Worship
With Us
We practice Covenant Renewal Worship, which is summarized as…
- Call to Worship: God Calls us to worship and it is our privilege and duty to enter His courts with praise and thanksgiving.
- Confession and Cleansing: As we confess our sins, we come to the great realization that He has already cleansed us through the atonement of Christ.
- Consecration: We are secluded from the world for this time to draw near to God to hear His Word, offer our first-fruits, and pray.
- Communion with God and the Saints: God invites us to the Table to enjoy the presence of Christ, our Host, in the symbols of the elements, and with one another as one Body. This meal of celebration seals the covenant renewal.
- Commissioning of the Saints: We are sent out by God’s power, promise and presence. We praise God one last time and pronounce the final “Amen! and Amen!!” (Neh 8.6). We hear the blessings from God’s Word by God’s undershepherd over the flock that they may go into the world with the power of the Holy Spirit to be used as priests, witnesses, evangelists, disciplers, and ambassadors.
Baptism
First and foremost, baptism is an act of obedience to Christ who has Himself ordained this sacrament (Mt 28.19; Acts 2.38, 10.48). Baptism is a sign and seal placed upon the Believer to set him apart unto God and into Christ (Acts 19.4) and into His universal church (Acts 2.41), it represents the death of our sin with Christ’s atoning sacrifice, and the resurrection of life in Christ (Rom 6.3-4; Col 2.12; cf. Acts 22.16).
To be sure, while it represents regeneration of the Spirit it does not equate to it; in other words, the Elect can be saved without it (Lk 23.43), while some baptized people can remain lost.
Anyone who makes a public profession of faith, whose life is consistent with this profession, and who has not been previously baptized in the Name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit is eligible. Furthermore, the infants and children of at least one Believing parent (I Cor 7.14) are welcomed into the covenant community through baptism as full-fledged communicant members (Acts 11.14; 16.15, 31; I Cor 1.16).
The Lord’s Supper
The Lord’s Supper is for the baptized Believer only. Jesus proclaimed that we must confess our Faith before men (Mt 10.32). Furthermore, our confessions of Christ are directly linked to our partaking of the Elements as Christ’s body and blood (Jn 6.69 in context). Our genuine profession of Faith in Christ is evidence of the Holy Spirit in our lives (I Cor 12.3), and our professions become tools of remembrance, reassurance, and encouragement.
However, we emphasize that a profession of faith will not save anyone; only the possession of the true Faith that unites us to Christ is efficacious for salvation.
We celebrate the Lord’s Supper, as opposed to a further opportunity for solemn contemplation of sin, death, and Christ’s penalty of sacrifice. Since we believe in the Lord’s real and spiritual presence in hosting the covenant meal, and we are called to remember and proclaim His death, resurrection, and coming (I Cor 11.26), and His ultimate victory over sin and death at the cross, we are joyfully obligated to celebrate the presence of the Bridegroom without mourning (Mt 9.15).
In addition to the act of worship we offer to the Triune God, we joyfully anticipate to be met and nourished spiritually by Christ, not only by the means of the preaching of His Word but also by the partaking of the Elements of the Lord’s Supper. We firmly hold that the Word and the sacrament go hand-in-hand in a complementary relationship, as the explaining of the covenant and the renewing of the covenant, respectively. When we meet together regularly as Believers we break bread of communion in celebratory remembrance of Christ’s sacrifice on our behalves, and in conformity to His mandate to do this often, proclaiming the Lord’s death until He comes, to celebrate the new covenantal relationship with God as mediated by Christ, to proclaim our unity in the mystical body of Christ, to identify with His suffering, and to live in the foreshadow of the Messianic banquet (Lk 22.19-20, I Cor 10.17, 11.23-26). Therefore, only those baptized into the covenant may partake.
The Admonition in I Cor 11.28 for self-examination is directed to those who profane the table by dividing the unity of the Body through classism. This ‘classism’ today takes the form of ‘ageism,’ i.e., age segregation. Christ clearly says, “Forbid not the children to come to me” (Lk 18.16). Therefore, we gladly facilitate our Lord feeding our baptized covenant children.
