In being faithful, we see Scripture as teaching a broad sense of worship that includes all of life and a narrow sense of worship when we set aside special times dedicated to worship in private prayer, with our family, and corporately with members of our church community. This is because worship and prayer have both corporate and personal form. It happened both in homes and in the temple courts in the early church, thus the dynamic must be both formal and informal even in our setting today. A biblical approach to the worship of God includes both these senses so that we can exhibit faithful worship not only in our daily lives but also in our corporate expressions when we gather with the explicit focus of worshiping our God.

In being simple, we see the acceptable way of worshiping the true God as expressed in the second Commandment – that he may not be worshipped according to the imagination and devices of men, or the suggestions of Satan, under any visible representation, or any other way not prescribed in the Holy Scripture. We call this the “regulative principle,” and it can aptly be summarized in the motto of “reading, praying, singing, preaching, and seeing” the Bible. Our worship will feature structure (reading, corporate confessions of creed, pastoral prayer and confessions of sins) but never will these things be done without explanation or in purely rote form, for if something is not communicating the Gospel, connecting with the hearts of our people, or demonstrating the worth of God it is not worth doing. Yet in the midst of this structure, we will encourage enthusiasm and not shrink away from expressive response appropriate to worshiping our beautiful and loving God.