Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching, and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. (Colossians 3:16-17, ESV)
The Worship ministry at Exodus seeks to call people to value God supremely, and proclaim the gospel with our lives.
We believe that we were created in God’s image to both display and enjoy the glory and character of God. We believe that all of our lives, together and separate, gathered and scattered, are being lived in the worship of something.
Scattered Worship
We actively call one another to value God supremely in our homes, workplaces, hobbies, and devotional lives. Letting the Word of God dwell in us richly, we will give thanks and glorify God in all that we do. While we are scattered as a people, our worship will seek to reflect our gathered times. We will seek to value God with our resources, attention, and time. We also seek to proclaim the Gospel as an act of worship when we are scattered from one another and dispersed in the world.
Gathered Worship
When we are together, we call one another to value God supremely and proclaim the gospel to one another, through our singing, preaching, readings, and prayers. As we are primarily responsible for planning and facilitating our gathered worship, we will pursue the following things with our time together.
- Preaching of God’s Word—When we gather as a people, we will have a message that comes from the Bible.
- Scripture—We will use scripture throughout our service to call our attention to God and the Gospel.
- Gospel Centric—Each gathered time of worship will seek to express the Gospel narrative.
- Creation—Call to worship–We will seek to draw attention and praise to God’s Lordship over all creation. He spoke the world into existence and sustains it with his sovereign hand.
- Fall—We will seek to express our sinful state, through confession, prayer, and expressing our need for a savior. We will call people to repentance and declare the need for all to acknowledge their guilt before our Holy God.
- Redemption—We will tell the story of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection with our words and songs. We will declare the assurance of the atonement, forgiveness of sins, and reconciliation to God for those in Christ Jesus.
- Consummation—We will celebrate our certain future of all things being made new. We will sing of our faith being made sight, heaven, and the return of our Lord.
- Timely and Timeless—We will sing both songs that are timeless and timely. We will sing choruses and hymns, ancient and modern and in-between.
- Excellent and authentic—We will seek to make music that is excellent. Our bands will work on our leadership and skill to the glory of Christ. We will use rehearsals to listen to another and be part of one another’s growth as musicians and vocalists.
- Intelligent and Emotive—We will seek to worship God with a clear Biblical view of who he is and what he has done. We will also assume that proper understanding of the truth would lead to emotional responses. Our posture, expressions, and demeanor should correlate to the truths with which we are engaging.
- Poetic and Understandable—We will be poetic in expressing our joy with a proper boundary of being understandable. Our songs have some creative license but not at the expense of truth and clarity.