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Worshipping Together for His Glory (Part 2)

Tim Dunn — March 26 2014

This is the second in a two part post on preparing to lead a service. Read the first half here.

The Praying

Prayer of Praise

The church service is a place where the community of believers can pray together. It is a healthy thing to use the Sunday service as a place to train the congregation how to pray correctly and reverently. For example, we have a dedicated prayer of praise that usually comes off the back of a Bible reading. This prayer will reflect on the passage read, and praise God for it. Because Jesus taught that all Scripture is about Him (Luke 24:27) and Paul argued that all Scripture is God-breathed (2 Timothy 3:16), it is a fair contention that we can praise God through any Bible passage (although obviously some require a great deal more sensitivity and thought than others).

The prayer of praise will usually only focus on about three different things in that passage that we can praise God for. This is because we don’t want the corporate prayers to be so long as to be a distraction in and of themselves. This prayer naturally lends itself to leading into a song of praise on a similar theme that has been prayed.

The Prayer of Confession

Another prayer that is helpful for the congregation to learn how to do appropriately is the prayer of confession. This prayer focuses much more on our sinfulness, particularly over the last week. Again, this usually comes off the back of an appropriate Bible reading (although it would also work very well before the sacrament of communion).

This prayer should model humility in coming before God as a sinner (helpful for any non-believers in the fellowship) and be specific enough to let everyone know we are all in need of confessing our sins (such as asking for forgiveness because we have lied this week). It should not be specific to the one praying however (‘Father forgive us for we have lied, just like I lied to Susan yesterday. That dress did make her bum look big. Forgive us, we pray.’).

What is often helpful is a moment of silence during the prayer, as this allows us all to follow the lead and confess sins that weren’t addressed that morning. These will hopefully be more specific to our own situation.

A key thing we want to be wary of in this prayer is the role of each Person in the Trinity. Praying that ‘God forgive us,’ is good and correct, but praying that the ‘Father died for us,’ is not true. It’s all too simple: ‘Father forgive us for the lies we have told this week. We know that You died on the cross to forgive us, and that You had to go to the cross because of our lies. So we are sorry.’ The Father sent the Son to die for us, and we know this because the Holy Spirit opened our eyes and minds to the truth. It is helpful to model this distinction and reverence to the congregation.

The Prayer of Thanksgiving

This is a prayer before the offering (although I know not all churches collect an offering during the service). It’s a reminder to the congregation that we don’t give because of obligation, but we are privileged to give because all we have comes first from God.

As with the other prayers, this is a helpful opportunity to teach the congregation. In this prayer the lesson is that we ought to thank God for the things we have, be it financially, relationally, or spiritually.

The Pastoral Prayer

In this prayer, we finally come to God with our requests. Note that the first three prayers are all a dialogue with God that does not involve us asking for things, except forgiveness. We have praised God, we have confessed our sins, and we have thanked God for the blessings He has showered upon us.

In this prayer we come before God together and pray for one another. We pray for specific members, we pray for other local Gospel-preaching churches, we pray for aspects of our civil authorities (as Jesus commanded), we pray for any evangelistic endeavours within the life of the church and we pray for one or two major events in the world occurring in the previous week or the upcoming week.

The Corporate Reading

Something that I’m fairly new to, is the aspect of corporate readings. However, once you get past the initial confusion and awkwardness, this is a really helpful method of declaring truths to one another.

The only real difference in this and the principles of singing is that there is no music or singing. The concept is the same, in that we are declaring to one another the great glories of God, the Trinity, the cross and the resurrection.

In our church, we tend to use scripture as well as some of the great Christian creeds written by devout believers throughout history. Often we will use part of our Church Covenant, as this is a short synopsis of the basic tenets of faith we hold as a body of believers.

The Sermon

This is by far the most important aspect of any morning service. I say this because the sermon is the point in the service when the living, active and holy Word of God is brought to bear on the listeners. Therefore, everything else in the service ought to point towards and enhance the position and message of the sermon.

The service should whet the appetite of the congregation so that by the time the sermon begins we are hungry to listen and eager to be fed. It makes sense, then, that the rest of the service should be on a similar theme to the upcoming sermon, so that the congregation isn’t jarred by a major change in tone or sentiment.

A typical mistake is to have a very humbling and moving sermon that culminates in a deep thought requiring contemplation, only to jump right into a very loud and fast-moving song. The reverse is equally unhelpful. Thus it is wise to allow the preacher to choose the final hymn, or at least have the music team know the general thrust and theme of the sermon so as to pick an appropriate song to close with.

Nevertheless, the sermon is the time when the congregation will be fed. It is through the correct and faithful declaration of God’s word that His promises are heard, His Gospel is proclaimed and His love expressed to His people.

The Order of Service

Below is a standard Order of Service for our church. It’s very simple, easy to follow, and yet hopefully prepares the congregation to get ready for the sermon.

Welcome and Notices
Theme

We come this morning to worship God, our loving heavenly Father

Call to worship: Psalm 68:4-6
Song

All Creatures of Our God and King
O Great God

Scripture Reading: Deuteronomy 1:22-40
Prayer of Confession
Scriptural Assurance of Forgiveness: Colossians 3:12-13
Song

Amazing Grace (My Chains Are Gone)

Congregational Reading: The Lord’s Prayer
Prayer of Praise
Song

Jesus The Very Thought Of Thee

Pastoral Prayer
Song

What A Friend We Have In Jesus

Prayer of Thanksgiving and Offering
Sermon: Matthew 18:1-14 – ‘Become Like Little Children’
Song

When Peace Like A River

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Tim Dunn is a pastoral assistant at Twynholm Baptist Church. He lives in London, England.


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Haven't used Swerv yet?

Get organized!

Swerv helps churches plan their services from one centralized location. It can keep track of your church’s song library and liturgies as well as generate CCLI reports for you. Swerv can also ease your review process since all the information is already in one place.