Our triune God is omnipresent.  Therefore, wherever His people are they live coram Deo, in His presence.  However, there is a sense in which God is present with His church in a special way when they gather to worship on Sunday, the Lord’s day.  The instrumental selection which opens the liturgy is the beginning of the transition from the world with all its distractions to the place of corporate communion with God.  The prelude is a time to be prayerful and reverent in preparation for the worship of our holy God.

Psalm 122:1

The pastor continues the transition of the congregation from the world to worship with a welcome to all whom the Lord has brought together, with an especial emphasis on visitors to the church.

Hebrews 10:25

The pastor presents to the congregation announcements and prayer needs concerning missionaries whom our church sponsors and lists opportunities of service to the world, the community, to one another, and of fellowship within the body.

Act 1:8

The transition from the world is complete.  The choir sings an invitation for the congregation to turn their attention toward God and prepare to praise and worship Him.

Believing that the Psalms constituted the hymnal of the Old Testament church,  the choir, and congregation sing a metrical psalm from the Trinity Psalter set to a familiar hymn melody by the music director.  These psalms appear within the bulletins for the Sunday Morning Worship Service.

Colossians 3:16

In preparation for the corporate confession of sin, the congregation reads a statement of God’s law from the Old Testament or a summary or restatement of the law from the New Testament. Thus God’s standard of perfect righteousness is set before us, and we are reminded of why we need to confess and what we need to confess.

Throughout the liturgy, the scriptures are read in the English Standard Version, the pew bible of Faith Presbyterian Church.

Deuteronomy 31:12

Understanding that, apart from Christ, we cannot meet God’s standard of righteousness as revealed in His word, we pray to God, confessing our sins together as a congregation, both sins of commission and sins of omission, using the prayer printed in the bulletin.  We also ask God to forgive our sin because of Christ’s atoning work on our behalf and to transform us into the likeness of Christ by the power of Holy Spirit.

James 5:16

The pastor assures the members of the congregation, on the authority of God’s word, that the one who confesses and repents of his sin and believes the gospel – that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the scriptures – is freely pardoned by God.

1 John 1:9; Romans 8:1

Reading from a statement of doctrine printed in the bulletin, the congregation corporately affirms what we believe.  The affirmation will be a section of the Westminster Confession of Faith, the Westminster Larger Catechism, the Heidelberg Catechism, the Apostles’ Creed, or the Nicene Creed, and will be an expression of the Reformed faith, which in turn is the apostolic and biblical faith, once for all delivered to the saints.

1 Corinthians 15:1-4, Jude 4

The congregation and choir respond to the affirmation of faith by singing together the Gloria Patri, an ancient Trinitarian doxology in praise of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Romans 11:36

Faith Presbyterian Church firmly supports a covenant family ministry model in which our very youngest can grow in wisdom and knowledge of our Lord alongside congregation members of all ages.  Accordingly a pastor invites the younger children to the front of the church where he teaches them an age-appropriate lesson often based on the sermon which will be preached that morning.

Matthew 19:14

The pastor offers a prayer of thanksgiving for God’s many blessings, after which members of the congregation have the opportunity to return gratefully and cheerfully a portion of the material goods with which God has so graciously blessed them.  The offertory is an instrumental selection which accompanies the ushers’ passing of the collection plates for this purpose.

Malachi 3:10, 1 Corinthians 9:7

The congregation and choir respond to the giving of God’s tithes and offerings by singing together another Trinitarian doxology, the Old Hundredth, praising the triune God from whom all blessings flow.

James 1:17

Led by the music director and the choir, the congregation joins together to sing praises to our great God.

Hymns are from the Trinity Hymnal, which consists of hymns faithfully based on God’s word and which clearly teach the doctrines of grace.

Revelation 5:12

The pastor prays to Almighty God on behalf of the congregation and himself.  This prayer includes adoration of God for who He is, confession of our sins against Him, thanksgiving for all of His manifold benefits to us, and supplication for our needs.  The prayer is especially designed to help prepare the hearts and minds of God’s people for the preaching of God’s word which is to follow.

Ephesians 1:15-23

At the conclusion of the pastoral prayer, the congregation joins together to pray the model prayer given by our Lord to His disciples in response to their request to teach them to pray.  That this prayer is suitable for corporate use is indicated by the Lord’s use of the plural pronouns “us” and “our”.

Faith Presbyterian Church uses the King James Version of the Lord’s Prayer found in Matthew’s gospel.

Matthew 6:9-13

The sermon is the high point in the liturgy, the element to which everything else in the service has led.  The Reformation restored the preaching of the word of God to its proper place in the worship service, at the center, symbolized by the front-and-center position of the pulpit in the sanctuary.  We come together in worship to praise God and enjoy His presence, but the most important part of worshiping God is hearing a word from Him.

The sermon begins with the pastor’s reading of the portion of scripture which he will be expounding in the message. This is followed by the Prayer for Illumination, a petition and request made unto God the Father, that Holy Spirit would prepare our hearts and minds to read, believe, and obey the gospel truths of God’s holy, inspired, and inerrant Word, even that we would receive in faith all the benefits of Jesus’ life and work as offered in the gospel.

Then follows the actual sermon, a word-based, gospel-centered message delivered by the pastor, who is qualified by calling, gifting, and education to preach, teach, and exhort.  The sermon is word-based because God has spoken to His people through His inscripturated word. Faith Presbyterian Church believes in and practices expository preaching, the verse-by-verse explanation and application of complete books of the Bible.

The sermon is gospel-centered because the ultimate purpose of the message is to present the person and work of Christ and their application to our lives as revealed in the portions of God’s word on which the sermon is based.  The gospel reminds us of who we are in Christ and what Christ has done for us.

Through the message preached by God’s man, God’s word by the power of Holy Spirit enriches, challenges and changes the hearts and minds of God’s people, bringing us into conformity to God’s Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.

The pastor closes the sermon with a prayer to almighty God, asking Him to apply His word to the hearts of His people.

2 Timothy 3:16, 2 Timothy 4:2, 1 Corinthians 18-21

To close the worship service and send us back into the world, the pastor reminds us of our position as the saints of God by pronouncing God’s blessing on His people.

Numbers 6:24-26