How We Worshipped One Sunday in April 2024

Churches worship in a variety of ways—some good, others … not so good. The “right way to worship” question often ends up at a discussion of the regulative vs. normative principles. Here, I’ll do something different. I’ll simply describe how our congregation worshipped one Sunday in April 2024. Perhaps it will help you. Perhaps it will encourage you. Maybe it will give you some ideas. Maybe it’ll let you know what not to do! But here it is.

This is our service order:

Table 1

What follows is a description of each component.

Part 1—Call to Worship

Table 2

The call to worship is the formal trigger which begins the worship service. It calls people to begin the dialogue with God as a congregation of believers. I do not step to the pulpit cold and begin the lectionary reading. I greet the people, welcome them to worship, and say something like: “We’ll begin our worship service by hearing God speak to us from scripture!” I then read the Old Testament and Psalm lectionary readings.

We’re commanded to read scripture publicly when we gather (1 Tim 4:13). This is the practice we see during Jesus’ ministry and afterwards (Lk 4:16; Acts 13:14–16; Col 4:16; 1 Thess 5:27). Rather than re-invent the wheel, I simply use the Revised Common Lectionary’s readings. If you prefer an alternative, your hymnal likely has themed scripture reading suggestions in an appendix at the back—check them out.

In a perfect world, the scripture readings, the songs, and the sermon would have the same key theme and blend together nicely. In reality, I’m a bi-vocational pastor and I don’t have time to make this dream a reality. So, while the selections do not always tie neatly into the theme of the sermon, that isn’t my goal. I want to read scripture and connect these readings to the Gospel to begin our worship service.

I display the readings on the screen like so:

Figure 1

I always key the “Gospel connection” to the readings. This past Sunday, the first two readings were Acts 3:12-19 and Psalm 4. I spoke for 30 seconds about how Jesus was the author of life who offered to wash away the sins of anyone who repents (Acts 3:15, 19). I reminded them that the Lord alone can make us dwell in safety (Ps 4:8). The object is to show how God’s words in the readings connect to the larger Christian story, centered in Jesus’ life + death + resurrection + ascension, and culminating in the new tomorrow at Revelation 22. This is a refreshing way to begin every worship service.

I then pivot to the prayer of adoration, which is keyed to the first two lectionary readings. I always pattern my public prayers in the manner of a “collect.” This is a term with a tortured etymology,¹ but it’s easy to understand. It’s a short prayer which follows a simple five-fold structure:

1. Invocation. This means you call on God by name (e.g., “Dear Lord …,” etc.).

2. Acknowledgment. This is the fact or quality of God that you’re relying on as you make your petition. In short, I briefly “acknowledge” the sum of what reading has just taught us.

3. Petition. What you’re asking—the point of the prayer.

4. Aspiration. Why you’re asking for the petition, usually transitioned to with the phrase “so that.”

5. Pleading. The basis for your appeal to God is the grace of Jesus. You can altar the wording, of course, but you basically note this.

These prayers are short, punchy, and won’t put anyone to sleep. This structure gives you more “bang for your buck” than most rambling, unplanned prayers. I write them out beforehand. Here is what the prayer this past Sunday looked like, keyed to the two lectionary readings in Figure 1, above:

Table 3

Part 2—Scripture reading

Table 4

The congregation does these readings. We alternate between (a) having a designated person come up to do the readings, and (b) having the pastor lead the congregation in a responsive reading. This means I read a sentence or two, then we all read the following sentence or two, and we switch back and forth until the readings are completed.

Anyone in the congregation can volunteer to do a reading, and we rotate through the list. We don’t care about how “good” the person sounds. We also don’t care what translation the person uses.

The secretary decides where to split the responsive readings. We print them in the bulletin in full. The bolded sections are where we read as a congregation, and the unbolded sections are what I read.

Figure 2

Part 3—Songs of Worship

We have two teams of musicians which alternate. One of vocal + box drum + guitar or piano, and the other is vocal + piano. I let them choose the songs and provide minimal input. All I do is provide the sermon schedule which shows the passages for their assigned week. Sometimes they choose songs which loosely fit with the theme, other times not.

Some pastors have concerns about women leading worship in song. I am not one of them. One of our musician teams is composed of two women.

If the song is from our hymnal, we just display the hymnal number on the screen. If it isn’t in the hymnal, we display the lyrics on screen. This past Sunday, the vocal + piano duo of ladies led worship in song, and these songs were: (a) “God of Wonders” by Marc Byrd, Steve Hindalong, and (b) “Indescribable” by Ben Fielding and Brooke Ligertwood (Hillsong). Two other songs follow later in the service, but there’s no need to discuss them further.

Part 4—Prayers

Table 4

We spotlight both a church attender and a missionary each week. I don’t restrict this “highlight” to only church members—if you’re a regular attender who gives evidence of saving faith, then you’re out into the “spotlight” rotation.

Each week, the secretary gathers prayer requests and praises from both the church family member and the missionary of the week. I read them to the congregation, and I announce that we will pray for these requests. The secretary also emails these requests to the church on Mondays and Fridays following the Sunday at which I announce the “people of the week.”

We do all this to foster a “family ethos” in the church, let people know one another, and to follow the biblical pattern of prayer for each other.

The prayer of confession changes weekly. I display a verse or a passage about repentance and confession of sin. I speak for perhaps one minute on the need to specifically name our sins, confess and forsake them (Prov 28:13), and to ask for God’s help to keep us on the path to Christlikeness.

You can find appropriate scriptures for this in: (a) Kenneth Boa, Handbook to Prayer, and (b) Christopher J. Ellis and Myra Blyth, Gathering for Worship: Patterns and Prayers for the Community of Disciples, and (c) Carrie Steenwyck and John Witvliet (eds.), The Worship Sourcebook, 2^nd ed., and (d) Patrick Curles (ed.) Book of Common Worship.

I display the prayer of confession passage on the screen in two parts; the first as I read and explain it, and the second as I challenge the congregation to personalize the text for their own life:

Figure 3

Parts 5 and 6—Offerings and Announcements

We allow any regular believing attender to participate in taking the offering—man, woman, boy, or girl. We pass plates down each row.

We try to keep announcements to a minimum, but like death and taxes, they will never go away. Robert Rayburn suggests putting them at the very beginning of the service so the dialogue between us and God is not disrupted,² but I think it is very strange and flippant to begin a worship service with announcements. Nor do I think it’s appropriate to end a service with announcements. So, we insert them briefly during the service and move on. In effect, we bury them.

Part 7—Catechism

We’ve been doing this for about 14 months. We began with the New City Catechism, which has 52 questions and answers. I thought it was decent. But, I wanted something more Baptistic. I settled on Hercules Collins’ Orthodox Catechism (ca. 1680), which is based on the Heidelberg Catechism. I think it is important to provide a steady diet of Christian doctrine in a systematic way. Some folks may never attend a church meeting apart from the Sunday worship service and will therefore miss doctrinal teaching. Inserting a catechism question and answer into this service will provide something to these people.

I have toyed with making the “answer” responsive—that is, asking the congregation to read the answer together with me. I usually just read it myself, but I may lean more into the responsive method. I always remind the congregation of last week’s question and answer, explain why this week’s question matters, and briefly expound on the answer. I display the question and answer on the screen in separate slides:

Table 5

Part 8—Sermon

The sermon is usually 35 minutes long. I believe a sermon over 40 minutes could have been better edited. My sermon two Sundays ago was 39 minutes long. My sermon this past Sunday was 42 minutes. However, I was preaching a massive section (Rom 14:1 to 15:13), so it wasn’t an easy task! I will not speak about philosophy of sermon preparation and delivery here—perhaps some other time.

I believe this service order is sound. I would like to engage the congregation more with prayer, but haven’t yet figured out a way to do it. The lectionary readings, the catechism, and the prayers of confession and repentance are my favorites. They’re fairly uncommon in churches without a liturgical background, but our method is low-key enough that these “high church” components are not stuffy or rote. I believe they greatly enhance our worship.