mgpcpastor's blog

At mgpc each week our worship follows a pattern which is Gospel shaped and Gospel affirming.
We gather at God’s call, acknowledge His saving grace, meditate on His Word, and then begin our response as kingdom people. Reading, prayer, preaching, song and sacrament are the actions of our worship.
Paul Clark Jr expands on a similar pattern: gathering, word, response and sending; and points out how this shape means that every worship service, as a whole, displays the Gospel, connects our gathered worship with our lives of worshipping service, and also connects us the wider church around the world and through the ages.
A couple of Clark’s thoughts:

Week in and week out, worship has a pattern that is predictable in its shape. This in no way limits creativity, or gets in the way of “making all things new.” To the contrary, form gives rise to freedom. While expressions like “fresh” and “next level” have been used to sound “cutting edge” (another one), rescuing the tired expressions of “dynamic,” “exciting,” and “inspiring,” the truth is that all of these become cliché quite quickly. Chasing novelty is a cultural temptress that often serves an inclination in worshipers that can easily simply become worshipers worshiping worship, or in essence worshipers worshiping themselves. God forbid. Monkeying with the order of worship for the purpose of bringing surprise – unexpected presentation, can easily degrade into little more than an engineered distraction. Indeed, the surprise we need is the visitation of the Holy Spirit to speak in our present circumstance, and this not just to “meet our need,” but to move us toward Jesus, the ultimate direction of Christian worship.
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Worshiping in the form that has historic roots all the way to the first century as well as extending to churches of many other faith traditions, its Gospel-form can accentuate our oneness in Christ, despite differences and divisions of disagreement. What’s more, the historic rootedness reminds us that we are worshiping now, but as part of eternal worship which has been before us and continues into eternity.

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