Sunday School | Foundations - Liturgical Worship in Anglicanism

I wanted to continue a little bit more on that history that I think will help us today as we explore why we worship the way that we do as Anglicans. I think understanding our history is really important to understanding why we worship the way that we do.

The Reformation and Cranmer's Approach

During the Reformation, which you heard a lot about last week, Cranmer sought to—here were his instincts. He did not want to throw the baby out with the bath water as many Protestants did. Their thinking was, if the Roman Catholic church or if there's any ancient tradition that the church used to do, we're getting rid of it. It's as if the church was in error for fifteen hundred years, and we're gonna start from scratch. We're starting over. And if it's not in the Bible, we're not gonna do it. In fact, if it's not in the Bible, it's wrong to do it.

Cranmer was not that extreme. He would have said that God was preserving some really beautiful and healthy things that emerged from the traditions of the ancient church, and they were biblical. But over time, they had become corrupt. And so Cranmer's instinct was to reform what was corrupted, to keep what was biblical, and to remove anything that obscured the gospel. We're gonna look at the ways that Cranmer, through the Book of Common Prayer, sought to do that.

Anglican Heritage and History

The other thing that I wanted to say about Anglican history is that Tim mentioned this uncomfortable reality—that in many ways we were born as Anglicans from this wicked corrupt king's desire to divorce his wife, which the pope would not grant, and to marry someone else that could produce a male heir. While that is true in some elements, the two things that I would say about that is that many Anglican historians trace our English or our Anglican heritage way before the Reformation.

Augustine of Canterbury—this is a different Augustine than Augustine of Hippo that is more commonly known—but Augustine of Canterbury was sent by Pope Gregory to England to evangelize the pagan Anglo world. When he got there, there were already genuine believing Christians. This movement of the English church started long before the Reformation and it had its distinctives. They were distinct from Rome and they often went back and forth trying to establish their own identity. And so it is a rich, rich history.

Somebody asked what is a recommended reading or a good history book. There's a couple. Tim mentioned Reformation Anglicanism. I think that's the name of that book. But then there's also Bob and Laura and I, who were recently ordained, read a book by Alexander Mormon. And then Bedes is another great Anglican historian. But it is a rich, rich history.

Here's the second thing that I like to say about our Anglican history, which does have these embarrassing moments like Henry the Eighth. What we should observe when we think about our heritage and our history is that it is following a biblical pattern. Think about Joseph and his brothers, and the way that God preserved his people, his chosen people through the sin of Joseph's brothers. They sold him into slavery. His father thought he was dead. But really, he had been sold into slavery and ended up becoming a really important leader in Egypt. God spared his people from famine that came into the land because of the sin of his brothers.

This is always how God does it. If you trace the Old Testament, God is bringing about his redemptive purposes through sinful broken men and women. Think about Abram. Didn't he give his wife Sarah in order to avoid persecution? This is always what happens. God is bringing about his redemptive purposes through broken, sinful humanity. And the story of the English church and Anglicanism is really no different.

The Five Solas

One of the great things that came out of the Reformation, upon which Thomas Cranmer based so much of how we think, how we worship, what we believe, were the five solas. These were a summary of Reformation theology that came and were kind of consolidated and clarified much later. But does anybody know what I mean by the five solas?

Sola scriptura is the first one, and I would say that is crucially important for understanding how we think about worship. Scripture alone is our primary supreme authority. When we are thinking about who God is and how we should worship him, scripture is going to be our guiding influence.

We here at Church of the Holy Spirit believe that God's word is infallible, inerrant, and authoritative for every area of life, and certainly for how we gather and worship as a congregation. We affirm what we call the five solas: sola scriptura (scripture alone), sola fide (faith alone), sola gratia (grace alone), solus Christus (Christ alone), and soli Deo gloria (to the glory of God alone). These are the principles that guide and shape the way that we think.

When we say that we are reformed, low church reformed Anglicans, that is a good summary of what we mean by that and the different principles that guide us. Cranmer sought to reform what was corrupted, to keep what was biblical, and to remove what obscured the gospel.

What Was Corrupted in the Medieval Church

Let me ask you: when I say "to reform what was corrupted," what had become corrupted in the medieval Roman Catholic church?

People mentioned worshiping Mary and indulgences. Indulgences—you had to pay money to get forgiveness. The bishoprics were given to men based on kings giving out favors to their friends, and certain families were being enriched. It wasn't to care for the people of God. It was so corrupt.

And here's something many of you probably don't realize: the mass back in the day was in Latin, and nobody would understand anything that was being said. Can you imagine coming to church and just sitting there as if it's some kind of magical, mysterious thing that's happening? The priest was doing these ritualistic, superstitious things, and by those actions, you were somehow supposed to be getting fed—but it had nothing to do with what you were hearing, understanding, receiving, or digesting by faith.

Cranmer came in and said, "What are we doing? People need to hear God's word in a language that they can understand and digest." Much of the way that we do our service today was based on those instincts.

Key Issues Cranmer Addressed

The doctrine of transubstantiation was a huge issue of debate. The Roman Catholics believed that the priest had special power to essentially turn the bread into the body of Christ—that it would literally become the body of Christ. This is why they had an altar, because an altar is where sacrifices happen. What they believed was happening every single week in the Eucharistic service was that Jesus was literally being re-sacrificed every week during the mass. There's no biblical basis for this. Cranmer sought to restore and reclaim the Lord's Supper, which was a sacrament instituted by Christ, but he wanted everything we did in our service to be biblical.

Confession was another issue. You had to confess to a priest. In the medieval Roman church, the priest was essentially the mediator between God and man. But what we know from scripture is that Christ alone is the mediator.

Low Church, Reformed Anglicanism

We use the language that Cranmer was low church and reformed. There is a spectrum in Anglicanism that goes from low church to high church and from reformed to Anglo-Catholic. We are decidedly low church and reformed, as Cranmer was.

To say "low church" does not mean less Anglican. I think that's what a lot of people think—that we're almost embarrassed about our Anglican identity because we're low church. That is not what it means. This spectrum does not go from less Anglican to more Anglican. It is simply a spectrum, and we believe that the most faithful biblical expression is in the low church reformed tradition.

Now I want to say: we don't believe here at Church of the Holy Spirit that our way is the way. In fact, Tim referenced the concept of via media—the middle way.

It is sort of in between where we maintain some of the beauty of the ancient traditions while not throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

So the other thing that I wanted to tell you that I think would be helpful before we jump into our particular service is another movement of history. Tim mentioned that there was Henry the Eighth, and then there was his son Edward who came to the throne at age nine, eventually died of tuberculosis just a few years later. And who came to the throne after that was Mary, who got the nickname Bloody Mary, and she came to the throne. Her mother was Catherine of Aragon, who Henry the Eighth had banished. And so when she came back into the throne, yes, she did kill all of these Protestant reformers, but she also intentionally sought to reestablish Roman Catholicism as the faith of England. She married a king from Spain, and for a while, if you were a reformer, if you were a Protestant, you fled in exile.

And after she died, Edward's sister came to the throne who was Elizabeth, and we got what was the Elizabethan settlement in which she restored our reformation, Protestant faith within the Anglican church. But you had people come back out of exile, and they had been deeply influenced by a Puritan movement. At that point, there was a group of people that wanted to do away with anything that looked Catholic.

If it looked Catholic, and maybe some of you have come to this church—and Tim referenced this—some of you have come to this church from maybe a Baptist or a nondenominational or a Bible church background, and you get here and you see the kneelers and you see my collar, and you see us processing in behind a cross, and you think, "I'm not used to this. This feels Catholic, and therefore, it feels wrong." And then there's others of you who came from a higher church tradition, and you see that I'm wearing jeans, and that we're kind of down to earth, and there's contemporary worship, and you think, "I thought that this group of people had reverence for God, but they don't."

And we are sort of in the middle of those two extremes.

I don't know if you had this experience, but maybe it would be helpful for me to just share a little about my journey into the Anglican Church. For those of you that are new here, you may not know that I was only recently ordained as an Anglican priest. And only shortly before that was I ordained as an Anglican deacon. I have known Quig for decades, loved this church. I served in one of this church's plants for a number of years, but it wasn't until maybe a year and a half ago that I became ordained within the Anglican church.

So much of what I'm sharing with you is fresh information for me. I'm learning it anew, but I am deeply grateful for our Anglican heritage, our Anglican traditions, our Anglican theology, and I'm really grateful that those things are fleshed out in the way that we worship every Sunday.

The Oxford Movement

Last thing I want to tell you about the history that I think will inform the way that we worship here is that there was a movement in the nineteenth century called the Oxford Movement. This was a group of people that had issues with Cranmer. They thought he was too low church, and they sought to restore a more Catholic version of Anglicanism within the English church. There were a number of influential leaders—John Henry Newman, John Keble—and these guys really wanted to restore some of the mystery around the sacraments. You started to get a higher church version of Anglicanism.

I would say that if you travel around our diocese, you would find expressions of both. And we don't think always that they're doing it wrong, and I don't think they would say that about us. I think one of the beautiful things about Anglicanism is that it is a broad spectrum, and you are in bounds. There are lots of different expressions of Anglicanism that are all legitimately Anglican.

There is a phrase—I don't know if this word was something that Cranmer introduced—but are you familiar with the word adiaphora? It means things indifferent. And maybe you've heard Quig or Tim say this in the past: "In essentials unity, in non-essentials, which is adiaphora, liberty, in all things, charity."

So there are some things within our Book of Common Prayer—which is the book that Cranmer authored from which we get our order of service—where we might say, "All may, some do, none must." So when you go to different Anglican churches, you might see there are some Anglican churches that wear incredibly ornate robes and vestments, and when they process, they process with incense. And that is not wrong.

It is not our chosen expression. That would fall into the category of all may, some do, but none must. One of the reasons you might ask—in fact, we've gotten this question about why we at Church of the Holy Spirit don't wear robes every week. I have made that decision. We made that decision collectively as a staff because, as Cranmer mentioned, he didn't want anything to obscure the gospel. Now for some of you, you may say that doesn't obscure the gospel for me at all. But in our context here in Roanoke County, some people, many people, most people I would say, that come to our church are not coming from a high church Catholic or Episcopal background.

In fact, let me just out of curiosity—maybe my instinct is wrong—how many of you came from something other than Episcopal or Catholic? So most of us. Now, some of you, when we stopped this sort of regular practice of vesting, some of you were like, man, I really missed that. But you might be surprised to know that the overwhelming response that we have heard is that there were many people that almost felt turned off by it, that there was this gap between the priest and the laity. And that was intentional in the Roman church. They wanted you to know that you were less than, that you had to come to the priest in order to get to God, and that he had special powers in order to get you the mass. It obscured the gospel.

And so Cranmer—he did things like he changed the altar to a table because Christ isn't being re-sacrificed every week. It is a table. It is a communal meal that we share. And so that is one of the reasons that we don't vest: we don't want it to obscure the gospel, and we don't ever want to send a message that we don't intend to send. So we want to maintain what is beautiful about the traditions without obscuring the gospel.

We also don't quite jump so far to say, if the Bible doesn't say it, we're not going to do it here. Our desire is to preserve what is biblical. If something contradicts scripture, we're not going to do it. But that doesn't necessarily mean that unless it's prescribed, we're not going to do it in this service. There are things that we do in this service like processing that isn't necessarily prescribed in the Bible. But we're going to talk about why that is rich and how it helps to enhance a gospel-shaped worship service.

Before I move into our specific service and why we do what we do, I just want to pause here and ask if there are any questions so far about what I have said.

Defining High Church and Low Church

So high church would be the expression that lots of vestments, incense, some of those things that kind of mirror the medieval church. That's how I would describe it. Our son-in-law was at a very high Anglican church in Tallahassee where they used to actually have Jesus on a cross hoisted up in the cathedral that's about eight more than life size. And you would almost think you're in a Roman Catholic church in many ways, and that was probably the highest Anglican church I've been in. Very worshipful, but very high.

I just had the thought that a lot of the difference between high and low is that the high church embraces a lot more symbols, and the teaching is a lot more embodied in some ways. Like, the low church kind of strips it down. We just want our main focus as the gospel, but when you have vestments and icons and incense, all those have a purpose. Part of it is just what you value and what you emphasize.

That's a great way of saying it. Tim also mentioned this in his class last week, but Cranmer wrote a bunch of homilies, sermons, and what was important to him was to reclaim the word as central to our worship service. And the reason for that—and you see this reflected in guys like J.I. Packer, who's Anglican, John Stott, who is Anglican. They were evangelical low church Anglicans. And the preaching of the word, the proclaiming of the word was central to the way that we worship. Why? Because you cannot worship someone that you do not know, and the word is the way that we know him. It is the primary way that God has provided. It is the primary revelation that he has provided in order that we might know him. The word is living and active.

And so that's a great summary of high church, low church. I think in low church, you're typically going to see more emphasis on preaching, expository preaching, preaching through the Bible than you would in a higher church setting where it's a lot more focused on rituals. And so that would be my description.

One of the things that confused me coming to an Anglican church from a Baptist background was when we talk about what we believe, and we say we believe in the holy Catholic church.

And eventually, they put that little disclaimer at the bottom that the universal church, but that was confusing to me. When I learned the apostles creed during my confirmation in the Presbyterian church as a kid, we say the holy Catholic church, but it's lowercase c, not uppercase C, which refers to the Roman Catholic church, but just Catholic as a word. It means God's true church, his one true church.

Audience member: Why does it just say God's true church then?

That's a great question. Probably should. Why doesn't it just say the one true church instead of the Catholic church?

Audience member: That is what they said then.

Yes, and we don't often update the language of those creeds. I think too of stained glass windows and architectural style. We've lowered that down to where it's more comfortable. That was so a part of our daily living.

Audience member: That's right. We've tried to make the worship service more accessible, less stained glass windows. We still have beauty. This is better than any stained glass window, in my opinion, but we have sought to make the church more accessible for folks.

Was there another question in the back? I think I saw a hand.

Liturgical Worship

I want to turn now to our service and the order that we follow. If you've been coming here for a while, you likely have noticed that we tend to do things the same way, and there's a reason for that. It is because as Anglicans, we believe in liturgical worship. Liturgy is a word that comes from a Greek word, liturgia. Does anybody know what that means?

Audience member: It is the work of the people.

That's right. And this is important because worship is not something where you come and just listen, where you just are a consumer. We are participants. And that is one of the things I love about this church. I came to Anglicanism from a more Presbyterian background, but really even more of a nondenominational background. In much of my adult life, after I began a genuine relationship with Christ, I was in Bible churches. And coming here, there was a richness and a reverence. I loved the kneeling and certain prayers that we would rehearse and recite together week after week.

Kelly Henderson had just commented to me recently that when she and Tim first came here about a decade ago, they were in their first service during prayers of the people, and when everybody started praying, it caught her off guard. But it was like, wow, this is awesome. This is a group of people that are engaged. They're not just here passively going through the motions. They're actually engaged in sincere and genuine heartfelt worship.

I often say, when we go to the confession and we kneel, we bring our bodies into a posture that we long for our hearts to be in. And there's something about that.

Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi, Lex Vivindi

There's a phrase that I was taught in one of my Anglican worship classes: Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi, Lex Vivindi. It's a Latin phrase. What it means is, essentially, the law of prayer is the law of belief, which is the law of life. What they meant by that is that the way we worship forms the way that we believe, which shapes the way that we live.

And that might sound out of order. It might sound like, wait a minute, isn't it the way that we believe forms the way that we worship? Both are true. But what we would say, and what I was taught in some of these classes, is that the way that we worship has something formational about it. Our service is gospel shaped, and there are different times and opportunities throughout our service where we're invited to do something that has a forming effect on us.

I love this analogy that one of my teachers gave to us. Have you guys seen the movie Karate Kid? The real one, the good one, not the one with Will Smith's son, but the one with Daniel LaRusso and Mr. Miyagi. What did he have Daniel do? He had him come over to the house and work, and Daniel had no idea that he was being trained. He was so annoyed because he was painting the fence and waxing on and waxing off. And then, in this moment of frustration and exasperation, he feels like he's getting nothing out of it. Mr. Miyagi says to him, "Show me paint the fence." And then he starts to hit him, and Daniel realizes he just had this sort of muscle memory baked into him because he didn't know it, but something was being formed. Instincts were being formed in him.

And I think there is a beauty to liturgical worship, the work of the people. When we come and we worship together, certain things we say every week, we do every week, and it is forming us.

It is forming the way that we believe. In fact, I would say even the Psalms are an example of this. When you pray the Psalms, you're borrowing ancient words of David for yourself now, and the way that he prayed becomes the way that you pray. It becomes the way that you believe, and it shapes the way that you live. Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi, Lex Vivendi.

We also see that liturgy throughout the Old Testament is the way that God instructs his people to worship. They have sacrifices and feasts, temple worship in Leviticus and Psalms. In the New Testament, it's commanded that we read the scriptures. This is a huge thing. If you go to a high church Anglican church that really follows closely the Book of Common Prayer, they read huge portions of scripture that have nothing to do with the message that is about to be preached.

Thomas Cranmer created something called the lectionary, and it was a way to help people read through the Bible every single year because he felt the word was so deeply important, especially for the people in that context that had never really heard it. They didn't know it because it was all in Latin. And so just the reading of scripture became an important aspect of worship, and it's commanded in scripture.

If you've noticed in Acts chapter two, do you remember what it says they were devoted to?

They were devoted to the apostles' teaching, to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to the prayers. — Acts 2

It doesn't just say to prayer, it's the prayers. Already by this time in Acts chapter two, there were liturgical prayers that they would recite, probably the Psalms and probably some others. We see other evidences of liturgical worship language throughout the epistles that were likely used over and over again, repeated by the early church.

And so we think that liturgy is important. Truthfully, even churches that would consider themselves nondenominational or Bible churches, they have liturgy too. Because liturgy is what you practice. It is what you do, and God—we know that God is a God of order, that he loves order.

The Elements of Our Service

Now, let me jump into our specific service. There is so much richness to what we do every single week, and as I learned this for the first time, it was like I instantly saw it. We ought to do a better job here, and we hope to help all of us understand the different elements of our service and what they point to, why they matter, and what they mean.

Every single week, we begin with something called the opening acclamation. Does anybody know what that is? Who can recite it?

Blessed be God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and blessed be his kingdom now and forever.

At the very beginning of worship, when we are gathered together, we say the opening acclamation, and we are acknowledging that worship is God-centered. We don't start worship by saying what we need. We come to worship acknowledging who he is.

And then immediately after that, we do something called the Collect for Purity. For those of you that are unfamiliar with some of this ancient language, a collect is just the collected thoughts of the gathered people together.

To you, all hearts are open, all desires known, and from you, no secrets are hid. Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit that we may perfectly love you and worthily magnify your holy name through Christ our Lord.

Let me tell you why that is important. We've acknowledged that worship is God-centered, and then we immediately go into the Collect for Purity, which acknowledges that we are flawed—that we are deeply flawed human beings who need his grace and his spirit. We need to be cleansed. Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts. But also, we need his spirit in order to worthily magnify him, to worship in a way that pleases him. We don't just show up with our own stuff being good enough to worship God. We deeply need the Holy Spirit, which Christ ushers in.

And therefore, right after the Collect for Purity, we process in behind the cross. Now, for some of you that might seem a little bit odd, but consider this: when we walk in behind the cross, what we are embodying is the reality that no one enters to worship God the Father except through Christ the Son.

No one comes to the Father except through me. — John 14:6

Every single week, when you see us walking behind that cross, we are acknowledging it is only by Christ's sacrifice that we are able to come. His cross. And we enter in. And we're also at the end of the service—we leave following him out into the world. So that is why we do that.

After we process, there is scripture, and what we do, we sing.

There is scripture read, and then there is the sermon because, as I said earlier, Cranmer was super important to him that the word became a central component of our worship because we cannot worship one that we do not know. This first movement of our service is often referred to as the liturgy of the word. Everything that has happened so far is preparing our hearts to receive the gospel proclaimed in word. And then everything that happens after that is known as the liturgy of the table. We are a church of both word and sacrament. As I said, Tim's gonna talk about sacraments in more detail next week. But the second movement of our service is the liturgy of the table, which begins with the offertory. After we hear God's word, we respond in thanksgiving.

You might wonder, why is it that we do the offertory when almost everybody gives online? The reason for that is it is part of our liturgical expression. We're gonna keep doing that offering even if nobody's putting anything in there because we're reminding ourselves that we are offering ourselves to God, that we are offering ourselves as a sacrifice of praise, and our money is representative of that. Money is an abstraction of value that represents what you do, the time that you spent. And when we give that back to God, we're saying, everything belongs to you. We offer ourselves in response, in a grateful response to hearing his word proclaimed.

And then there is holy communion, which we share together every week here. While we don't believe that the bread becomes Jesus' body as the medieval Roman church taught, we do believe that the Lord's Supper is a sacrament that was instituted by Christ, and as Paul would say in First Corinthians 10, that participating in his body is a participation. When we do the Lord's Supper, we are participating in his body, we are participating in his blood. There's something happening there. It is something that God has given us as a way to remember his sacrifice, and by faith, we are nourished when we come to the table.

1 Corinthians 10

At the end of our service, we leave and our deacon carries the cross back out into the world, and there is that blessing and then dismissal where we say, "Let us go forth into the world." Because we gather together, we follow Christ into worship. But then as we leave, we leave as missionaries, every single one of us. We are lights in this dark world carrying the good news of Jesus Christ. Every single one of us. That is the structure of our service and some of the reasons behind why we do what we do.

Q&A

I just wanted to open it up now for anybody that might have questions.

Question about pastoral blessings:

We don't seem to be doing any blessings of the people by our pastors. Is that a decision, or is that not something that's liturgical?

When you say, do you mean at the end of the service?

End of the service, or sometimes I mean, there've been other times where we've been blessed by a pastor.

Definitely at the end, but I was just wondering if I haven't seen that, or maybe I've missed it.

And some of the crossing and the things that people do, genuflecting, that would fall under the category of adiaphora—all may, some do, none must. You'll see people, even when we come in with the cross, and there are some people that bow as the cross comes in. Some of you don't, and that's okay. But that would be my answer to that. It is not intentional. Sometimes we do a more formal benediction, sometimes we do kind of a final word that we want you to leave with. But yes.

Question about the Lord's Prayer:

I had actually in one of my newcomer meetings that we've been having with folks that are interested in joining the church, someone mentioned that we don't do the Lord's Prayer enough. I'll be honest with you, much of our liturgy, if we were to go through and retain every element of liturgy within our service, we would be here for a couple hours. So we have had to make some decisions, not because there are certain things that we don't value. The Lord's Prayer is beautiful, and we probably ought to incorporate that more than we do. But it has not been eliminated for any theological or philosophical reason. It's more just a practical reason of time. And so for that same reason, sometimes we will recite the Nicene Creed or the Apostles' Creed. We don't do it every week.

Bob, Tim, Laura, and Barb, you guys feel free to jump in because as I mentioned, so much of this is new, and this is my Anglican church experience. So much of what I've experienced is from this church.

Who else has a question?

Question about communion:

I just wanted to ask you about communion. I was influenced by a book by Ann Voskamp, and she said the word eucharisteo, and it means thanksgiving.

And that influenced me powerfully because I'm always asking God, why am I doing this? I want it to be real. And that word—I'm coming up there to thank him for what he's done for me. That's why sometimes I come up there and I'm crying, because I'm thanking him. And I may not be thanking him much during the day or the week, but it comes home to me sort of. I've heard that people think it's too long. Somebody who visited with me said it was too long.

I said, yeah, but it takes time sometimes to absorb what we're really doing.

That is a great comment. Every single week when we come together to celebrate Holy Communion, it is an opportunity to remember and to be deeply thankful for the sacrifice Christ made for us. And even though he's not being sacrificed all over again, we are remembering it afresh, and we're feeding on him in our hearts by faith.

Erin had a question about why we stand only for the gospel and not for the whole word. Tim and I have actually discussed that. We think that all of God's word is inspired. I don't know that I have the exact answer to this question, but I will tell you, a liturgical practice by many—it's not just that they stand for the gospel reading. When everybody stands for the gospel reading, the person reading the gospel comes out into the congregation, and there's a song sung. What happens at that moment is that everybody turns, and you're facing each other, and you're facing the person that's reading the gospel.

There's something embodied in that moment where we remember the word became flesh, and he came to his people. We're looking at each other and remembering that we are one body, unified under Christ's finished work. So that is, I think, the reason that we stand for the gospel—because the second part of that is coming into the people with the word made flesh. It does not mean that we think that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are more inspired than the rest of God's word. In many churches, in fact, they stand anytime that the word of God is read.

Father, thank you for this time. Lord, I know there are so many questions that people likely still have, even ones that were emailed to us that we couldn't quite get to. We thank you for this church, and we thank you that we have the opportunity to come here and to worship you. I pray that we would be deeply formed into the people you want us to be because of the way that we worship here at Church of the Holy Spirit. In Christ's name, Amen.