“But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”
- John 4:23-24
Covenant Renewal Worship
We hold firmly to the regulative principle of worship. All churches have a liturgy, whether they are conscious of it or not. All liturgies necessarily say something about the God they serve. While it is commonplace for contemporary churches to “invite” God into their worship services, arranged according to their own fitful whims and the traditions of men, Scripture reveals something quite different. We believe that God, through His Word, sets the terms of worship. God has the prerogative and takes the initiative to summon His people into His presence around His throne to worship Him on His terms in response to who He is and what He has, is, and will do in our lives.
Covenant Renewal worship renders service to the Lord after the biblical pattern of covenant and sacrifice. As the structure of covenant and sacrifice follows a five-stage pattern, so too do we follow the same five stages in our liturgy: (1) the call of Almighty God to worship Him, (2) confession of our sins and our common faith, (3) consecration through receiving the reading and preaching of the Word of God, (4) communing with Christ and His saints at His Table, and finally (5) God’s commissioning of His saints in the authority of Christ to live faithfully as living sacrifices unto God according to His Word (Rom 12:1-2), sending us back out into the world as ambassadors of His kingdom-rule in our various spheres of influence and authority. In this way, our Lord renews covenant with us, His people, as we faithfully assemble to worship Him each and every Lord’s Day in His congregation.
God alone is worthy to be worshiped, and those who worship Him must do so in Spirit and Truth (John 4:24). When Paul proclaims the gospel to Gentiles, he sees his role before God as a minister in the priestly service of the Gospel (Rom 15:16), and those who come to God in faith and repentance are presented to God as a holy offering (Rom 12:1-2).
The worship of God is the very centre of everything we practice as the people of God. People become like what they worship (Ps 115, 2 Cor 4:13), and therefore, it is easy to see why worship is and should be at the centre of all that a Christian does. In fact, it is through our worship that we, as the people of God, are transformed from one degree of glory to another (2 Cor 3:18). When we share the gospel of the kingdom, we do so because God is worthy of being worshiped by all, showing us that the biblical motivation for gospel proclamation is the worship of God through Christ our High Priest, Prophet, and King.
The centrality of worship in the life of the Christian means that membership at Christ Covenant Church entails a commitment to the service of covenant renewal, where members hear the call to worship and respond in faith, praise, prayer, the confession of sin, confessing the faith, hearing the word of God and communing with the Lord and each other at His table.