi and Ruth were at the end of the second chapter of Ruth when Boaz had not made a move to redeem them, and something had to be done. Our current plan for two services is not our first choice and it’s certainly not foolproof. It is fraught with a level of risk and practical difficulties, but these are the least of our concerns. What concerns us is the spiritual impact of such a decision, and this is the one concern that has given us the most pause, and perhaps you’ve had some questions of your own about this.

With the abilities provided by technology, there has been a rise in recent years of “multi-site” churches, which consist of what is considered to be one church, meeting at multiple locations, usually in a metropolitan area, each having its own “campus pastor(s),” but all receiving their primary teaching from a single pastor who preaches “live” at the main campus and is streamed via screen at the other sites. Some find this model of church concerning, and some have gone so far as to make the case that it is unbiblical.

Through deductive reasoning, some have lumped churches that have more than one service in a single location (the multi-service model) in with the multi-site model, declaring this to be just another form of the same unbiblical idea.

Jonathan Leeman of 9Marks is a leading voice in this debate. In a book entitled One Assembly: Rethinking the Multisite and Multiservice Church Models (Wheaton: Crossway, 2020), he states:

“There is no such thing as a multisite or multiservice church based on how the Bible defines a church. They don’t exist. Adding a second site or service, by the standards of Scripture, gives you two churches, not one. Two assemblies, separated by geography or numbers on a clock, give you two churches” (pg. 17).

This is quite an unsettling claim and certainly worth considering, because Leeman makes some good points in his attempt to substantiate it. While it is beyond the scope of this article to deal in detail with the issue of multi-site churches, suffice it to say that I agree there are at least some serious dangers associated with the multi-site idea. But it is a stretch to claim that a church holding multiple services in the same location is equivalent to the multi-site model.

There are certainly some unbiblical reasons for holding multiple services in a single location, such as are found in many churches in America that have “traditional” and “contemporary” services. This is simply an attempt to aid Christians in their avoidance of dealing with preferences as Scripture calls us to do, and in the process, it usually winds up violating the mandate of Titus 2 for the older generations to pour into the younger.

But to claim that it is unbiblical for a church to have multiple services in one location because it has outgrown its facility cannot be supported biblically. Such a claim, in fact, goes beyond Scripture.

“To claim that it is unbiblical for a church to have multiple services in one location because it has outgrown its facility cannot be supported biblically. Such a claim, in fact, goes beyond Scripture.”

Many of the arguments for what is “biblical” or “unbiblical” for the local church are said to come from the book of Acts. But one of the basic rules of hermeneutics that modern-day Bible teachers sometimes seem to forget is that historical narrative is not prescriptive. In other words, while the book of Acts may offer principles and paradigms that are universal, we have to stop short of reading, “Thus saith the Lord” into passages that say, “Here’s what happened.”

Even if one were to read certain passages in Acts prescriptively, the case against the multi-service church model stands on some pretty shaky ground.

If you really want to know what the church is supposed to be and do, you have to go to the epistles and then compare what you find in those prescriptive passages to what you found in Acts. When we apply this to the subject of the local church, we find much that is instructive about how we are to view the church and how we are to conduct corporate worship. What we don’t find anywhere is a clear indication that a church is forbidden from holding multiple services, much less that it is actually multiplying churches if it does so.

So rather than going beyond Scripture, we have to place this issue squarely in the category of wisdom.

Having answered whether or not it’s biblical to hold two services, the only real potential spiritual impact of moving to two services is the question of how it will affect the unity of the church. It seems natural to think that if the whole church does not meet together this will have a negative impact on our unity. As we’ve wrestled with this issue, we have had to remind ourselves of what constitutes biblical unity.

When Jesus prayed His high priestly prayer in John 17, He said to the Father:

“I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me” (20–23).

When many Christians read this prayer request, they think Jesus was asking the Father to unify Christians in a physical, organizational sense. This is what the Roman Catholic Church maintains, and it is the mantra of the ecumenical movement. But while our Lord certainly asks that our unity be perfected one day in the future glory of the eternal state, the application of His prayer to this present age is one of spiritual unity. Our Lord is speaking ultimately of our spiritual union with all other genuine Christians, both in heaven and on earth, who are united to one another by virtue of their union with Him.

Nowhere in the New Testament do we find a command for all Christians to organize themselves into any structure other than the local church. We would define a local church as a manifestation of the larger body of Christ in a particular place at a particular time who have covenanted themselves together under biblically-qualified leadership to observe right doctrine, participate in the ordinances, etc. Even in the sphere of the local church, the New Testament speaks of unity in terms of pursuing peace with one another through love and sacrifice in matters of conscience and preference rather than mere physical presence.

If the members of a local church are committed to the same statement of belief, the same elders, and to one another, but all members meeting together at the same place at the same time is not possible, it does not mean that the church is any less unified. It simply means that we’re not all physically present with one another on Sunday mornings. The fact is that on any given Sunday at any local church around the globe, it is rare, if ever, that everyone is together in the same service because there will always be those who are sick, or out of town, or…

Striving for Unity by Keeping Both Services the Same

We believe that the best-case scenario for a local church is that all the members are able to meet together at the same time in the same place. This is because everyone has opportunity to see everyone else at the same time (although they will likely not be able to speak to them all, even in a small church), everyone hears the same message at the same time, everyone hears the same music and sings the same words at the same time, everyone prays together at the same time, etc.

It is for this reason that the elders of FFBC have designed our two services to resemble one another as precisely as possible. The music will be the same; the sermon, of course, will be the same; the things we pray for corporately will be the same. When we observe the Lord’s Table we will do it on the same day. When we have baptisms, we will do them at a time when everyone who desires can attend. We will also have a fellowship time in between the two services that will be long enough so that those who attend one service will be able to fellowship with those who attend the other.

Furthermore, we will have Children’s Ministry available during both services to deter the possibility of one service becoming dominated by the “old people” and the other by “the young.” Actually, this ministry to our children opens a wonderful way for people to be an integral part of both services because they can serve during one and attend the other! For those who choose to do this, the Sundays they serve will be even more meaningful than if we had only one service.

Finally, we will be keeping Flocks at the same time rather than, say, having separate Flocks running concurrently with the first service. This is not only to give those who attend the first service the opportunity to fellowship with those who attend the second service, but to make sure they will have that opportunity if they attend Flocks (as we encourage all our members to do!).

Let me close by bringing us back to the simple answer to the question: We are moving to two services because it is our only option at the present time. Should another viable option come about before the target date, we will most certainly consider it. And if not, even after we’ve begun to hold two services, as soon as a better alternative comes along, we will wholeheartedly pursue that option.

“Let me close by bringing us back to the simple answer to the question: We are moving to two services because it is our only option at the present time.”

We hesitate to use the word “temporary,” because that is a relative term that people typically put into their own timeframe. For some, it means two weeks; for others, two months; etc. But the fact is that we could be doing this for two years! The point is that we will continue to look, explore, and consider options well beyond September 1st.

We don’t know what the Lord’s provision may be, much less when it will come about. What we do know is that God is faithful, and if He continues to grow our number, He will indeed provide for us according to His perfect will and in His good time. For now, let us be thankful and content with what He has already provided and work together to make the most of it for His glory and the advancement of His kingdom!