Liturgy

Call to worship

God calls us into His presence to worship him. Coming to worship God is not our idea. God is the one who takes the initiative to bring us into His presence to be renewed by his grace. As this happens we respond by singing praises and in worship. And as this is happening we become mindful of the fact that we are sinners, and this leads us to the next step in our liturgy.

Confession

This is a time to both confess our individual sins before God but also to confess corporately that we have fallen short of God’s standard. After we have confessed our sin together all will rise and someone will read scripture that gives assurance and reminds the church that we are forgiven in Christ and His work was finished on the cross.

Consecration

After our hearts are right with God through the means of our response in worship and confession, God consecrates us through the reading and preaching of His word. Consecration is a solemn commitment of your life to some cherished purpose. God is the one consecrating us, in other words, He is transforming us to be more like Christ, to reflect His glory, and to fulfill His purposes with our lives.

Communion

This is the culmination of our remembering and renewing our relationship with God. Because of the importance of the communion table and what it represents (the new covenant in Christ’s blood), we celebrate communion every week. Communion is a meal, and the Bible shows patterns of meals being parts of celebrations and special events. Communion is a time of remembrance, a time to remember what Christ did for us on the cross, but also a time of celebration. Jesus will eat and drink together with us in the fulfillment of the kingdom of God.

Often times, believers look at communion as a time of solemn remorse and repentance and take the two minutes before they take the elements to “get right with God.” The idea of the service starting with God calling us worship, our response in praise and confession, our being consecrated by the word of God, is that these things are means God uses to prepare our hearts for communion. We cannot prepare ourselves, God prepares us to eat and celebrate at His table.

Commission

 This is when God sends us out into the world. We go and serve God in our families, in our neighborhoods, in our jobs, and in every other aspect of our life. We do this by the power of the Holy Spirit. The service concludes with a benediction (benediction literally means “good saying”) which is a pronouncement of blessing whereby the Lord sends us forth with His favor out into the world, not in shame or defeat, but in faith and victory.

A covenant renewal service is not about man; it is all about God and God pouring out His grace on us. God calls us to worship, God cleanses us from our sin, God consecrates us with His word, God communes with us at His table, and God commissions us for His work. We celebrate this together as saints on a weekly basis.