If you are of a certain age you can remember a time when Sunday was genuinely different. A time when it was peaceful, and quiet, and for that one day of the week at least, the High Streets were empty of shoppers.
It's 25 years this year since Sunday trading rules were liberalised in England and Wales at the end of August 1994. At the time, a powerful coalition of church leaders, trades unions and others fought to stop it being deregulated even more. The name of their campaign? KSS – or Keep Sunday Special.
But now, for many Christians, it is a case of a different sort of KSS: Keep Sunday Stressful! Looking back, it is hard to believe the extent since that time to which Christians in general, and church leaders also, have simply rolled over and rolled into line with the prevailing ethic of seven-day trading and activity. It's not a healthy development.
One illustration of this is the way, for example, that Christian conferences may start on a Monday morning without any apparent thought to the way this necessitates people travelling a wearyingly great distance on a Sunday (not to mention the assumption this also includes about how transport workers and others should be around to facilitate their journey).
And in local churches, the results week by week are even clearer. As Peter Jensen says in the latest issue of Churchman magazine: "One of the features of contemporary church life is that even those whose faith is clear and robust have a tendency to come to church somewhat irregularly. In so doing they resemble what we may call the casual attenders, always assuming that the 'professional' Christians will be there to run things and that their attendance is of peripheral importance."
Thus, long-term, there is a ticking time-bomb waiting to go off as those professed Christians under the age of, say, 50 or 60, (who are far less likely to be weekly attenders), succeed the old faithful generation of those aged 70+ for whom weekly Sunday worship is a default habit and simply what one does on a Sunday automatically.
Underlying this is an apparently unconscious assumption in people's minds that Sunday is simply "Day Two of the Weekend" – rather than, in any sense at all, the "Lord's Day". But the "weekend" is not in any sense a Biblical concept whereas the Lord's Day, whatever one precisely makes of it, undoubtedly is.
Tim Challies, the American church leader, is pretty wise on all this. He rightly says "there are differing views on what the Bible teaches about the Lord's Day". But, he says, "those rooted deeply in Scripture would agree" – we might change that to "should agree" – "on at least these two principles (though some would argue for much more): First, our greatest privilege and most important responsibility on the Lord's day is to worship Him with His people...Second, all our activities on Sunday should reflect the fact that it is 'the Lord's day' (over and above the fact that, according to Psalm 118:24, every day is 'the day which the Lord has made')."
John Piper has written: "I cannot escape what seems to me compelling evidence that the Lord's Day remains till Jesus comes and that it is set apart for the glory of Christ and the good of our souls. May the Lord give you wisdom and freedom and joy as you display his work and his worth on his day."
So what should we do? In our churches a few years ago we made a simple change on our weekly newsletter by altering the heading of the day previously known as "Sunday" to "the Lord's Day". It's a simple but powerful reminder of what Scripture calls it. And we have tried to teach that Sunday is not "day two of the weekend" but a brilliant gift day the Lord offers us as a weekly oasis of rest, refreshment and encouragement. Wow!
Two or three years ago we were staying in the small house of some young friends who had kindly offered it to us while they were away. But, they said, would we mind leaving on the Saturday (even though we had inquired about staying until the next day) as they wanted to return home from their own time away to be at worship with their church on Sunday.
We could do with a few more people who think like that! Like you, maybe, for starters?
David Baker is a former daily newspaper journalist now working as an Anglican minister in Sussex, England. Find him on Twitter @Baker_David_A An other version of this article appears in the current edition of Evangelicals Now, and is reproduced with permission and some minor changes by the author.
