On weekends, Cynthia Willingham and her 7-year-old daughter Alicia head south to Garnett to visit family and Willingham’s boyfriend, who farms there.

They typically pull back into Lawrence around 4:30 p.m. Sunday, stop home to unload their laundry and splash some water on their faces, then head straight to church.

They like to attend the 5:30 p.m. Sunday worship service at St. Margaret’s Episcopal Church, 5700 W. Sixth St., because it fits perfectly into their weekend schedule.

“We get to sit and unwind at church, and then we go back home,” said Willingham, an administrative assistant in the German department at Kansas University. “It’s wonderful.”

People have a lot of options when it comes to Sunday worship at St. Margaret’s. Aside from the evening service, the Rev. Darrel Proffitt also leads the congregation in worship at 7:45 a.m., 9 a.m. and 10:45 a.m.

And in order to accommodate those who wanted to watch the Final Four basketball game between KU and Maryland, the church moved its Easter vigil service to an earlier time in the day, so it would be over by tip-off.

After services, St. Margaret’s played host to a TV-watching party in the church, with the game projected on a big screen so Jayhawk fans could enjoy it together.

“We had the largest Easter vigil attendance that we’ve ever had, a little under 200 people,” Proffitt said. “A couple of families who’d heard about the service came over from Kansas City. We had people who we’d never seen before. That was the very reason we did it.”

Moving the Easter vigil service so church-goers could catch the game might seem a little unusual  even irreverent.

But not to Proffitt.

“It’s all about being relevant,” he said. “A lot of people are worried about churches doing these things, especially some of the old-line churches. Our philosophy behind this is, ‘God so loved the world  don’t you think we should, too?'”

St. Margaret’s approach to offering flexible worship times to fit people’s schedules and activities might be different, but it’s not unique.

Other Lawrence churches are doing the same, in an effort to be welcoming and adapt to the changing needs of their members. That’s essential if congregations want to thrive these days, Proffitt said.

“People are in a different place. They don’t necessarily schedule their Sundays around a worship service anymore,” he said. “Our main competition (on Sundays) is not a church down the street  it’s The New York Times and a latte. People don’t think church is relevant to their lives. That’s a clear call to change.”

Reaching out

The Rev. Paul Gray couldn’t agree more.

Heartland Community Church, where Gray is senior pastor, offers Sunday worship at 9:30 a.m. and 11 a.m. The second service is a more casual format.

Now the church, 619 Vt., is thinking about adding a service at 7 p.m. Wednesdays.

There’s no dress code at Sunday services  it’s pretty much “come as you are.”

“One of the things that has led to declining church attendance is some churches saying that you have to come (to services) when it’s convenient for us,” Gray said. “We want to do just the opposite.

“We want to be as flexible as we can to meet people’s demanding schedules, and we’re not asking you to conform to a certain pattern of dress or rituals or things like that.”

Accommodating

Inflexibility among churches can lead to empty pews, he said.

“We have a lot of younger couples and families that have children in weekend soccer leagues. They play games on Sunday mornings,” Gray said. “If you only have one service at one time, you’re going to eliminate a lot of families.”

The Rev. Rick Burwick has seen attendance at the 6:30 p.m. Sunday worship service at Clinton Parkway Assembly of God, 3200 Clinton Parkway, grow from 50 to more than 100 in the last five months.

“A lot of them are families with high school kids and some smaller kids,” he said. “We have a lot of single people coming on Sunday nights, and several coming here who are actually members of other churches.”

Its an alternative to the traditional Sunday morning routine.

“We have people working three shifts in Lawrence, and there are those who could never attend church on Sunday morning,” Burwick said.