Why We Use Liturgy

Visitors to Sacred City’s worship gathering will immediately recognize the use of liturgy in our worship. We follow a definite pattern every week. We employ scripted confessions, creeds, prayers, and professions of faith to structure our worship. The question is: why?

REASON #1: Liturgy is Biblical

The first and most important reason we use liturgy in our worship is because liturgy is biblical.

In the Old Testament, worship followed a sequence of three offerings. The sin offering was given first, symbolically cleansing the people from sin. Next came the burnt offering, which was burned up entirely to signify the total dedication of the worshippers to God. Finally, a fellowship or peace offering was offered. Having been cleansed from sin and consecrated to God, the worshippers could now enjoy communion and friendship with God.

With the coming of Jesus, most of the Old Testament worship rituals - altars and animals sacrifices and burnt offerings - have been abrogated. But the basic pattern of approach to God - cleansing, consecration, and communion -  remain the same. Consider how each of these elements is reiterated in the New Testament:

• Covenant: We are in a covenant with God, just like our forefathers were. “But now [Jesus] has obtained a more excellent ministry, by as much as He is also the mediator of a better covenant, which has been enacted on better promises.” (Hebrews 8:6)
• Cleansing/Confession: God still expects us to confess sin before approaching Him in worship. “If we say that we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth; but if we walk in the Light as He Himself is in the Light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” (1 John 1:6-9)
• Consecration: God commands us to set ourselves apart for His purposes. “Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.” (Romans 12:1-2)
• Communion: Experiential communion with God - the renewing, refreshing experience of His presence and power - is still the ideal for gathered worship. “And when they had prayed, the place where they had gathered together was shaken, and they were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak the word of god with boldness.”(Acts 4:31)

Since Christ has come, the external practices of worship have changed. But the biblical pattern of approach to God has not. God calls His people together to cleanse us of our sins, remind us of our covenant obligations, renew our fellowship with Him, and send us back into His world as His representatives. And this order matters.

As a helpful analogy, think of a wedding. Every Christian wedding ceremony follows a particular order. The bride is escorted down the aisle by her father; she is given away to the groom; solemn vows are repeated; rings are given; the union is sealed with a kiss; and the minister pronounces the couple to be husband and wife. This order is intuitively obvious to all who are present - it’s just “the way it should be.” But why? Because a wedding is a covenant ceremony. And such ceremonies proceed according to certain form, or ritual. There’s a “right order” to them. The same is true for a courtroom proceeding, a citizenship oath, or a home mortgage loan. And for a Christian worship service. As Christians we are God’s new covenant people. Our relationship with God is a covenant relationship. And so we gather weekly to renew that covenant according to the patter God gives us in Scripture. 

REASON #2: Liturgy is Historical

In historic Christianity, liturgy was given. Christian worship was scripted according to a definite form. If you’ve ever been to a traditional Lutheran or Anglican worship service or even a catholic mass, you’ve seen how liturgy works. People speak, stand, sit, kneel, and pray at specified times, following a particular structure or pattern.

In recent centuries, as liberal theology drained away the historic orthodox convictions of tradition churches, the liturgy became little more than a vacuous structure, devoid of any devotion to Christ or commitment to his mission. In response, the evangelical movement arose. In it’s passion to avoid the “deadness” of traditional church liturgies, evangelicalism went rabidly anti-liturgical, opting instead for a free-form sort of worship service. Evangelicals still prayed, preached and sang in their worship gatherings, but without an intentional pattern. Corporate confession of sin, the recitation of the creeds, spoken prayers, and the regular practice of the Lord’s Supper were mostly neglected. Better to “let the Spirit lead” than to succumb to dead orthodoxy.  But the net result of this change has been less than desirable. Evangelicalism has produced a generation of Christians who have a vague sense that corporate worship is important, but have no idea why, or what (if any) form it should take, or whether there is even a biblical pattern for how the church should approach its Lord. They also lack a sense of history. They have little regard for the continuity of “the faith once for all handed down to the saints” (Jude 1:3) throughout generations and centuries.

If you study church history, you’ll notice that every generation held the same few elements as “properly basic” for Christian discipleship: the Ten commandments. The Lord’s prayer. The Apostle’s Creed. The Great Commission. The Shema. Where did our forefathers learn these things? In the liturgy! Ask yourself: do you know all ten of the Commandments? Can you recite the Lord’s prayer from memory? Is the Apostles Creed second nature to you? If not, it’s probably because you grew up in a church that didn’t practice liturgy. In fact, chances are that your non-literate Christian ancestors knew the Bible better than you do - simply because of the liturgical rhythms they were immersed in. Benedictine monks sing through the entire book of Psalms not once, but three times each year. After doing that for forty years, don’t you think you’d have most of them memorized?

Because we want to embrace our rich connection with the people of God throughout history, we use liturgy in our worship gatherings.

REASON #3: Liturgy is Formative

Think about the rhymes, songs, and cadences you learned as a young child: the Alphabet song, “Happy Birthday,” the Pledge of Allegiance. Maybe you can remember the theme music to your favorite childhood cartoon or the lines you had to memorize for your first school play. Why are these things so ingrained in your memory? Because they had a formative effect on you. They shaped you. They created “grooves” in your soul and in your memory that are easily recalled to this day.

James K.A. Smith refers to these shaping experiences – and others like them – as “secular liturgies.” Our cultural institutions – education, media, corporations, government – have a liturgical motive. They want to shape us. They want to inculcate into us a certain “vision of the good life.” They want to make us into a certain kind of people - people who buy their products or are loyal to their cause or embrace their ideals.

The liturgy of Christian worship is a subversive counter-measure against the shaping influence of culture. By using liturgy in worship, we are seeking to re-form or re-shape people according to the gospel. Rather than being defined by the world, we want them to take on the values of the kingdom of God. This formation takes place on a number of levels:

• Theological Formation: Theological convictions are formed not just through teaching and study, but through singing, confession, creeds, and catechisms. A church’s theology can be “felt” in how it prays and how it sings and how it treats the Lord’s Supper. As a church committed to historic Reformed theology, we want the sovereignty of God and the sinfulness of man to be consistently portrayed in our rhythms. We want the redemptive drama of Creation-Fall-Redemption-Consummation to be felt and experienced regularly in every aspect of our worship.
• Spiritual Formation: What we do in worship shapes the way we approach God in private. By reading Scripture aloud each week, by confessing our sin each week, by hearing the promises of the gospel spoken each week, by celebrating Jesus’ death and resurrection in communion each week, we are forming our souls in a certain “cadence” or rhythm of worship. We are building habits that shape desires and inclinations in unseen ways. Smith notes: “We don’t      wake up each day thinking about a vision of the good life and then consciously, reflectively make discrete decisions about what we’ll do today… Instead… our desire for the kingdom is inscribed in our dispositions and habits and functions quite apart from our conscious reflection.” Children, especially, are formed by the familiarity and regularity of liturgy: “Christian worship that is full-bodied reaches, touches, and transforms even those who cannot grasp theological abstractions.” 
• Gospel Formation: If it’s true that we never outgrow the gospel (Col. 1:6, Romans 1:16), then we need our hearts to be shaped more and more by the reality of that good news. In Christian worship we are celebrating the gospel story. We are reminding ourselves of the truth of who we are and whose we are. We are “learning the language” of the gospel – becoming fluent in speaking it to ourselves and to others. A gospel-infused liturgy shapes us more fully into a gospel-centered people. 

We use liturgy at Sacred City because of the way it forms us theologically, spiritually, and redemptively. 

REASON #4: Liturgy is Missional

Anyone who has ever felt distant or “lost” at a Catholic funeral or an Anglican Eucharist celebration will likely question this point. Isn’t liturgy a profound obstacle to mission? Doesn’t it naturally exclude anyone who’s not an “insider” – who doesn’t already know the language and the expectations? 

By no means! The problem is not in the liturgy itself, but in the way it’s conducted. Poor leadership can make even the richest liturgy feel stale, dry, detached, and inhospitable. But good, gospel-shaped leaders will use liturgy to extend a welcoming, hospitable arm to strangers and sojourners. 

The word liturgy comes from a Greek term that means “a public service.” Liturgy is designed to make Christian worship public – that is, accessible to outsiders! When it is properly explained and warmly engaged, liturgy creates an accessible “flow” that beckons outsiders in. Like a table of contents or a map, it makes unfamiliar territory familiar. 

THE SHAPE OF THE LITURGY

Theologian Simon Chan notes that throughout the history of the church, the basic shape of Christian liturgy has been relatively consistent. “Word and sacrament are set within the act of gathering and the act of returning, thus giving rise to a fourfold structure.” Chan goes on to frame out the basic elements of the church’s worship liturgy: 

Entrance 

• Greeting/Call to Worship: God is, in a sense, the host, and we are being welcomed into his presence. Sometimes a call to worship consisting of an appropriate sentence from Scripture is added to remind the congregation why they are gathered together. 
• Adoration: This is an act of proclaiming who God is and also responding to his calling us together. The most common form of adoration is the hymn of praise. 
• Confession: Confession is a poignant reminder that we have not yet arrived. Liturgical confession must acknowledge both corporate and personal sins, both sins against God and sins against humanity. In the liturgy, each person is no longer an individual but a member of the body of Christ, and personal confession is needed as members of the body of Christ. 
• Absolution: Absolution could be understood as a condensation of the gospel... the words of absolution convey the good news of God’s forgiveness of sinful creatures. It is necessary that the giving of the word of forgiveness follow from the confession if the relationship is to be reestablished. 

The Proclamation of the Word

• Reading of Scripture: In reading the Bible we are not engaged in mere historical recollection. We are saying that God is speaking to us today; it is the Living Word that addresses us in our present condition. 
• Sermon: Preaching is Spirit-inspired speech. In preaching, the preacher is bearing witness to the truth he proclaims and staking his life on it. It builds a bridge between the ‘there and then’ of the salvation event in Jesus and the ‘here and now’ of God’s continuing saving activity by the Spirit. 
• Prayer: The prayer of intercession, as it is sometimes called, focuses on matters that are basic to the life of the church in the world. Four areas of concern are usually covered: the needs of the church, civil authorities and the salvation of the world, those burdened by any kind of difficulty, and the local community. It is the prayer of the church but is usually led by one person, with the congregation making response. 
• Sign of Reconciliation and Peace: The exchange of peace serves as a reminder that the children of God must be reconciled to one another before they can partake of the Supper. 

Holy Communion

• The Eucharist proclaims in word and sign the death, resurrection, and return of the Lord and thereby makes the mystery of the gospel an ever-present reality. 

Dismissal

• Benediction: The benediction spoken at the end of the service is the final word to the people of God before they return to the world to serve. In the blessing, however, we are not using a formula that mechanically induces a blessing. We are proclaiming the action of the Triune God. The gift can only be received by faith. 
• Sending Forth. The liturgical journey begins with Christians’ leaving the world and ends with a return to it. We ascend the Mount of Transfiguration so that we may descend to face the painful reality of this world. True worship heightens rather than resolves this tension. 

THE WEEKLY LITURGY AT SACRED CITY

Sacred City’s weekly worship gathering follows this historic liturgical structure, contextualizing it for an urban, missional, post-Christian setting. A Liturgy Leader guides the congregation through the liturgy in a warm, hospitable fashion, serving as a sort of “tour guide” to make unfamiliar territory familiar. Following Chan’s outline, our weekly worship gathering progresses as follows: 

Entrance

• Call to Worship/Doxology: The very first element of covenant renewal worship is a reading from the Word of God which testifies the the glory and the mighty works of God. In this God is the one who initiates worship and calls all people to worship the Triune God. We respond to the call by singing the Doxology.
• Greeting: After an opening time of song, the congregation is welcomed in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit; making it abundantly clear who we are worshiping. This is followed by a few responsive scriptures between the Liturgy Leader and the congregation. 
• Adoration: The first set of worship songs are carefully chosen to reinforce God’s holy character, His mighty acts, and His steadfast love, leading the people into a sense of worship and adoration toward God.
• Confession: The Liturgy Leader guides the the congregation through a corporate confession of sin. After that a few moments are given for silent confession.
• Absolution: The Liturgy Leader speaks a word of absolution and pardon over the people, using a specific text of Scripture to highlight the promises of the gospel. We then sing an appropriate song of rejoicing over the cleansing of our sins through Christ’s work.
• Psalter Reading: We want our entire worship service to be started in scripture, for it is by the Word of God that we are sanctified. The Liturgy Leader and the congregation read responsively from a psalm that helps to deepen our understanding of who God is and what he has done for us.
• Profession of Faith: The Liturgy Leader guides the congregation in a spoken profession of faith, usually utilizing a historic creed or specific catechism question and answer. In this way we profess our unity with the church throughout history and reinforce the core doctrines of the Christian faith.
• Prayer: The Worship Leader will pray a prayer of thankfulness to God for all the gospel promises we have just proclaimed together, and ask for further help from the Spirit as we prepare to hear from God in the proclamation of the Word.

The Proclamation of the Word

• Reading of Scripture: The text which the sermon is based on is read aloud, creating space for the congregation to hear and reflect before the sermon.
• Sermon: Sacred City strives to excel in preaching gospel-centered, Christ-focused, expository sermons. We see the pulpit not merely as a place for biblical instruction, but as the driving force for leading the church in mission, shaping the church in the gospel, and showing the relevance of the gospel to non-Christians.
• The Lord’s Prayer: Jesus taught is disciples to pray in a particular way. Each week we recite the Lord’s Prayer together.

Holy Communion

• Communion: The Lord’s Supper is observed every week as the culmination of our worship. In how we introduce the sacrament, fence the table, and dispense the elements, we seek to comfort believers with the finished work of Christ and beckon unbelievers to respond in repentance and faith toward Jesus.
• Sacramental Blessing: The pastor pronounces a blessing over the congregation after eating and drinking the elements in faith. 
• Song of Response: We lift a final song of praise to God in response to Him revealing Himself to us throughout the gathering, and especially the Eucharist.

Dismissal

• Nunc Dimittis: As the worship service comes to an end the congregation is led in Simeon’s prayer of departure that is found in Luke 2:29-32.
• Benediction: The liturgy leader speaks God’s blessing over His people and sends them back into the world to advance His kingdom and live for His glory.

After years of practicing this pattern, we can testify to it’s formative effect among our congregation, it’s missional efficacy in our city, and its help in strengthening gospel fluency within our church community.

CONCLUSION

This essay has been written to help those new to Sacred City understand our structure of worship and to help those who have been at Sacred City for a while and may still want further clarity on why we practice liturgy.

For those desiring a more scholarly and theologically robust discussion of these topics, we recommend the following books:

• “The Lord’s Service” by Jeffrey J. Meyers (Moscow, ID: Canon Press, 2003)
• “Reformation Worship” by Jonathan Gibson & Mark Earngey (Greensboro, NC: New Growth Press, 2018)
• Unceasing Worship by Harold Best (Downers Grove, IL: Intervasirty, 2003)
• “Reformed Worship in the Global City” by Timothy J. Keller, in Worship by the Book, ed. D.A. Carson (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2002), 193-249.
• Liturgical Theology by Simon Chan (Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity, 2006)
• Desiring the Kingdom by James K.A. Smith (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2009)

**We are grateful to Bob Thune and Coram Deo Church for originally writing much of this material