Worship Service: What Is Yours Like?

[Jonaitis]

I'm curious to know what your average worship services looks like every Sunday (or on a different day if your church-body fits this exception).

Our services start at 10:00, and roughly finishes somewhere between 12:30-1:00. We begin and finish with:

1. Public Greeting and Opening Prayer
2. Scripture Reading
3. Congregational Singing
4. Catechism Reading
5. Public Announcement/Praise Report/Prayer Request
6. Corporate Prayer
7. Lord's Table with Admonition
8. Fellowship Break
9. Sermon
10. Closing Hymn
11. Closing Prayer

I'm sure this kind of format is very common for a Baptist congregation, but yours may be entirely different.

 

[Anthony2019]

I attend different Holy Communion services in the Church of England. These take place on Sundays and sometimes on days during the week. They may differ in length, some may be very short (ie. 30-45 mins), others may be longer (ie. 1 - 2 hours).

1. We usually start the service by greeting each other in the Lord's name
2. Confess our sins to God and be assured of His forgiveness
3. Listen to the Word of God.
4. Hear the Sermon.
5. Intercessions, prayers for the world, the Church.
6. Exchange the Peace.
7. The priest says the Eucharistic prayer, the consecrated bread and wine is distributed to the congregation.
8. Prayer of thanksgiving and blessing.

Depending on the individual church, some of the services may follow a more traditional format (ie. some may use liturgy from the older texts such as the Book of Common Prayer, or others may use a more contemporary format such as Common Worship). These may be said or sung.

Some services may use books, others may use overhead projectors. Some have traditional music (choir anthems, hymns, etc), others may have more informal, modern songs played by a music group. Some may have chants. Others may not have music at all!

Some services may be busy with hundreds attending, others may have much smaller groups of people. Also our Holy Communion services may include additional prayers/etc if someone is being baptised or confirmed.

 

[DragonFox91]

I really like this thread idea! Do you think we will see a lot of differences? Or will we have more similarities?

RCA:
Call to Worship / Opening Prayer
Singing
Prayer for Forgiveness + confession
Singing
Children’s Lesson
Singing
The Bible Reading + the sermon beginning & ending w/ prayer
Prayer of Thanksgiving
The collection / offering
Church news
Singing (praiseful song)
Benediction

Communion once a month, follows the offering. RCA website lists the structure more thoroughly, including what items should be included in each, this is it from memory


Baptist:

Generally the same. :
Call to Worship / Opening Prayer
Singing
Prayer + church news
The collection + offering
Singing
The Bible Reading + the sermon beginning & ending w/ prayer
Singing
Benediction

Communion once a month, before the Benediction.


Couple other differences: Baptist church, the sermon takes up the largest share of time by far, at least a ½ hour. Also not scared for the service to go 15-minutes to 20-30 over.
RCA keeps it to an hour. Will cut out verses to songs or shorten prayers to fit an hour.
RCA just meets one time at Sunday morning
Baptist has a morning and evening Sunday service.

For both, singing can be multiple songs, hymns, contemporary songs, or share time w/ a choir by itself, a solo, or music by itself.

 

[seeking.IAM]

I attend different Holy Communion services in the Church of England

3. Listen to the Word of God.

I think you might expand on your #3 as I see it as a differentiator from many other service types which often have only one formal scripture reading. In my Anglican tradition (The Episcopal Church USA), there are generally three readings including a Psalm and Gospel reading plus another.

 

[Anthony2019]

I think you might expand on your #3 as I see it as a differentiator from many other service types which often have only one formal scripture reading. In my Anglican tradition (The Episcopal Church USA), there are generally three readings including a Psalm and Gospel reading plus another.

Yes - very similar here. We usually have a Gospel reading (to which we stand) as well as a reading from the psalms, epistles, OT, etc.

 

[Jonaitis]

I really like this thread idea! Do you think we will see a lot of differences? Or will we have more similarities?

RCA:
Call to Worship / Opening Prayer
Singing
Prayer for Forgiveness + confession
Singing
Children’s Lesson
Singing
The Bible Reading + the sermon beginning & ending w/ prayer
Prayer of Thanksgiving
The collection / offering
Church news
Singing (praiseful song)
Benediction

Communion once a month, follows the offering. RCA website lists the structure more thoroughly, including what items should be included in each, this is it from memory


Baptist:

Generally the same. :
Call to Worship / Opening Prayer
Singing
Prayer + church news
The collection + offering
Singing
The Bible Reading + the sermon beginning & ending w/ prayer
Singing
Benediction

Communion once a month, before the Benediction.


Couple other differences: Baptist church, the sermon takes up the largest share of time by far, at least a ½ hour. Also not scared for the service to go 15-minutes to 20-30 over.
RCA keeps it to an hour. Will cut out verses to songs or shorten prayers to fit an hour.
RCA just meets one time at Sunday morning
Baptist has a morning and evening Sunday service.

For both, singing can be multiple songs, hymns, contemporary songs, or share time w/ a choir by itself, a solo, or music by itself.

Interesting. I've heard of some churches setting time apart for collection/offerings/tithing, as well as the benediction.

In our services, any member can choose a hymn of their choice for congregational singing. Occasionally, we will have 'Special Music' where people bring in their own instruments to play along with our singing. Our former leading elder use to preach like 45-50 minute sermons (typical Baptist), but having been a former professor and having knowledge in the original tongues, his message and expositions were very educational. He use to translate his own text before each Sunday. He was replaced by our teaching elder when he retired, but our current leading elder is great too. He is a very humble servant of the Lord Jesus Christ. I believe his sermons are somewhere around 30 minutes.

We also encourage the men in the congregation during cooperate prayer to pray for the requests made in the hearing of the people. But sometimes, we will break into small groups of three or four, but this isn't very common.

We also encourage members to discuss the sermon after its finished. So we give maybe 15 minutes after for the time for members to share their thoughts, opinion, criticisms, etc, and if it turns into a discussion, we try to keep it short.

We do communion/Lord's table every week, and we for many years have used non-alcoholic wine (0.5 ABV) and home-made unleavened bread made by a member in our body. Our small family-oriented body was formed in 2005 and tried to model Acts 2:42 as the basic structure of public worship. We don't really believe in the idea of programs or children's ministries. We firmly believe children learn best while being their parents (plus, we don't have the room capacity for such a ministry).

 

[Techo]

Sorry... cannot give you any particular order to what happens where I go. It can vary each week.

On the 1st Sunday of the month we do one where we share the ministry word over live stream with all the fellowships within the State. A couple of fellowships travel to another fellowship to, physically, be together and then someone in one of those combined group will, after a song, bring a message. Then the live stream finishes and we, often, then do some songs. Somewhere about this time someone(s) may bring a word. After the singing there will often be some singers who bring a new song (as the Spirit leads them) in prophesy or exhortation. There will be announcements (generally near the end) and then 'Grace' before we go to morning tea/fellowship time and talk about what we heard in the message or what the Lord has been showing us. The 3rd week of the month can run similar except Sunday is a continuation of the Bible Study from the day before. Other weeks the order of singing and Word could be reversed. Any of this could be changed if it is felt a different priority needed to be used. There will be prayer in there, probably near the start, and maybe other things depending upon what they feel needs to happen on that occasion.

We do not... well we are trying not to... rely upon any sacramental approaches in how we come to meet with the Lord... including using music to get people into an attitude of worship. The music is to support the message that is being taught. Works out to be about 3 hours all up.

We do not really fit into the patterns of most other fellowships but the teaching in the Word that we get and the music we write to support the Word we are hearing is what every one who are with us (or have been with us) appreciate the most.