Worship

At Santa Margarita Community Church we gather together every Sunday morning to worship our Savior. Our Sunday morning gatherings include the practices of preaching, singing, prayer and offering, and the ordinances of communion and baptism. We preach expositionally through books of the Bible and we allow truths from the scriptures to guide the entirety of our serice of worship. We strive for our music to be corporately singable and we are currently learning as a congregation to sing both the Psalms and hymns together with greater understanding and skill. Each week, we preach the Word, we pray the Word, we sing the Word, and we eat and drink the Word. It is our aim that the aim of the biblical passage preached would be achieved in our hearts and in our daily lives.

Order of Worship

Whether it is written down or not, every church and every tradition has an order of worship, or a "liturgy." The word liturgy simply means the “service of worship.” It is a good word because it uniquely belongs in the sacred setting. 

The liturgy that we take part in shapes us, whether we know it or not. It is forming our hearts and sanctifying our affections. It is leading us from being a loosely connected people to being the people of God gathered together and dedicates our hearts, minds, and hands to His glory between Sundays. 

Preparation

The worship service begins with preparation of our hearts for the act of worship.

Song of praise. The worship service opens with a corporate song of praise that engages us in the scriptural theme of the service, which is set by the passage to be preached. 

Call to worship. The call to worship is the divine invitation to leave the cares of the world and join the angels of heaven and the church past and present in the worship of the one true God. It involves five parts:

• The invitation: We mark out this time of corporate worship from all others with the words “This hour is not like every other hour. In this hour, we gather as the people of God, according to the command of God, in order to worship God.”
• The exhortation or charge: The exhortation of the passage at hand is directly introduced so as to engage the hearts of the congregation.
• The scriptural call: A passage of scripture with a corresponding theme, often a psalm, issues the formal call to engage our hearts in worship. We often use the lectionary psalm of the day.
• Prayer: The prayer addresses the God who has spoken to us in the psalm, confesses our sin, and asks for God to work the aim of the Word in our hearts this day. This is asked in the name of Jesus.

Adoration

Prepared hearts turn to direct acts of worship to the Triune God. 

Songs of adoration. Songs of corporate worship, both old and new, which are biblically accurate, historically valuable and corporately singable, allow us to worship God in congregational unity.

Scripture Reading. Each week a passage of scripture is read by a congregant. This follows a plan which takes the congregtion through the biblical arc, from Genesis to Revelation, over the course of three years. This is prefaced by a short rubric introducing the passage. 

(Testimony). Testimonies are sometimes engaged to give praise to God for the good that He is doing in our congregation and to celebrate what we want to see more of in maturing believers.

(Reading). Corporate readings from the Heidelberg Catechism, Apostle’s Creed, Book of Common Prayer, or Book of Common Worship, serve to focus our minds and hearts on true doctrine and to unite them with the church across history.

The Pastoral Prayer. A prayer is offered in praise of God, on behalf of the needs of our congregation, and in preparation for the offering that follows. 

Offering. We receive an offering from the congregation as an act of gratitude for what God has provided to our families and so that more good can be accomplished with our pooled resources than might be otherwise. Offerings are free will for attenders and expected for church members.

Exhortation

Having prepared our hearts and offered praise to our God, we are ready to hear the Word of God preached to us and to receive it as the Word of God.  

Scripture Reading. The scripture passage to be preached on is read by the pastor. 

Sermon. A expositional sermon, prepared to bring the Word of God to bear on the lives of this local congregation is preached.

Dedication

The service sends us out into our daily lives with a dedication to believe what we have heard from the Word of God and obey it at home, at work, and in our neighborhoods.

Communion. Communion, or the Lord’s Supper, follows the hearing of the Word every Sunday. We take time to confess our sins to God together before partaking. Our traditional free church form is to pass plates to one another, signifying our belief in the priesthood of all believers. We use words of institution taken from the Book of Common Prayer: “The gifts of God for the people of God.” We then connect the passage preached with the celebration of the finished work of Christ, believing that every passage leads to the cross of Christ. 

Songs of dedication. These songs pick up the emphasis of the sermon. If the sermon passage leaves us contemplative or enthusiastic or hopeful, these songs correspond. This leads us to sing our commitment back to God.

Charge. The closing charge serves as a summary reminder of the truth we have heard about God, who we are as the people of God in this place, and the obligation we are now under to serve God having worshipped him. 

Benediction. The pastor offers a benediction or traditional blessing from the Word of God. He raises his hands over the congregation and the congregation reaches theirs out in a receptive posture. The benediction ends with “amen and amen;” the second is joined by the congregation in full voice.