Worship

Join Us for Worship at 8:30 and 10:00 AM on Sunday Mornings

We gather together for Sunday worship at 8:30am and 10:00am from September to June, with the 10:00am service featuring our Chancel Choir. During the summer months, a single worship is held at 9:30am. Please see our home page for more details. If you are unable to attend in person for any reason, you can always watch the livestream of our service, or later, the recording of the livestream on our YouTube channel. You can watch the livestream here and previous services can be streamed here. It's easy to catch up on what you missed!

From Pastor Aaron Neff

What does worship mean in the Presbyterian Church? To put it simply, worship of God is the reason you and I exist. God made people because God desires to know us and to be known by us. In worship, both of these things happen.

The Book of Order (which is part of the Constitution of the Presbyterian Church USA) says about worship: “Jesus Christ is the embodiment of God’s gracious action in history and the model for our grateful response to God. In Jesus we find the full and clear revelation of who God is; in him we also discover who God is calling us to be. Therefore we worship Jesus Christ as Lord, even as he leads us in the worship and service God desires” (W-1.0104). In other words, in worship we seek to know Jesus better so that we can understand and worship God more truly. The way we do this is through Word and Sacrament. Another way of putting that is: we worship God by reading the Christian scriptures, hearing a sermon, and participating in Baptism and Communion. Christians have always incorporated music into their worship, and at First Presbyterian, music is an important part of our worship experience. Many hymns that we sing were written as prayers set to music. So you can think of Presbyterian worship as being comprised of three components: Word, Sacrament, and prayers (both musical and spoken).

The order of a traditional Presbyterian worship service is structured in a way that the order itself tells a story about God. The most important thing to notice about the worship flow is that the Word is the climax of the service. All other aspects of the worship service help us to either prepare for the Word or to help make it more real and applicable in our lives.

One important aspect of Presbyterian worship is the belief that God’s love for us and desire to know us is unconditional. That means whoever you are, God welcomes you, which means we welcome you, too. Please worship with us sometime and experience the unconditional love of God.

Accommodations

Click HERE to learn more about mobility, sight and hearing accommodations

Musical Accompaniment

Our voices are backed by a Taylor and Boody organ played by Dr. Bruce Frank. It is built in the style of David Tannenberg and was dedicated on June 22, 2008. On the Taylor and Boody website, you can view specifications of the organ.