I am visiting two churches. They both have an early service, 7:45 or 8:30. I find them a little less crowded and mostly older folk. Went with dh to a different church last week
Got there late and found it completely packed. We found two seats by the back wall to the left of the entrance so we sat there. A lady pointed us to the upstairs balcony. What a relief, just a few people.
The reason there were no seats was the pastor's object lesson
![Confused :?](./images/smilies/icon_e_confused.gif)
He had assigned 'reserved' to three full pews. The lesson, he introduced the empty pews as the outstanding saintly people in his church. All I could think of was that the late comers were banished to the balcony. That's okay, we got to skip out before the crowd.
Anna, I remember Saturday vigils where we were the only ones there aside from the pastor and maybe a reader. I miss the prayers, incense and candlelight.