Worship

Our worship on Sunday mornings is, in the vernacular, kind of a big deal. In fact it’s a really big deal. The baseline realities of life in the cosmos include the human instinct to worship and God’s being the only adequate object of such. In the very beginning God set for himself a day of rest, the seventh day of creation. From this, God later commanded the Israelites to demonstrate their trust in him by resting on the seventh day. Christians moved the seventh day to the first for their celebration of the resurrection and their breaking of bread together, still meeting together weekly for worship.

While we humans live urgent, even chaotic lives and and often wish, even demand, that God interact with us quickly with extraordinary provision, in fact God is most invested in providing his grace through the ordinary means that he has established. This is a slower and less immediate process. Nonetheless, we’ve found as a community that the straightforward regular worship of God - Father, Son and Holy Spirit - to be the chief means of spiritual sustenance and growth. From the command of the Sabbath, and the invitations to come and worship, and the examples of the church meeting to praise God and be instructed by him we understand the Biblical foundation regarding our need to meet together to worship. We are changed every week when we reorient ourselves to worship the one, true God, having been distracted and tempted during the week to make other things the center of our lives. Gradually but inevitably, the worship of God sets us free, providing an eternal perspective from which life is lived richly.

Following the lead of the Bible and the tradition of the church, our worship is centered on Word and sacrament. Both the sermon and the administration of the Lord’s Supper are central to what we do on Sunday. The sermon is always an exposition of a Scripture passage and the Supper is observed with proper professions of faith and gratitude. In addition, again following Scripture and the great tradition, we include elements of singing, confessing, giving and praying when we get together.

While we connect ourselves with the ancient history of the church in our worship, we also desire that it be very much in our own language. We hope our worship is vital and meaningful. We’re not formal in our dress or demeanor. We are sensitive both to God’s having ordained leaders in the church and the essential equality of all as we worship and serve. We also hope that we’re as welcoming as can be to all who would gather with us.