Worship at St. James

People at St. James tend to worship in a less formal way than you might find in other churches.  We don't usually dress up for worship or speak in hushed voices.  We believe that laughing together can be part of offering praise to God.  During worship we work to direct our thoughts to who God is and how God is molding us and to who our neighbors are and how we can be instruments of God's work in their lives.  We usually organize our Sunday services into four sections:

• We assemble in God's name: We gather in the name of the Lord, offer praise in the words of Scripture, prayer and song, acknowledge our sinfulness, and are reminded of God's forgiveness.
• We proclaim God's Word: We read and proclaim Scripture, sing Psalms, hymns, spirituals, or anthems, respond to the proclamation of God's Word with acts of commitment and faith, offer prayers of concern for local and worldwide needs, and give our tithes and offerings
• We give thanks to God: We praise God for creation and providence, give thanks for Christ's work of redemption, and invoke the Holy Spirit upon the church.  This is also where the Service of the Lord's Table is celebrated.
• We go in God's name: We are sent forth with God's blessing to serve.

In each of these sections we include prayer, singing, and Scripture.

Prayer

Prayer is more than just talking to God.  Prayer is also about listening, about being quiet with God and being prepared to have the contradictions in your life and the teachings and stories of the Bible to bubble through your mind and reorganize into challenges to you and challenges for you to bring to the larger church.

We are invited to bring our needs, our fears, and our hopes to God in prayer.  But prayer is for more than merely asking for things.  At St. James we occasionally use the following points to help us organize our prayers

"Prayer is none other than an expanding of our hearts in the presence of God." John Calvin

• Adoration,
• Confession,
• Thanksgiving,
• Supplication, and
• Intercession.

We often simplify these for little kids into

• Adoration: "I love you, God."
• Confession: "I'm sorry for . . . ."
• Thanksgiving: "Thank you, God, for the . . . ."
• Supplication: "Please give me . . . ."
• Intercession: "Please give my friend the things she or he needs"

These points are helpful if we find we are falling into a "gimme" prayer but they never should be more important than our experience of the presence of God as we sit together gathered as a community because of God's love and particularly because of Jesus' love for us in his life, death, and resurrection.

Singing

In the Fifth Century in his Commentary on Psalm 73, Augustine of Hippo wrote about the importance of singing.  What he wrote has been condensed over the years into the phrase, "the one who sings prays twice."  This was true when Miriam, Moses sister, led the Hebrew women in a song of deliverance with tambourines and dancing when the children of Israel were delivered from Pharaoh's army.  It is also true when we sing in our worship services a spiritual song like Amazing Grace.

The difference between going to a concert or recital and singing a hymn or the Doxology in a worship service is that in a worship service we are not spectators but participants.  It is central to our faith that our music is not entertainment but a way to worship.  Singing is our testimony to one another and our prayer to God.

We use The Presbyterian Hymnal for most of our congregational singing.  But we also use music written by members of our congregation and other music that may not be from our own tradition but that expresses the relationship with God that we are trying to build in our congregation.

St. James also provides an online network between the song titles in The Presbyterian Hymnal and many of the collections of music files available online.  This network allows those who do not play an instrument or read music an opportunity to listen to many of the tunes used in our hymnal.  That network called "Title to Tune" is here.

Scripture

The Bible is more to us than an old book with rules and stories.  It is a great gift we have from God.  It is the primary way we experience God with us and speaking to us today.  In our services we read from the Bible and usually have a sermon which explains and applies a passage from the Bible.  In the beginning of our worship we use Scripture to remind us of God's love and of our call to be the children of God. 

Further into the service longer passages of the Bible are read.  These passages are usually from a set of readings called a lectionary that uses a three year cycle to read through the Bible. These readings are often led by a lay person.  For a list of these readings go here.

The sermon is the proclamation of God's good news.  It follows the Scripture readings and usually explains and applies the passages read.  At St. James we believe a good sermon is more than a dry lecture or a negative harangue.  A sermon should engage the hearer's mind and spark questions.  It may challenge deeply held ideas and it may encourage those who feel tired of their lives.

As in most Presbyterian Churches, we usually use the historical-critical method of interpretation in preparing sermons.  We try to be aware of the archaeological and cultural background of the passage, we try to be aware of the literary form of the passage, and we try to keep our minds open to the possibility that the passage reflects more than just one person's understanding of what God was doing.

Special Music

In worship we often have times when the congregation is silent and an instrumentalist plays or the choir or a soloist sings.   Even as we sit still and listen we are not to be merely spectators.  We listen to learn from the theology or testimony of the song and to find how it fits with the experience of our own hearts.  Even when the words are in a language we do not understand, we listen to how the music expresses the ideas we find in the translation in our bulletin.  We are always listening to find where our experience of God's love connects to the words and music we hear.  This is why many Christians say "Amen" at the end of a song.  "Amen" is a Hebrew word that translates as "so be it" or in more contemporary English "That's right!" or "Right on!" or even simply "YES!!"  We enjoy music at St. James and often applaud after a song to express our appreciation of our friends in the choir or on the various instruments.

The worst thing that you can do when you listen to music in worship is to merely note the errors, the style, or the quality of the poetry.  Some people are better at leading musical worship than others but that does not make the worship merely a thing to be critiqued or judged.  Where we may need to judge is how well the music or poetry (or prayer or sermon for that matter) connects to the story of God's love recorded in the Bible and lived in our hearts.