Oncers, Noncers, and Evening Worship

A friend of mine grew up in farm-country Indiana, and their family faithfully attended church twice on Sundays. She likes to tell us that the only times as kids they were allowed to skip the Sunday evening service was when Elvis and then the Beatles performed on the ‘The Ed Sullivan Show’. The evening service was once a regular feature of American Protestant worship, but for a variety of reasons has slowly disappeared. I believe that an evening service is incredibly valuable for Christian spiritual formation; for that reason we instituted an evening service in my congregation two years ago.

But I couldn’t help but think of my friend’s story when I was recently introduced to a phrase from the Dutch Reformed tradition: “Oncers become noncers…”