By Jonathan Wright
Don’t mess with Wednesday evenings.
Repeat: don’t mess with Wednesday evenings.
I’ve written about this problem before with absolutely no noticeable results, causing me maintain a very sobering attitude about the limitations of my own influence, at least through the vehicle of this column.
Nevertheless, it’s time to let off a little steam about it again.
Here’s the problem plain and simple: the blatant assumption that scheduling major school and other community events on Wednesday evenings is perfectly fine, when many local Christians faithfully attend their churches’ mid-week services and other activities.
The obvious attitude of the folks who schedule such events on this once-sacred weekday evening is that Wednesday evening church attendance is dispensable, that it’s not that important to those who are committed to their local churches—that missing one Wednesday evening service or activity isn’t that big a deal.
It is indeed a big deal to many of us.
Our commitment to the Lord very naturally translates into commitment to our local churches.
It is totally unthinkable and absolutely intolerable to allow outside activities to interfere with what to us is an integral, sacred part of our week, these services and activities that have been a part of our lives for so many years.
You just don’t mess with Wednesday evenings.
More than once our beloved local high school, Greenbrier East, has scheduled its superb ninth-grade orientation—when? Not Monday evening, not Tuesday evening, not Thursday evening, not Friday evening, but, of course—right smack-dab on Wednesday evening, of all nights.
There was a time not too long ago when schools and communities had an unwritten understanding with local churches: they would never schedule games or other activities on Wednesday evenings. It was unthinkable, totally out of the question, out of respect to the churches that are such an important part of our communities.
No more.
For something as important as the ninth-grade orientation ceremony, which is a dazzling time of honoring and challenging the high school’s incoming freshman students in high style, it’s nothing less than an affront to Wednesday night churchgoers to plant it right on that very night.
And it’s outright unfair to these folks to force them to have to choose between their church activities and this once-in-a-lifetime event for their ninth-grade children.
There are plenty of other evenings of the week to schedule such things. Why, of all evenings, does it have to be this one particular one?
One last time, pure and simple: don’t mess with Wednesday evenings.
You’re sending the wrong message and upsetting a lot more people than you may realize.
