Here are a few principles that we follow in our worship services at Trinity Evangelical to give you a better idea of why we do things the way we do. Our own guiding principles center around the idea of an informed biblical worship.
Biblical Worship is Theologically Informed
Big words. But what we mean is that God is at the center of our worship. We start with the understanding that He is our Creator and we are His creation. We unashamedly worship the trinitarian God by glorifying Him in all that we do during the time we’re together in worship. The New Testament isn’t an instruction manual on how to put together a proper service, but the Bible does give us the general and ultimate principle that whatever we do, we do all to the glory of God. So, our theology about who God is and what He has done determines everything from the “look and feel” of our services to the content of the sermons here at Trinity Evangelical.
Biblical Worship is Covenantal
The gathering of saints in worship is exactly that–the gathering of a covenant community of believers and their families who have entrusted their lives to Christ. The service is going to be geared to be encouraging and edifying for the Christians who are there worshipping together in covenant with God as a community.
Not that people who aren’t Christian aren’t welcome. If you’re not a Christian–or you’ve not been a part of a church for a long time–we invite you to come and see what it means to worship as Christians who week after week experience together the joy and wonder of being a part of the covenant community known as the Church.
The worship service though is a place where Christians are engaged in the things Christians do–loving their neighbors and worshipping God. The best witness we can provide for someone who doesn’t know Christ is to be an example of what the covenant community is about and we endeavor to do that in every worship service.
Biblical Worship is Christocentric
Christ-centered worship is everything we do. It’s not rocket science to figure out that Christian worship ought to be about Christ. The Bible tells us that where two or three are gathered in His name–Christ is there also. The Christ we believe in is the Christ the Church has always believed in–the Son of God our Lord, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried. He descended into hell, and rose again on the third day. That Christ is in the midst of us–He is with us–when we gather together for worship. Our worship is always centered on Him.
Biblical Worship is “Whole Bible” Worship
The Apostle Paul tells us that everything that was written in the Scriptures was written to teach us and that through endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope (Romans 15:4). Paul also wrote to Timothy that all Scripture is God-breathed and profitable for “teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.” (2 Timothy 3:16). We look to all of Scripture for the how and why of worship, not just the Old Testament or the New Testament.
Biblical Worship Recognizes the Acts of God Throughout History
Now and in times past, God has worked and is working out His purposes in this world. We don’t worship a God who stopped acting shortly after the New Testament was completed. No, we worship a God who is alive and continues to act throughout our history. Our history, not merely the history of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (but oh what a history that was!). God is at work today in our lives and His wonderful accomplishments both now and in times past bear repeating in the presence of the covenant community.
This is why good quality hymns are so important–and hymns that do their best to represent the entire musical tradition of the Church. The Church needs to repeat in song and story the great events of our common history in Christ where God has acted, triumphed, been victorious, and worked marvelously for His people, the community of the faithful.
Our God also promises to work in the future and our hopes, prayers, and dreams based on those promises aren’t in vain. As grand as His acts have been and continue to be, He’s already promised us that even greater things lie in store for us.
Past, present, and future. It all needs to be sung, said, and lived as we gather together to worship God.
Biblical Worship is Sacramental
Everything we do in worship is a picture of God’s grace towards us and a sign of his work in and among his people. As the sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist put forward the life-giving salvation we have in Christ–picturing regeneration and continued reliance on the presence of our Lord, so too the worship service we engage in communicates to ourselves and others that we live, move, and have our being in him. As we lift up our hearts to the Lord in word and song and sacrament, he draws us near to him and we experience the reality of God’s grace together as his people.
Biblical Worship is Understandable
One of the hallmarks of the worship of God’s people during the Reformation was that it was understandable to those who participated. That doesn’t mean we somehow believe that other languages and cultures don’t contribute in huge ways to the diversity found among Christians. Churches should strive to be multicultural–much like the churches of the New Testament era. In the early history of the Church, the gospel transcended the local cultures it encountered and brought many races and ethnic groups together in a way that was never possible prior to the advent of the Church.
We rejoice in that sort of noble heritage and only add that with all of our diversity there must also be a unity of purpose and conviction. We resonate in a huge way with Luther, Calvin, and others who strongly maintained that what we do in worship should be understandable to all. The Bible says no less in several places and we realize that we’re in worship to edify and encourage one another no matter how we differ from one another. The great thing about viewing worship in this way is that we see that everyone contributes in one way or the other and as a result the whole covenant community is edified together.
Biblical Worship is Orderly
Not too popular an idea in some circles these days. But if you think biblical worship isn’t supposed to be orderly, we’d suggest reading Leviticus and Numbers in the Bible. Talk about orderly! We’re not called, of course, to duplicate the myriads of laws, ceremonies, and sacrifices the Old Testament prescribed for the Israelites. Those rules and regulations were put forward to demonstrate and look forward to the advent of the Messiah, Jesus Christ.
But we agree with the Apostle Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians when he encouraged that all things in worship be done decently and in order. We act together as a covenant community because we are one in Christ. That means we sing hymns together to the glory of God and we listen together as God’s Word is preached. We’re actively and orderly edifying one another in doing so and demonstrating through our respective actions the very change from death to life that we experience together as Christ’s Bride, the Church.
Biblical Worship is Full of Variety
As Christians, we draw on thousands of years of a history that belongs to everyone in the covenant community. History is ultimately about what God has done through His Son Jesus Christ for his people. The history of how we have worshipped over the centuries could be likened to an ocean. There are major currents we can draw on to better appreciate just what God has done for us since the beginning of time. There is an ebb and flow that is common to any worship of God’s people but everyone knows that there’s a clear difference between the freezing stormy winter seas of the Bering Strait and the warm, calm, and peaceful swoosh of the waves found on the shores of a tropical island.
We can read in the Bible all the different and amazing ways of how saints thousands of years ago worshipped their God. After the New Testament era, churches continued to gather and worship in a variety of ways that brought honor and glory to God. Ignoring these different traditions would be like trying to sail in a sea that had no water.
However much we learn to appreciate these varying traditions, the one thing we do know is that they constantly varied and were rarely exactly the same throughout Christian history. As much as they displayed the common ebb and flow of Jewish and Christian worship, they also demonstrated the great diversity present in the people of God. As a result, we believe it is only natural to vary our own worship in appreciation of the great traditions of the synagogues and churches of the people of God throughout the centuries.
Biblical Worship is Beautiful
We can talk about this all day long, but experiencing it is where the argument comes to us in full force. There’s just something about experiencing the absolute beauty of Christian worship. We recognize that we are one in Christ and yet a diverse group of people gathering together to glorify God in our worship. Unity and diversity–one of the major philosophical quandaries of the ages–right there–lived out in the worship services of God’s people. There is nothing like singing the hymns together with your family and other Christians around you–all the voices together praising God and lifting up His name among His people.
If you haven’t experienced this, we don’t expect you to understand. We only invite you to come and see.
Temple worship in Bible times was often accompanied with instruments, choirs, skilled musicians providing music written for the occasion, and a huge display for everyone to see just what it was God had done and was doing for His people. In the New Testament, worship revolved around the changed life of those who came to Christ. Sometimes it was found in the simplest sharing of a meal–bread and wine. Other times it was demonstrated in giving all you had to those in need. Whatever the original context, we too strive to worship our God in a beautiful way that, among other things, reflects the awesome God-initiated change from death to life that we have had in our own lives.
Biblical Worship is Spirit-Filled
Our Lord promised his disciples that when He ascended into heaven, he would send the Church a comforter. That Comforter is the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit descended on the disciples waiting in the upper room, the gospel was preached with power on the day of Pentecost, thousands converted, and the Church and the world hasn’t been the same since. Western Civilization was turned upside down not only by a few disciples of our Lord, but most especially by the power and work of the Holy Spirit demonstrated in the lives of every day people for thousands of years.
One place we see the Holy Spirit work is in our worship. Biblical worship is Spirit-filled simply because Christ promised that He would send His Spirit in His place. We know that when two or more are gathered in Christ’s name–there He is also. Our Lord and God is there with us through the Holy Spirit. The Spirit has given us life and breath. It is through Him that we can preach and sing and encourage one another. It is through the Spirit that our prayers reach God the Father and it is through the Spirit that we live out our lives as we go from worship every Sunday to continue to glorify God in all that we do.