Christ-centered worship, a set liturgy with its roots in the Reformation, a liturgy that isn’t pared down to mere outline, a church holding to a Reformed confession, a gospel-centered worship around the Lord’s Supper, and preaching that presents not law as the food for faith but Christ crucified as found in the gospel.
From the previous post – “Yet when it comes to a finding home church, I want to suggest that Christians (beggars all) indeed should be choosers!”
Picking up where I left off (Here) in my history tour:
We eventually landed in a small Anglican church. It was there that we began to not only appreciate but value the weekly repetition of the Holy Communion service in Book of Common Prayer – the reading of the Law, the unabashed and fully biblical general confession of sin, the declaration of absolution with the comforting words of Scripture, and the thoroughly gospel-centered Holy Communion liturgy.
The effect of this historic and Reformed liturgy was like participating in a weekly catechism of the faith once delivered to the saints. The liturgical worship assumed nothing, but rather led the believers through the essential cycle of the Christian life: repentance, forgiveness, and gospel grounded obedience. That path was via the reading of the Law’s with its holy standard of perfection (Lord have mercy), the confession of sin which highlighted not only sins “done and undone” but ourselves as “miserable offenders”, the declaration of pardon for all those who trust in the gospel of Christ, the confession of faith (Nicene Creed), a full presentation of the gospel of Christ as the church worships at the Lord’s Table, and the final corporate prayer of thanksgiving acknowledging the great salvation that God has given us through the merits of our Lord Jesus Christ.
