Archives for May 2020

COVID-19 NOTE:Our adult Sunday school classes and worship services will be live streamed each Sunday until we are able to meet in person. Join the live stream at 9am for Sunday school, and our worship service will begin on the same live stream at 10am. The following links will enable you to join us for Sunday School and Worship this Sunday, May 31: Click here to access...

We conclude our series on the Order of Worshipby considering the Benediction. The Benediction is God's blessing on his people as we go out. God opened the worship by calling us to worship, and he closes the worship by sending us out with his blessing.We see this action commanded by God in Numbers 6:2227. God says that by this action, Aaron and his sons put the name of God ...

COVID-19 NOTE:Our adult Sunday school classes and worship services will be live streamed each Sunday until we are able to meet in person. Join the live stream at 9am for Sunday school, and our worship service will begin on the same live stream at 10am. The following links will enable you to join us for Sunday School and Worship this Sunday, May 24: Click here to access...

Continuing our series on the order of worship, we now come to the doxology and prayer of thanksgiving. We have heard the assurance of pardon, the gospel preached, and the truth of who God is and what he has done in Christ in the Creed.Now it is time to praise God for these things and give thanks.We praise God using the traditional Doxology most Sundays. This Doxology is a ...

COVID-19 NOTE:Our adult Sunday school classes and worship services will be live streamed each Sunday until we are able to meet in person. Join the live stream at 9am for Sunday school, and our worship service will begin on the same live stream at 10am. The following links will enable you to join us for Sunday School and Worship this Sunday, May 17: Click here to access...

The craziness of these past weeks derailed us from our series on the Order of Worship. We are walking through our order of worship each week and considering carefully what we are doing and why we do it. So far, we have covered everything from the Call to Worship at the beginning of our service to the Prayer of Intercession that follows the sermon. This week, we will consid...

COVID-19 NOTE:Our adult Sunday school classes and worship services will be live streamed each Sunday until we are able to meet in person. Join the live stream at 9am for Sunday school, and our worship service will begin on the same live stream at 10am. The following links will enable you to join us for Sunday School and Worship this Sunday, May 10: Click here to access...

The subject of worship and how to conduct it is too often a contentious one. In recent decades, it has even given us the term "worship wars." Many Christians choose their church home based more on the style of worship than the doctrine that is believed and taught. Nonetheless, each church must make a decision about how it will conduct its worship. As we read Scripture, we ...

One of the principles of worship I mentioned last week is the dialogical principleworship is a dialogue between God and his people. We see this in the worship described in Exodus 1924, for example. Appropriately, the dialogue begins with God calling his people to worship and only then do his people respond.This principle has two practical impacts on our worship. First, our...

Last week we considered the call to worship, which signals the beginning of worship, being God's call from his Word to his people to gather together and worship him. It is the beginning of a dialogue between God and his people that continues throughout the service.Before we move on, it is important to consider the real effect of the call to worship. In a very real way it u...

In previous weeks,we've considered the Call to Worship, the Reading of the Psalm, and the Hymn or Psalm we sing in response to God's call. This week we are going to consider briefly the Prayer of Invocation.In this prayer, our primary concern is to call upon God to be present in our midst and work amongst us during our worship. It is an admission that nothing we do can cha...

Of all the things we do in worship each Sunday, reading God's Word may be among the greatest. As we have said before, in corporate worship we are in dialogue with God. He speaks to his people,and we respond. And in no purer way does God speak than in the very words he inspired. For this reason, our worship is filled with the reading of God's Word. We've already considered ...

We come this week to one of the most unusual aspects of our worship: the confession of sin. There was a time when most churches in America had a corporate confession of sin, but since the Second Great Awakening in the 19th century, it has fallen out of favor. There is much that could be said about how and why this happened. It's enough here to point out that it has, and it...

So much could be said about the sermon! We approach the preaching of the Word liturgically by praying and reading the text. We pray because we are coming before God's Holy Word,and prayer is an act of humility. In the prayer, the minister acknowledges his own weakness and both the need of the Holy Spirit in order for the preaching of the Word to be effective and the promis...

When we have finished the preaching of the Word of God in worshipeach week,we close that portion of the service in prayer. In this case, it is a prayer of intercession. We bring our requests to God. We pray that the Word that has just been preached will be effective to do its work in us by the power of the Holy Spirit. We then pray for the missionary or missions organizati...

COVID-19 NOTE:Our adult Sunday school classes and worship services will be live streamed each Sunday until we are able to meet in person. Join the live stream at 9am for Sunday school, and our worship service will begin on the same live stream at 10am. The following links will enable you to join us for Sunday School and Worship this Sunday, May 3: Click here to access ...