Churches shifting summer worship from Sunday to Wednesday nights

SALEM, N.H. (RNS) As New England sweltered in early July, Sunday mornings came and went without a single soul showing up for worship in the hot, stuffy sanctuary of First Congregational Church of Salem, N.H. Even the pastor stayed home.

But God wasn’t forgotten. Worship just waited until Wednesday evenings, when the cool comfort of the basement fellowship hall drew as many as 40 to sing and pray. That’s 50 percent more than the church attracted when it met on summer Sundays.


Merri Carlson, far right, sings during worship in the comfortably cool basement of First Congregational Church of Salem, NH.
RNS photo by G. Jeffrey MacDonald

“If people take a break from worshipping, they sometimes don’t pick that habit back up,” said Owen Williams, a longtime deacon at First Congregational, a United Church of Christ congregation.