3 Midweek Service Alternatives

Photo by Miikka Luotio on Unsplash

I was stuck. We were finally coming back from COVID and starting Wednesday night services back up. We decided to rebrand the night for adults and focus on groups instead of the traditional Wednesday night service.

This was great for adults, but what about kids? Will I have the same kids every week? How long will the groups meet? What should I do on First Wednesday, when I’ll have more kids?

To make things harder, I wasn’t sure how many kids, if any would come back, and the time I had available to prep another service was very limited since I was doing Sunday online and in person.

I’m in the Assemblies of God, so most our churches have Royal Rangers and Mpact Girls Clubs on Wednesday nights. However, I’m seeing more and more churches move away from these programs and others like it for various reasons.

This post is not an advocation for or against them, but if you’ve already decided to not do them or exploring your options, I hope this can help.

3 Midweek Service Alternatives

1. Repeat the Weekend’s service.

I did this Pre-COVID for over a year with great success. I did have many of my kids return for the midweek service, but up to 40% of them didn’t attend on the weekend.

There are kids that will complain about hearing the same material, but repetition is not a bad thing.

How many parents of young children are sick of watching the same episode of Cocomelon or Bluey again and again? I think my 8 year old has watched the same Minecraft playthrough at least 3 times. Many kids like and appreciate hearing it again, especially if it’s engaging.

In addition, with all the content out there and the constant barrage of messages, hearing the same information will help kids with retention.

To keep things fresh, I would change out the Bible story or show a video instead of a live presentation. It was playing these videos off of YouTube that gave me the idea to create Potato Head Theater.

I abandoned this plan when we reopened for two reasons.

1. Instead of 60% of my kids coming to the weekend and midweek, 99% of them were. I felt there weren’t enough fresh eyes to keep the audience engaged the whole time.
2. My Wednesday night volunteer team was decimated during the shut-down, and I barely had enough to have two in the room let alone put on a full service similar to the weekend. 

I had to get creative, so I created two other alternatives with the focus on the Bible and fun.

2. Game Night with Bible Trivia

My church was putting a lot of energy into getting the adults to come back for midweek, so I needed to do the same. Thus game night was born. I modeled the night after an old program called Super Book Olympics, but I came up with my own material.

The Sunday before I would give kids a list of 10 Bible trivia questions and challenge them to answer them before they came to Wednesday night.

Once service began, we would go over the answers and make sure every kid had them written down.

Then we would play up to ten games. After each game, the teams could earn bonus points for answering one of the Bible trivia questions we learned earlier. The final game was always a quiz style, going over all the questions. Sometimes this game was the most intense because I kept raising the stakes after each question and points cost nothing.

The night was a huge success and didn’t take a lot of work to put together. We played some of the greatest hits from the weekend services, and I got my questions from Junior Bible Quiz. 

In addition, kids learned way more Bible facts and we told different stories than what was covered on Sunday morning.

More Bible. 

More fun. 

Win-win.

3. Bible Study and Free Play

After opening from COVID, my church adopted the “First Wednesday” model. If you’re not familiar, basically you only meet once a month for a big discipleship service. We modified this model and added small groups to the weeks in between.

On First Wednesdays, I'd hold the Game Night mentioned above. The number of kids I’d have on that night would nearly double compared to the rest of the month. Since there were significantly less kids, I kept it easy and relatively unstructured.

Because the adults were in small groups doing a Bible study, I thought we could do the same. I have a subscription to Right Now Media, so I would show a video, break the kids into smaller groups, and ask discussion questions over the content.

However, I kept the study time no longer than 45 minutes of my 75-minute service. The rest of the time was free play before and after the study. I had a large game room with video games, air hockey, carpet ball and more.

Many times, this room wasn’t used much on the weekends except for the 10 minutes before and after service so the kids were excited to be able to play for so long. In addition, relationships were built as kids were able to spend time together playing as opposed to sitting and listening.

As fun as the game room was, sometimes the room would descend into chaos especially if the adult groups went long. When the weather was good and the sun was out, we would go outside and play kickball soccer, or wiffle ball. Whatever game I could come up with that would involve all the kids at the same time and keep them engaged.

As with the monthly game night, I found kids begging to come back on Wednesday night and many parents joined groups, just so their kids could come. 

Again, a win-win.

Finding a good alternative for Wednesday night isn’t always easy, and these aren’t perfect by any means. Feel free to try them and tweak them to work for your own context.

You’re not alone, together we can disciple our kids and impact the next generation.

What are some Wednesday night alternatives that’s worked for you?