Future Campus Plans

This quick message is to help answer some questions that have recently come up regarding the future campus plans of Living Stones. The following response is to help to paint a picture in understanding how Living Stones structures our Worship gatherings theologically, philosophically, and practically.


There are three reasons why we are not doing three morning gatherings at the Downtown campus. First, theologically we have a conviction that in public worship there ought to be plenty of time for all of God’s people to engage in extended times of singing. We believe that sermons should be long enough and deep enough to allow the people attending to grow spiritually and we believe in encouraging community…which leads to the next more philosophical reason for only having two morning gatherings. If we were to run three gatherings back-to-back-to-back, we would need to shorten our gathering times. This would not allow for extended for worship, preaching, or community because we'd have to funnel people in and out of the gathering. Philosophically this goes against our convictions. Finally, we also believe that threes gatherings would create practical difficulties. Although we have considered having 8a.m., 10 a.m. and 12 p.m. gatherings, we believe that this would be a pragmatic mistake since almost no one would go to the 8 a.m. gathering; history and demographic studies have proven that there is very little draw for attending 8 a.m. gatherings, and people in general don't generally want to go to church at noon on Sundays. Therefore, having three gatherings would leave Living Stones with only one optimum gathering time – the 10 a.m. which would inevitably become packed while the others remained empty. This would go against the very purpose of adding an extra gathering. Hope these explanations help.