Worship is our adoring response to God’s saving grace through Jesus Christ. We hear about God’s story, and then we respond. At First Church, we have discovered that the best way to worship is to dialogue with God—allowing Him to speak first. Worship services are designed so that God reveals who He is to us, and we respond in adoration. Worship is our contemplation of God as He reveals Himself through His Word rather than a contemplation of ourselves.
Why is it important for God to speak first? If we speak first, we expect God to respond; however, worship is our response to God. At the start of a worship service, which is the greater need: for God to know more about us or for us to know more about Him? When God speaks, He reveals something about Himself, we respond, and the dialogue of worship begins.
The Gathering
Everything we do in a worship service centers around dialoguing with God; we respond as He speaks. Through the prelude, announcements, and introit, the Christian community gathers. This portion of the service reminds us of our communal mission to love God and our neighbors. From the gathering portion of our service, we transition from living individual lives to dialoguing with God in corporate worship.
The call to worship invites us into God’s presence through the words of Scripture. We believe He speaks richly to us as He reveals something about His nature. Our response is an opening hymn of praise that proclaims God’s greatness and our love for Him.
Prayer, an intimate dialogue with God, follows the opening hymn. Sometimes we offer prayers of praise as part of our response to His salvation, and other times we offer prayers of confession as we remember God’s holiness and our sinful nature. Prayer demonstrates that we acknowledge He is God, and we are not. We ask for things only He can grant knowing there are things we cannot do ourselves. Prayer is simply a simultaneous dialogue and response.
The Word
After the gathering portion of the service, we focus on God’s Word. Everything we do leads to this part of the service, the purpose of which is to receive His Word. This section of the service includes the choir anthem, Scripture reading, and sermon. The hope is that His Word challenges us and changes us as we dialogue with the Holy Spirit and listen—ultimately forming us to be the children God wants us to be.
This focus on the Word is not the only time Scripture is the basis of the service. The musical selections, hymns, prayers, responses, and sermons are saturated with Scripture. They are all different ways we dialogue with God during worship services.
Thanksgiving
We respond to God’s Word by offering our thanks in the form of offerings and Holy Communion. The offertory’s music reflects on the Word just shared, and the offering is a form of response. The offertory is a sign that, as we commit material gifts given to church ministries, we also commit to giving our heart, mind, soul, and strength over to the challenges set before us in the sermon.
On the Sundays we celebrate the Lord’s Supper, our response to God’s Word in Holy Communion shows Him that we are thankful for the sacrifice made on our behalf. We take it, not just in our hands, but into our very bodies. When we do this corporately, we recognize the presence of Christ in the church community and affirm that we are a part of the Body of Christ.
The Sending
The final portion of the worship service is the sending. As the Body of Christ, we are sent out into the world to make Christ visible through our acts of love, justice, and mercy. These final instructions are often given to us in the closing hymn and certainly in the benediction before we return to living out what we have learned in our conversation with God.
A final but important note about our worship structure is that the four large movements—Gathering, the Word, thanksgiving, and Sending—mirror the life of Christ. The gathering calls us to the presence of Christ, reminding us that the incarnate Christ lived among us, and we are now in His presence. The Word is the ministry of Christ. Thanksgiving or Holy Communion is our response to the Word and a sacrifice of praise. We give an offering just as Christ offered Himself as a sacrifice for us. The sending represents the last thing Jesus told His disciples to do—go into the world and make disciples. Every Sunday, we re-enact the entire gospel story. If worship is formational, may it be the story of Jesus that shapes us.
Like Christ’s life on earth, worship services should challenge us to change and grow. Worship should not simply affirm our current understanding of God and our place in His creation. Weekly worship services should change us to be more like Christ; we should not change worship to fit our view of God. We know that God has moved in us when we live life differently in response to the story of His saving grace, enacted, retold, sung, spoken, prayed, and remembered in our worship services. When our worship is intentional, it leads us to live more like Christ.
by Sacred Arts Director Jeff Faux
