Ten Ways to Savor Sundays
August 14, 2026
August 14, 2026
Abstract: Joel Kurz offers ten suggestions to help Christians make the most of Sundays for the sake of worshiping the risen Christ and fellowshipping with his people. The goal is not to make the day a burden or to enforce binding rules but rather to be intentional about delighting in the Lord’s Day and the weekly gathering. Instead of allowing Sunday to be overrun with other priorities and activities, Kurz urges us to use this day for the glory of God.
What if the best day of your week was the day you spent with God’s people? That sounds great, but if we’re honest, Sundays can feel like a grind. Another class to teach, another service to plan, more music sheets to print out, more doors to be opened, more conversations to be had—and plenty of other responsibilities. If we’re not careful, we can start feeling apprehensive about Sundays rather than savoring them.
In order to savor Sundays, we need to start by being reminded of the significance and purpose of the Lord’s Day. The focus is not on a 24-hour period of regulations and rules but on gathering with God’s people to worship him. Jesus rose from the dead and met with his people on a Sunday (John 20:19), and on the following Sunday he met with them again (John 20:26). After his resurrection, his followers assembled on Sundays (1 Cor. 16:2), and the apostle John received his revelation of Jesus Christ (what we know of as the book of Revelation) on “the Lord’s Day” (Rev. 1:10).11 .As early as the Didache (c. AD 90-100), we’re told that Christians met on the Lord’s Day. See https://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/didache-roberts.html. Justin Martyr (AD 155) referred to this day as the first day of the week, the day Jesus rose from the dead. See https://www.ccel.org/ccel/richardson/fathers.x.ii.iii.html. While Scripture does not prescribe the number of times we should gather or the length of our meetings, Christians have often met morning and evening (or afternoon) in order to structure the whole day around worshiping the risen Christ.
With this background in mind, I want to offer ten suggestions to help make the Lord’s Day a day that you anticipate and enjoy, and a day that centers on gathering with God’s people for worship. To clarify, these suggestions are not meant to be burdensome or binding but to give us space to delight in this foretaste of heaven. Faithful Christians may disagree over what’s prudent or permissible on the Lord’s Day, but regardless of your view, there is great benefit in being intentional about how we approach this day.
Humans are creatures of rhythm. Summer leads to fall, and winter always gives way to spring. The sun rises in the morning and gives way to the moon at night. We don’t live in a perpetual state of work, recreation, or rest. Rhythms help us live according to God’s design. And when Jesus rose from the dead, a new rhythm of worship began. The Lord’s Day is the time each week when Christians cease from their other responsibilities and activities to meet with Jesus and his people. This rhythm reminds us that our true citizenship is in heaven.
A holiday well spent is a holiday prepared for with intention. We invite our friends, buy the food, and wrap the gifts. Christians too have a holiday, not once a year but once a week. Therefore, we should intentionally prepare our hearts and schedules for Sundays. It can be tempting to use Sunday to catch up on laundry, do the grocery shopping, meal prep, and a thousand other things. But as you’re able, plan to take care of as many duties as possible during the week to free up Sunday. Give yourself time to linger after the service, to accept an invitation to someone’s home, or simply to read a book, take a walk, or enjoy a nap. We want to be “devoting ourselves to the pursuit of those things that promote the enjoyment of God.”22 .Tim Challies, “Delight in the Lord’s Day,” Challies.com, July 19, 2009, https://www.challies.com/quotes/delight-in-the-lords-day/. Challies reflections are based on Donald S. Whitney’s book Simplify Your Spiritual Life: 90 Ways to Make the Spiritual Disciplines Less Overwhelming and More Sustainable (NavPress, 2026). This leads naturally to the next two suggestions.
Kevin DeYoung once noted, “The Christian uses Saturday not just to recover from Friday but to prepare for Sunday.”33 .Kevin DeYoung (@RevKevDeYoung), Twitter (now X), January 17, 2015, https://x.com/revkevdeyoung/status/556454101337124865?s=46. The best way to use a Saturday night is to serve Sunday morning. Granted, work and family schedules differ, and there are often factors that are beyond our control, but the point remains: don’t be careless about your Saturday. As a child, my parents tried to get me to finish my homework by Saturday night. While there was often still a Sunday afternoon scurry to finish my work, their goal impacted me. It’s worth asking, “How can I use Saturday to guard Sunday?”
Read, meditate, and ask questions on the upcoming sermon text. If your church doesn’t publish the upcoming text, ask one of your pastors. I usually email our church members the upcoming passage and solicit their questions. This should whet your appetite for the main feast, as you begin to smell the aroma of God’s Word. Give your soul time to crave it. Then after the service, share what you received with others. I once visited a church and was encouraged as numerous members went to lunch afterward to discuss the sermon. Let the Word reverberate in your home. Ask your children what was encouraging for them. Re-read the sermon passage as a family before you go to bed. Allow the day to become an echo chamber of God’s Word.
This is a tough task in a world where youth sports, adult leagues, and birthday parties are increasingly scheduled for Sunday mornings. But what if we taught our children that the Lord’s Day gatherings are more important than their games, recitals, and parties? Or to take another example, what if we tried to guard Sunday from always being the final travel day before work on Monday? However we choose to prioritize the Lord’s Day, we want our decisions to communicate that the gathering is a non-negotiable. For “our greatest privilege and most important responsibility on the Lord’s day is to worship Him with His people.”44 .Challies, “Delight in the Lord’s Day,” Challies.com, July 19, 2009, https://www.challies.com/quotes/delight-in-the-lords-day/. Challies reflections are again based on Donald S. Whitney’s book Simplify Your Spiritual Life: 90 Ways to Make the Spiritual Disciplines Less Overwhelming and More Sustsainable (NavPress, 2026).
Instead of merely thinking of the Lord’s Day in terms of a service that lasts an hour and a half, consider how you can make use of the entire day. This forces you to slow down and set other things aside. If your church gathers again in the evening, this will be a natural way to frame the day. But even if you don’t have an evening service, try to think of ways you can bless others rather than simply starting on your Monday to-do list. For instance, you’re less likely to get back into the “grind” when you make time for a church member to linger in your living room after lunch. Allow the day to be shaped by enjoying God through his Word, through his creation (good food and nature), and through his people.
Hospitality doesn’t have to be a dinner party. At its core, it involves inviting others into our lives, and Sunday is often a great day for this. Commenting on Lord’s Day hospitality, Rosaria Butterfield notes that we might be “the way of escape” for brothers and sisters in Christ as God uses our ordinary hospitality to rescue them from isolation and sin.55 .Rosaria Butterfield, “Your Lord’s Day Might Be Someone Else’s Way of Escape,” 9Marks, November 14, 2018, https://www.9marks.org/article/your-lords-day-might-be-someone-elses-way-of-escape/. By opening our homes on a Sunday afternoon, we might be doing more than providing friendship.
If we think of Sundays as merely a day of rest, we might be tempted to skip the gathering to spend the day watching Netflix or pro football. Or we may simply spend it in isolation. Granted, the idea of leaving my house for a gathering doesn’t always feel like rest, but if the “Sabbath that remains” is Christ himself, then we rest by intentionally drawing near to him. In turn, gathering with God’s people provides a rest that physical inactivity cannot provide. It’s a rest that reinvigorates your soul, not just your body.
Perhaps this is a word for those who have specific responsibilities during the service, but regardless of your role, we should value our service to the church over our performance. To be sure, we want to serve people well, but the center of attention should be the presence of Christ among us, not our production. It’s when we turn Sundays into a performance to be evaluated that it produces dread rather than delight. (No wonder some churches don’t meet once or twice a year to give their volunteers a day off—consider the irony!) We are there to serve the congregation in its worship, not to impress anyone.
One of the reasons it’s difficult for us to enjoy the Lord’s Day is because life is busy and we’re afraid that if we neglect our normal duties, Monday will be more stressful. In other words, we don’t trust God with our schedules. But as DeYoung reminds us, “If we want to keep going, we have to learn how to stop.”66 .Kevin DeYoung, Crazy Busy, quoted from: https://www.monergism.com/thethreshold/sdg/ryythm_deyoung.html. We must trust that God can do more in six days than we can do in seven. When I choose to ignore those emails in order to gather with God’s people, I declare that God is the God of my time, and I am trusting him.