Dan, Fred, and I have been thinking through our service order at Riverview and would like to implement some changes to the weekend services.
Here’s basically what we are thinking, although it would change based on communion, baptisms, child dedications and so on.

Welcome (band leader)
-Emphasis on object of worship rather than style and preference of worship
Song 1
Song 2
Song 3
Announcements Prayer (venue pastor)
Message (teaching pastor)
Invitation to respond through the gifts/offering (teaching pastor)
– Explain response through tithes and offering and worship
– Encourage people not to rush off an collect kids
Song 4
Song 5
Song 6
Final Announcements and Close (venue pastor)
– Mention post service prayer teams. 
– If you are new, there are pastors in lobby that would like to meet you. 
– To get connected to serve or get into a LG, please go see someone at Info Central.
Band outro

This new format does a couple things for us.  First, it allows us to platform more pastors.  For instance, if Noel is speaking at Holt, Paul or James or Steve would be able to pray before the message and close out the service.  We’d also like to try to have pastors in the lobbies of our venues to answer questions about Riverview and to meet new folks.   Second, it allows the band leaders to focus more on leading the music time instead of public speaking.

We are also working on a way for folks to meet in the back of the auditorium and pray with trained leaders.  We think this would be a great thing for people who are ready to respond to the Gospel, or deal with other issues in an immediate and appropriate setting.   We know this will take some work to organize and if you have any ideas of how to implement, I’d love to hear them.

We’d like to try this format out on the weekends of August 24th/25th and August 31st/September 1st.   Then we will evaluate it and tweak or go from there.

Please let me know if you guys have any initial thoughts or concerns about this plan.