Worship: How We Worship

Our Sunday services share a basic flow and structure that is similar to the pattern of worship followed in many mainline Protestant denominations—and shows some similarities even with Roman Catholic and other worship traditions. This basic pattern is rooted in ancient patterns of worship that can be traced back to the first few hundred years of Christianity.

However, although our worship follows these ancient, shared patterns, one of the characteristics of our particular tradition in the United Church of Christ is that we balance the inherited tradition with the flexibility to make worship our own to fit the needs of our particular community and times. We do not have to use fixed, unchanging texts for prayers and other parts of the service. Thus, within a fairly common structure, parts of our worship change from week to week or season to season.

The common structure of our Sunday service consists of four major "sections" or "movements": Gathering, Word, Response, and Sending.

Gathering: The first movement in worship is the gathering together of the community. This begins informally with the actual arrival of the people, conversation together, and making our way into the sanctuary (the worship space). When the actual worship service begins, though, the act of gathering is observed through ritual in the opening portions of the service, which most often includes:

• Musical Prelude: As the service begins, one or more of the musicians of the community—often our organist—offers up music, setting apart the time as sacred space.
• Greeting and Welcome: The pastor and the gathered congregation greet one another with the exchange "The Lord be with you" / "And also with you", and the pastor continues with words of welcome.
• Call to worship: A worship leader and the gathered congregation dialogue back and forth with words of praise to God that serve to call the congregation into the time of worship.
• Opening hymn: The whole gathered community then open the service by singing together. Typically this is a hymn of praise to God. Often the choir and other worship leaders will enter and take their places via a procession, as a symbol of the physical gathering of the whole community.
• Prayer of Confession and Assurance of Forgiveness: As the final act of gathering and preparing to worship, the congregation will pray a prayer in which we offer up to God our places of brokenness, so that we may be honest with ourselves and with God as we enter the time of worship. Because we believe that God forgives us when we are honest about our brokenness, a worship leader then declares an assurance of God's love, grace, and forgiveness. Assured of our reconciliation with God, we then reconcile ourselves with one another by 'passing the peace of Christ', greeting each other with the words "The peace of Christ be with you." Finally, we sing praise to God for this forgiveness and reconciliation with an ancient song of praise known as the "Gloria Patri".

Word:  The second movement in worship is attending to the Word of God read in scripture and proclaimed in the community. This movement most often includes:

• The Early Word: We invite the children in the congregation to come forward for their own time to hear a story from the Bible or some other message of faith, designed to be especially appropriate for their stage of faith development.
• Choir anthem or other special music: The musicians of the community share in the proclamation of the Word through song or other music.
• Scripture readings: We hear two or more selections from the Bible. These selections are chosen each Sunday from a schedule of readings known as "The Lectionary". You can read more about this over at Bible Readings.
• Sermon: The pastor then preaches a sermon based on the scripture selections. In the sermon, the witness of the ancient scriptures is brought into today's context, so that we might hear the promises of God anew and in the midst of our contemporary lives. Hear more about our sermons (and even read a sermon or two) over at the Sermon section of this site.
• Hymn: Finally, the whole community joins in a hymn or song that shares in the proclaiming of the message for the day, symbolizing that proclaiming and witnessing to the Word is not something that only the pastor does with the sermon, but is something that our whole community does together.

Response: In the third movement of the worship service, the community responds to the reading and proclamation of the promises of God. This movement most often includes:

• The Prayers: In response to the Word, the community is drawn to pray for itself and for others. We give thanks to God and we lift up before God the needs of the church, our world, our nation and community, people who are sick and in pain, and anyone or anything else that is in need, in the faith that God hears our prayers and works for healing, wholeness, justice, and peace in the world. Often we conclude these prayers with the prayer that Jesus taught his disciples—known by many as "The Lord's Prayer".
• The Offertory: We also respond by offering our gifts back to God. In the worship service, many people physically offer gifts of money at this time, but we are also invited to offer up our time and talents, and even our very lives. On those Sundays when we celebrate Holy Communion, our offering also includes the bread and wine (non-alcoholic grape juice, actually) that will be used for Communion. When the collection is finished, the offering is brought forward to be dedicated as the congregation sings a song of praise known as "the Doxology".
• The Sacrament of Holy Communion: On those Sundays when we celebrate Holy Communion, we do so at this point in the service. See more about this over on the Holy Communion page.

Sending: In the final movement of worship, we are sent out into the world, having been refreshed in the love of God in order to do ministry in Christ's name. This movement most often includes:

• Sending hymn: The community once again joins in song as it prepares to go out into the world.
• Benediction: The pastor proclaims words of blessing on the congregation, a symbol of God's blessing, as it prepares to go forth.
• Postlude or other sending music: As the community departs, the musicians of the community make a final offering, marking the end of the worship service and the beginning of the community's service in the world.